When thinking about church planting, two of the big questions that arise are: Why Church Plant, and then Where will you Church plant? But for Tim and I, when we accepted that Church Planting was indeed an important, there was a question that we needed to think about, even before we got to the where. And that question was: Are we suited to this kind of ministry?
The whole idea of Church planting came from a particular older brother in Christ, who approached Tim to say that he thought that Tim and I were very suited to Church Planting, and should seriously consider doing it. Tim was surprised, but thought it was worth thinking hard about whether this was true.
A few weeks later we went to a session at College on this very topic, what kind of personality and gifting do you need to be a church planter? Things mentioned where: If you have an ability to lead, if you were the kind of person who started ministries if your own bat, if you loved evangelism, if you had preaching and pastoring gifts, if you relished change and enjoyed excitement. Sitting in that session, Tim and I joked that if you smooshed the two of us together into one person, you would probably get a good church planter, but as it was, perhaps we weren't the kind of people who were suited to this kind of ministry.
And so Tim emailed this friend back and said, "We have thought and prayed about this, and we really don't think we are the kind of people who could church plant".
About a month later that same friend contacted Tim again because he wanted to talk more about the church we were going to plant!
This person's continual enthusiasm for the idea, along with Tim's growing realisation for the need for church planting, convinced us that we needed to think and pray about it more.
And so we participated in the Geneva Push Church Planting assessment. You can find out more details about that here. This was an opportunity for us to undergo a rigorous assessment of our gifts, to have some referee's write about our ministry, and to be interviewed by experienced church planters. And to our surprise they came out saying that they thought, with some conditions, that we were the kind of people who were gifted to plant a church
The biggest questions that were raised were to do with our administrative gifts and our lack of natural entrepenerial drive. But our interviewers believed that what we lacked personally could be suplimented by having a "core team". Some people plant by doing everything themselves, starting on their own, and growing from there. We were not necessarily suited to that model, but would cope better with a group of people who from the start were on-board with our mission and could cover the areas where we lacked. And so, we found, much to our surprise, that maybe we were the kind of people who could church plant!
And Church planting is so important we decided that if we could do it, then it was something we really wanted to do!
Of course, in all this we are aware that ultimately it is God who makes a ministry work, and all the gifts in the world can't grow a church. Only God can.
A great example of this happened last September. Sitting in the foodcourt at Box Hill Centro- I said to Tim, "Where are we going to meet these non-Christians when we church plant?". I was feeling scared and discouraged. As we walked out of the foodcourt- we bumped into a lady I had first met in Sydney who didn't know God. She had just moved to the Box Hill area. After chatting for a little bit, we walked off. Tim commented- "you should have got her phone number so you could catch up". I agreed, feeling foolish for missing such a great oportunity. Suddenly I saw that her two year old son had actually followed us out of the food court! So I walked him back to her, and asked for her phone number. We have since caught up and she wants to know more about Jesus! It was such a great reminder that it is God who works in people's lives, that he can do ANYTHING, and that we are just trying to be faithful while along for the ride!
We prayed long and hard to God through this whole process, that he would direct our path and help us to do his will. And while we feel that church planting is the right thing for us to do, we don't know what will happen. We are entrusting this process to God, and asking that he use us, as suited or unsuited as we might be, to bring people into his Kingdom and to bring him glory!
Amen!
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