They also have noncash resources. Because you don’t have bags of money, resources are at a premium. Your church’s old sound system sits in a storage closet collecting dust, while the church planter agonizes over how he can raise the funds. Don’t raise funds. Raid the storage closet. To be frank, most churches have enough old gear laying around for two or three church plants. Projector screens, LCD projectors, offering boxes, coffee machines, air pots and just about anything else that you can think of will save you thousands of dollars right off the bat. The Master has need of their donkeys if they’re not going to ride them. In addition, there’s health benefits, insurance, accounting staff and expertise, constitution and bylaws, graphics and media. You’ll ask to give a pitch and appeal on a Sunday morning. The possibilities are endless.
Question 3: Who Is Going With Me?
Lastly, your sending church is packed with people who are bored with being an audience. This is a target-rich environment for core team builders looking for unused gifts, undeveloped potential and congregants with that half-crazed gleam in their eye. If your pastor trusts you and you’re being sent, he’ll throw you in front of them to announce your crazy exodus in hopes that you’ll take the weird and difficult ones off his hands.
When I formed my first core team, God brought us everybody else’s rejects. In 1 Samuel 22:2, God brought David the dejected, despised and worthless men. Some translations state that they were in distress, in debt and bitter in soul. No offense to my team, but we were really a motley crew, run off from other churches, who became mighty men (and women).
What puts fear in the heart of a church planter is being held back, and for that reason most planters fear sharing their plans with their sending pastor. It won’t be easy, and the result is unpredictable every time, but the burden of how it goes largely rests upon you. You don’t have to read Kissinger’s tome on diplomacy, but you’re going to have to pray for wisdom as you aim to win your sending pastor’s support. With hat in hand, and the humblest three-piece suit of humility that you can cover yourself with, you’re going to need to put yourself in his shoes. As a result of your recruiting efforts, he stands to lose some of his best people. From your pastor’s perspective, losing those people could be very disheartening, especially if they’re as valuable to the sending pastor’s work as they are to yours.
If you get caught on the receiving end of a shotgun blast, stay cool, and try to understand the reaction of the sending pastor if he’s less than gracious in the first meeting. Keep in mind, there will come a time when somebody will come knocking on your door, metaphorically asking for your daughter’s hand in marriage, and you may be polishing your shotgun in anticipation of the next young punk. Be aware that you may catch him off guard or at a bad moment. He may be dealing with vicious infighting, suffering personal attacks or be leaking people he values—people like you. Your request could be the straw that breaks the camel’s back. Pray with him, listen humbly, letting him know that as a result of his faithful ministry, his people want to step out in a venture of faith, and that he could be a part of commissioning and sending them.
Ultimately, the sending church misses out on the blessing of supporting a new work should they refuse to engage proactively. As Francis Chan once said, “Christians are like manure. If you put them in a heap for too long, they begin to stink. Spread them out, and they become fruitful.” If your pastor understands the importance of church planting, then he will realize that your crew is not leaving his church because it stinks, but because they themselves are beginning to stink. He will think of it not as losing a member, but gaining a church planter. He will see himself as an answer to your prayers. He will, in fact, be the answer to those three questions.
Peyton Jones is a veteran church planter, founder of the New Breed Church Planting network and author of Church Zero: Raising 1st Century Churches Out of the Ashes of the 21st Century Church (David C. Cook, 2013).