Enough Church Planters? We Need Church Gardeners.

A decade or more ago I was convinced I was being called to plant churches. I attended as many missional conferences as I could, got my hands on all of the latest church planting books, and hounded my lead pastors about development into this vocation.

And then it all went up in flames.

The short story is I experienced some spiritual abuse and I walked away from the church, while secretly planning to still plant a church organically through business developments I was doing (coffee and hospitality). It was a weird four years of following Jesus silently without any deep Jesus community around me.

In my early 20’s, and somewhat into the later years of my 20’s, I thought the city needed more churches. Some of this thought was because I was a hardcore fundamentalist toward my own stream of faith (missional, reformed baptist) and didn’t see anyone else that looked like me.

Bumping along the path I started to find myself further and further from the stream I had been in — returning to versions of my faith when I was a teenager (Pentecostal, emergent, contemplative) and by the time my 30th birthday rolled around I felt no familiarity to the faith of my “wanting to plant churches” days. It was a slight crisis, and I mean very minimal.

I wasn’t sure what to call home anymore, because I saw good in every expression of the body of Christ — I became staunchly ecumenical. Unity had always been a huge value to me and I realized that I was just trying to force everyone to agree with my expression.

Yes. I am human and have very faulty ideas sometimes — take everything you hear from me and contemplate it, don’t just accept it.

So, I began to swim in 15 million different streams — learning from so many different followers of Jesus and it was breathtaking and beautiful. But, there was still this pesky thought in the back of my mind of church planting and ministry.

What do I do with the call I feel on my life? The call that has been affirmed time and time again.

To be honest, I sat around for about 2 years contemplating and learning. Much of that time believing that church planting would still be the path, somehow. But, there was this one stream that had enamored me, made me obsessed. A stream that I didn’t understand I had been wading through for nearly 15 years.

Spiritual formation, or discipleship.

At the end of the day, I just wanted to make disciples. I started to see that we need churches, and I dearly love the church, but the church is a people — not a building, not a set of bylaws, not programs. A people in need of transformation into the likeness of Christ.

I dove in. I dusted off every Dallas Willard book I had. Dug into church fathers and mothers from every stream out there (notably; Ignatius of Loyola, Brother Lawrence, etc.). And committed to reading the Gospels, and only the Gospels, for the next 5 years.

I traded in being a student of movements and structure, for being a student of transformation and the human heart. I became a gardener.

Slowly cultivating the already tilled and sowed land we have as followers of Jesus.

We have tons of churches. We have lots of leaders. We need transformation.

My life is now devoted to the people, emphasis on people, of the local church. To helping make them into fully formed disciples of Jesus.

People are still called to plant churches everyday, but where are the ones called to cultivate the people.

I am a church gardener.