Tuesday Tussle

Summer.  Got to love it.  Lawn mowing, sun tanning, baseball, cookouts and family.  Just a great time of year.  I don't know that I fully was ready for summer to begin but it is here none the less.  Since this is the first summer of our new church and the first one I have gone through as a lead pastor, I really don't know what to expect except the faithfulness of God.

This past week was our lowest attendance ever at Fellowship.  Honestly, it was tough.  Through the 2 years of training that I went through everyone tried to tell us that this would happen.  They don't call it the Summer Slump for nothing, you know!  I am becoming more and more aware that at key points in the process I think I checked out mentally or thought that my giftings would be enough to get us through and we would never drop below 100.  Therefore, I didn't take the information that successful church planters were trying to give me.  I now understand that they were hoping to spare me the reality shock to the system that I have now experienced. 

48 hours removed from Sunday, a few phone calls to key people in my life and a good afternoon alone with God and the "little white ball" I have come to some conclusions and thought I would write them down here.  Hope they help someone else because the are helping me.  So here goes some real transparency.  Can you dig it?

1. GET OVER YOURSELF  - There is perhaps no greater thrill in my life than leading Fellowship Church.  I have dreamed of this for years and to see it coming to pass, to hear the stories of those who are attending and seeing life change happen is amazing.  Within that comment though is a grain of pride.  I had heard the following statement made by church planters before me who said, "Church planting will break you like nothing else."  Well, I though I had already been broken but I am finding that a big part of the breaking process is responding to the bit in my mouth.

Breaking a horse is not only about getting on it, it's about controlling it.  1 John 2:3 says, "We know that we have come to know Him if we obey His commands."  To live by the spirit is to follow the leading of His presence within us.  We will know we are broken when we not only give place to Him in our lives but when we respond to the bit of his leading, guiding and direction.

What happens when we don't?  Well this is not a complete list but here are a few of my thoughts right now:

1. Giving into temptation.  The closer we move toward brokenness the more sensing of the spirit we need because the temptation scale will increase as well.  We are not sure if Jesus was ever tempted prior to the wilderness experience that followed his baptism.  The one thing we are certain of is after Jesus made a step out and up the temptations hit him hard and in the face.  The Bible says he was "driven by the spirit."  That's control - he submitted himself to the control of the spirit.  If we want to move to true brokenness,  we have to embrace the bit of control.


2. Depression.  Someone once told me, "you are your own worst enemy."  That has stuck with me the last few days.  In fact, it's becoming a rally cry inside of myself.  Though it is true, I am going to change it.  If I don't, I am going to battle depression.  But the deeper reality is, that I should be my biggest fan.  Let me unpack my thought here for a moment.  There came a point in David's life where he believed in himself and his God when no one else did.  He was confident in his ability and his God in the face of the giant that sent even a king into hiding.  It's so easy to spiritualize this and say that he was confident in God.  True, but he picked out the stones.  He loaded them into the slingshot.  He swong it and released the rock.  KEY:  He did what he could do and then let God take care of the rest.  If we can get a hold of this I believe we can decapitate depression before it decapitates us, our vision and our faith.
   
   

2. DON'T MAKE REACTIONARY DECISIONS.  In a phone call yesterday, one of the major voices in my life cautioned me against making a reactionary decision.  I think to be a church planter you have to be driven.  That drive is what causes us to organize a group of people and birth something out of nothing.  That drive, if not bridled can cause us to react to situations instead of responding to them.  The difference between the two is small but huge.  If we react we are prone to make things worse in an effort to make them better.  To respond to a situation is to get all the information together and make a decisions based on facts and not feelings.  Those decisionis will make the organzation better in the long run even if there is a little pain in the beginning.  Sometimes we forget that God spent thousands of years planning his response to the sin problem of humanity.  I am so glad he didn't react - we would not be here if he had!

3. DON'T FORGET IT'S NOT A SPRINT.  I have spent the last two years of my life getting ready for Fellowship.  That's a long time of prep work.  We all want to be the next great success story.  We want to see people coming to Christ by the hundrends.  But those kind of things don't happen over night - they take consistent, long standing effort.  Matt Keller, in his awesome book,  The Up The Middle Church talks about the marathon of church planting.  Sounds great.  Easy to make metal assent to the concept.   But when you hit your first summer, I think it takes on new meaning.  Paul said it this way, "I have run this race..."  Determine to pace yourself, build stamina and run your race - don't try to run someone elses.

4. STOP AND SMELL THE FLOWERS ALONG THE WAY. Don't forget to celebrate the small victories and life change that is happening in the early stages of the church - they will be the center pieces of your stories in the future.  In God's perfect timing, I just received some emails and text messages from people who have come to Fellowship since we started.  Life change is happening.  Couples are growing together.  Wives are seeing husbands get involved.  Kids are getting baptized. I just realized my wife had fresh cut flowers on the table the other day.  They are dead now. I wonder what they smelled like?  If I would have taken the time to look, I would have be able to enjoy their aroma.  God, help us all stop our pace long enough to smell the scent of fresh cut flowers you have put on display in our minitries.  The flowers of life change.  Someone once said, "Don't despise the day of small beginnings."  I think this is what they meant.

So come on summer.  Bring it on.  We will focus on building relationships with the first crop of Fellowship members.  We are going to get them plugged in and trained up.  Then when fall comes, we are going to hit new highs, reach new people, grow bigger but God's name is going to get top billing.  This is about making His fame great - not mine or even ours.  The sunset is coming into focus.  The paint is ready and the brushes are at work. 

