I’ve been trying to write down a few things I’ve learned in seven years of church planting. Maybe so I won’t forget or make the same mistakes the second time around. The first installment here:
This one’s a little more practical. I remember in the first year [when I definitely didn’t know what I was doing… as opposed to later, “sorta” not knowing what I was doing], I was having a conversation with another pastor about baptism. He said that even though he has several other pastors on his staff, he does all the baptisms at his church. I asked why and he said, “That’s always how we’ve done it and it’s my way as senior pastor to shepherd the entire church.”
I don’t know what possessed me to ask why… I know other churches that do the same. But when I heard the answer, I realized it made absolutely no sense. Does any “shepherding” actually happen when the senior pastor shows up every few months to dunk a few people? Does the Bible actually mandate that baptisms be done by pastors [let alone the “senior” ones]? And just because others did it, why do we need to do it?
From that point on, I found myself asking “why” to everything. Why do we need a building? Why does the pastor have to do all the teaching? And [the blasphemous] why do we need to have weekly Sunday worship? I found myself asking this question over and over again:
Why am I doing what I’m doing?
I never really got good answers to my own question. And the problematic thing was that I found myself in somewhat of a no-man’s land. I couldn’t go back to the old way of doing things; but I also had no idea where to go to next. There wasn’t anyone in my circles that had walked down this path. And I constantly felt the pressure [externally and internally] to keep doing the things I was finding less and less reason to do. I was often stuck, afraid to move.
Continue reading “lessons :: why am i doing what i’m doing?”
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