Wake up call
Planting a church is proving to be one of the craziest things I've ever endeavored to be a part of. It's got the highest of highs and lowest of lows.
When we first started TXC it was really easy. We were running high on energy. We were riding a wave of momentum with tons of new people coming every week. Everyone that was helping out had lots of energy and it was fun.
Now I'm not saying it's not fun anymore. It's just that the view point has changed from where I'm sitting. At first it was easy to see this as a "one hit wonder" type of thing. Where we would do our thing, serve the community and people would come flocking.
This morning I woke up.
One of the biggest pitfalls that pastors can very easily fall into is judging the success of the church they are leading on a week to week basis. I've heard people say that if you do this that you will wreck yourself. I think I've been doing this. And I've felt the pain. And it's self inflicted. Needless emotional highs and lows as I look at what happens from Sunday to Sunday instead of the big picture. Instead of 5, 10, 20, 50 years from now.
A church doesn't grow and mature over night. In the beginning I was hoping it would. Maybe because I was running from the reality of the hard work it takes in planting a church. I admit, I was completely naive coming into this. I was living in a dream world.
However...the dream is still alive and burning red hot. It's just that I've come to realize that it's not going to happen in one week. It's going to happen with one day stacking on top of the next and it's going to be hard work...where we actually do everything we can instead of just hoping it will happen.
I've realized that if I don't constantly remind myself of my need of Jesus (which comes from consistent prayer and bible study) that I won't know why we're doing what we're doing. Why does that person need Jesus? Because I know what he's done in my life and the difference that he's made. It's not because they need to come to a cool church and hear some cool church music and hear a cool church guy talk and have their kids in a cool church kids program.
It's Jesus nothing more, nothing less.
It's going to take a lot of hard work for us to see this little church grow to 1,000 (with 500 of those people being new Christ followers) in the next 5 years but I can't see us being in existence for anything other reason. If we are in it for the accolades, we may as well shut the doors. If we're in it for bragging rights, we may as well shut the doors. If we're in it for mansions and state of the art jets, we may as well as shut the doors. If we're in it for quick "success", we're lost.
I'm in this thing for the long haul. I don't care if we have 10 people at our gathering tomorrow or if we have 150. The fact is that Jesus has rocked my world and I will give my life to seeing others experience the same thing.
When we first started TXC it was really easy. We were running high on energy. We were riding a wave of momentum with tons of new people coming every week. Everyone that was helping out had lots of energy and it was fun.
Now I'm not saying it's not fun anymore. It's just that the view point has changed from where I'm sitting. At first it was easy to see this as a "one hit wonder" type of thing. Where we would do our thing, serve the community and people would come flocking.
This morning I woke up.
One of the biggest pitfalls that pastors can very easily fall into is judging the success of the church they are leading on a week to week basis. I've heard people say that if you do this that you will wreck yourself. I think I've been doing this. And I've felt the pain. And it's self inflicted. Needless emotional highs and lows as I look at what happens from Sunday to Sunday instead of the big picture. Instead of 5, 10, 20, 50 years from now.
A church doesn't grow and mature over night. In the beginning I was hoping it would. Maybe because I was running from the reality of the hard work it takes in planting a church. I admit, I was completely naive coming into this. I was living in a dream world.
However...the dream is still alive and burning red hot. It's just that I've come to realize that it's not going to happen in one week. It's going to happen with one day stacking on top of the next and it's going to be hard work...where we actually do everything we can instead of just hoping it will happen.
I've realized that if I don't constantly remind myself of my need of Jesus (which comes from consistent prayer and bible study) that I won't know why we're doing what we're doing. Why does that person need Jesus? Because I know what he's done in my life and the difference that he's made. It's not because they need to come to a cool church and hear some cool church music and hear a cool church guy talk and have their kids in a cool church kids program.
It's Jesus nothing more, nothing less.
It's going to take a lot of hard work for us to see this little church grow to 1,000 (with 500 of those people being new Christ followers) in the next 5 years but I can't see us being in existence for anything other reason. If we are in it for the accolades, we may as well shut the doors. If we're in it for bragging rights, we may as well shut the doors. If we're in it for mansions and state of the art jets, we may as well as shut the doors. If we're in it for quick "success", we're lost.
I'm in this thing for the long haul. I don't care if we have 10 people at our gathering tomorrow or if we have 150. The fact is that Jesus has rocked my world and I will give my life to seeing others experience the same thing.
