This conference breakout preview comes to us from our friend Curt Benham, who will be speaking this Friday afternoon at Mockingbird NYC!
Church planting is so hot right now.
These are heady times in the Church Planting Industrial Complex. There’s lots of money flowing around, and lots of conferences with lots of hype and lots of really, really, ridiculously good looking people slinging lots of “actionable steps” to help you plant the church of your dreams and make a Giant Impact ™ for Christ on your city.
Church planters have become the tech entrepreneurs of Western Christendom. We’re the ones who must innovate, innovate, and innovate some more in order to get all those wayward millennials’ butts back in the pews and make our cities a utopian paradise.
But here’s what they won’t tell you: church planting will kill you (ministers and laypersons alike). You will die. The law (of church planting), which promises life, will in fact kill you.
In other words, planting a church looks a lot like a life. You have big dreams for your church (or for your career, or for your children), and you feel empowered to take control of those dreams, become the master of your domain, execute your strategy, and ride off in the glow of your success. But you soon realize that you do not have control, and that the millennials aren’t showing up, and that your city is not becoming a utopian paradise, and that people are sick of hearing about grace and want “better, deeper” sermons with more “life application,” and that you’re a crappy “leader.” Ultimately, even though you talk about him all the time, you realize that you are not God. And that kills you. That’s the death-blow.
Resurrection is pretty sweet too, though. What comes out of the ashes of a dead church planter and his/her dead church can be a beautiful thing. Resurrection life usually looks nothing like what you expected or what you would have chosen. But it’s beautiful.
In this break-out session we’ll get honest about the joys and the sorrows of planting a grace-focused church.
Pre-register here!
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For those of us who are unable to attend will these sessions become available online? I’m asking for a… ahem… really, really, ridiculously good looking friend of mine slinging lots of “actionable steps” who is hoping to plant the church of his dreams and make a Giant Impact ™ for Christ on his city in the coming years.