Diary of a Possible Church Planter

Nehemiah 2:2-3 And the king said to me, “Why is your face sad, seeing you are not sick? This is nothing but sadness of the heart.” Then I was very much afraid. I said to the king, “Let the king live forever! Why should not my face be sad...

I got the bug years ago, and now it seems possible that it's time to act. The bug has matured. Twelve years ago I was a 19-year-old, interning at a large church in the youth ministry, and wondering why we couldn't do things a little bit differently to attract a little bit of a different demographic. I was frustrated and even angered at our cheesy christian clipart, our juvenile activities, and even our massive events targeted at our christian kids.

My youth pastor, the guy I worked under and learned from, had a lot of patience with me. He explained to me that our job as church youth workers (youth pastors) was to nurture the christian kids, whose parents were at 'big church' tithing their big bucks so that we could have a paycheck. He also told me at one point something that drastically and dramatically changed my life. He said, "you know Chad, you're not all that". As much as I was critical of the way things were, I was not the saviour. I wasn't called to be so then, and I'm certainly not called to be now.

Fast forward a few years. I'm married, I've had much, much more church experience both happy and sad, energizing and dissapointing. I have two boys of my own whom I'm terrified to bring up in the knowledge of God, and for the past 6 months at least, I've been 'sad' with what King Artaxerxes might call 'sadness of heart'. Really, it's been the same frustration I felt brewing over all those years ago.

Why do we do the things we do as Christians? Why do we say that we follow the One Who told us to go into the world, while we play it safe in our christian subculture? Why do we blame the darkness for being so bloody dark, when we who are the 'light of the world' refuse go bring light to those places? There's a school 3 blocks down the road from our church building that is notorious for being a 'dark place', and christians who want to keep their kids protected do all that they can to keep their kids away from that darkness - instead they send them to the same school most other christian parents send their kids to. So there's a conglomeration of light - which is practically not a light at all - and there's a school that gets darker and darker. And the christian parents say, 'see, I told you that was a dark place'... GAHH!


The youth ministry's been doing great. There's increasing group cohesion, missional mindset, leaders getting involved in the lives of kids outside the four walls, and excitement about what's to come. But still, there's been this 'sadness', this restlessness, this frustration, this whatever-you-want-to-call-it.

Darren, my lead pastor has recognized it. And after MUCH intense prayer and counsel and tears and anquish, has decided that the best thing for me and for the church would be to release me to find out what it is that could possibly alleviate the sadness, and do it. I'm ending my time here this summer.

My desire is to lead a church in fulfilling the great commission. I love our church, otherwise I wouldn't be so frustrated with her. But I have no option to lead her, and really, no desire to. Here I fellowship and worship, and she's a big ship to turn. I choose to leave that task to Darren. As for me, I need to find a church that I can lead into mission, a church that exists as much for the community around it as for the community within it. If no such church exists, then my desire is to plant - a thought that excites me ("yes, it's finally here!") and terrifies me ("am I really suited and ready?").

I'll keep you posted on our journey.