So to my fellow church planters, be encouraged.  I am praying for any of you who are expreiencing what I have this week.  It's normal.  Believe it.  Accept it and make it work to your advantage! 

Going for the prize - one life at a time!

Comments

[Rick Fountain]

Great Blog! This will be a tremendous help to all planters who are walking the same road. You guys are such a blessing!!!!!

[Steve & Jessica White]

John and Shandra,

We would like to thank-you sooo....very much for all of your kindness you have shown our family. We feel so blessed to be a part of Fellowship Church. We are both quiet people but we want you to know that we appreciate you both so much.

We would like to be involved and help as much as we can.

Steve has recently asked Jesus into his heart and he can feel and see how his life is changing. God is so powerful and amazing!!

Thank you for praying for our family and for reaching out to us. We will continue to pray for you and your family too.

We are so very grateful.

[Sheri Elliott]

Love your blog! You are so real about your feelings and we can all relate to you on that level! Don't ever stop doing what your doing. You are bringing the Lord's word to the community where you live, yet it is touching the world by your blog!

John you are such a blessing to me and Dennis, this church has changed our lives! I have never seen Dennis so willling to get involved, as I"m sure you know by now, he is quite shy till he gets to know you, but since coming to Fellowship Church we are growing as a couple.

[Julie Copeland]

My husband and I both grew up in church. We were recently at a church where he was serving as the music leader, but we really didn't feel we were in God's will. Some great friends of ours told us about Fellowship and asked us if we would be interested in joining the launch team. I have to be honest and say I wasn't real convinced that was what we should be doing. We loved this couple and after meeting Johnny and his wife, we quickly fell in love with them too. My husband and I started praying about joining the launch team and really started to feel this was where God wanted us. I still had some reservations. I knew 100% that this was where God was calling us not only to serve but to grow as believers, but I still wasn't sure if we should leave where we were at. We started attending planning meetings, learning about what Fellowship was truely about and stood for, and meeting the team that was going to be apart of this launch. I quickly saw the passion and excitement our pastor had for sharing God's word and for investing in people and knew we would soon call Fellowship our home.

As Fellowship launched, I had the opportunity to serve God alongside many amazing people. God has blest us with a pastor and wife that we truely love. Johnny and Shandra have been there for us in a way many pastors have never been. They have not only invested in us spiritually, but also with a real relationship we can experience daily. Johnny has presented the Word weekly and I have been challenged more in the last three months than I can say I ever have been. He presents the Word straight forward without sugar coating anything. There have been several weeks in which he has presented something that is tough, but he reads to us exactly what the bible says about the topic and tells us this isn't something he is telling us to do, but God is telling us. He has fed us weekly with the Word but has also taught us to go home and feed ourselves. He challenges us to dig deeper into what he taught us that week. I can honestly say there have been several weeks I have gone home in tears because he has spoken a message and I feel as if it is only God and myself in that room. God has broken me and is building me into more of the Christian I want to be through Fellowship. I know God is at Fellowship and I can't wait to see what He does not only in my life but also the life of our church. Thank you so much Johnny for inviting us to join this dream and be apart of Fellowship. God has truely blest us with you and Shandra!

[Marcus Brown]

Great post! You should send it to headquarters and see if they will publish it. Praying for you guys and cheering you on!

[Sylvia Cox]

John,

As you have clearly been experiencing, life does not always turn out the way we want it to. Even when we are doing what we are "called" to do - sometime the bottom drops out of things. What I have found so many times with God is that God was always there holding me up. It was a necessary process for the journey he had for me. If we ever think we have God's plan figured out - we should think again.
Our Faithful God doesn't call us to something just to let us down - He never changes! Sometimes our feelings change, our situations change and we think we've missed it and God has changed His mind. But He is still there holding us, calling us, guiding us. He is constant and unchanging - He is just waiting for us to see that.

Great things are happening at Fellowship and as you know - our Wonderful, Faithful, Awesome God is right there cheering us on - through the great and the small moments.

Love and Blessings

[Jared and Joy]

My husband and I started attending FC the first Sunday. When we left we talked about what we had experienced and knew we wanted to go back the following week. As the weeks went by we realized this would soon be our home.

We were impressed with the transparency/authenticity and the simple form that this new church had taken on. We had both been extremely involved in our home churches before we were married. When we found FC we were looking for a place we could both call our own. We also were excited about the fact that we would be involved in a church from the ground up. As we continued to attend we could see passion and excitement in our pastor and quickly learned this wasn’t a church started on a whim.

In the following weeks we became more excited and had the desire to get more involved. We attended the first foundations class and what we learned solidified in our hearts what we already knew, this was our home. During out time at FC we have connected with other couples and are growing friendships that could last a lifetime.

Relationships that we are building are great, but the Word that we receive on a weekly basis is amazing. We feel that we are being fed, but also being taught to feed ourselves. The transparency we felt when we first came becomes even more evident as we get to know all of our friends at FC

Thanks FC for all you have done for us! We are excited and ready to get plugged in and trained up!

[Sarah Keller]

Great Post John! You're definitely on the right track, and like Shandra said, thanks for being so transparent!

I remember Craig Groeschel talking about the early days of his church and he said something to the effect of, "I severely overestimated what God wanted to do through me and severely underestimated what God wanted to do in me."

Which is definitely the same story that Matt and I had. There were A LOT of things that God needed to do in us and the ministry that we did was often a by-product! The best thing is to learn through these seasons, so you can teach others when you come out of them!!

We are so proud of you and Shandra...you're doing a great job and we love watching your story unfold!

Keep up the great work and give Shandra a hug from me!

God Bless,
Sarah :)