<\/p>\n
This morning I had breakfast with a church-planter. Starting a new worshiping community is a different beast from pastoring an established congregation. To quote The Wizard of Oz<\/em>, \u201cNow that\u2019s a horse of a different color.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThere has been vocational confusion, dark times,\u201d my church-planting friend told me, now four years into this endeavor.<\/p>\n Of course<\/em>, I thought, there has to be vocational confusion and dark times.<\/em><\/p>\n After all this pastor has had to wear more hats than I can imagine: visionary leader, construction foreman, preacher, worship leader, volunteer organizer, community developer, grant writer, meal planner, non-profit director, fundraiser, coffee-shop barista, spiritual director, cheerleader, landlord, entrepreneur, marketer, community events organizer, theologian, evangelist, custodian, ad exhaustium<\/em>.<\/p>\n And all that to help birth a community the vision for which is still taking shape.<\/p>\n One wonders how pastors of new church plants survive the beginning years. What allows those who sustain this kind of ministry to do it? What keeps them from hanging up their stoles and dawning the barista\u2019s apron full time?<\/p>\n I suspect that though this work is a horse of a different color, the practices that have sustained pastors throughout the centuries in the widest variety of ministry settings haven\u2019t changed. They are the practices that keep us most open and available to God, the practices that help us discover and honor our truest selves, the practices that help us stay true to the voice of vocation speaking to us from deep within.<\/p>\n There are many, but three strike me as particularly relevant: having a soul friend, keeping a sabbath, and practicing silence.<\/p>\n I pastored churches for eight years, and I don\u2019t think I would have survived without my soul friend\u2014a spiritual director. My spiritual director created the space once a month for me to do nothing but look at my life to discern how the Holy Spirit might be at work. His office was a space where I could cry, yell, laugh, and think. His office was a space where I could do the work of remembering who I truly am and why I was in this work.<\/p>\n When the demands of ministry begin to overwhelm us, our soul friends can create the space for us to remember our deepest center in the heart of God.<\/p>\n These friendships can take different shapes. A pastor can see a trained spiritual director, have a mutual friendship with another clergy person, or meet with a group of clergy friends to practice soul friendship for one another. (One warning about clergy groups: The minute they begin to become gripe sessions or mutual advice-giving sessions, run away fast<\/em>. That\u2019s not what soul friendship is about.)<\/p>\n Second, a church-planter should consider keeping a sabbath. Sociologist Judy Wajcam has argued that we live in an era of \u201ctemporal disorganization.\u201d Because of technology, there are fewer boundaries on our time. Work spills into family and play in a way it never has before. And this is truer, I suspect, for church-planters than for other pastors. Church-planters often have no office to go to, no staff to meet with\u2014they lack the structures of an institution to order their time. And without those structures, the work of ministry bleeds in to every second of every day.<\/p>\n We then can forget that it\u2019s not our frantic agency that brings in the tides and holds the stars in the sky. There is Another at work.<\/p>\n And that\u2019s why God gave us a day of rest, so that we could cease from work long enough, not just to rejuvenate (a good day off can do that), but remember that it\u2019s not our <\/em>initiative that matters in ministry, but it\u2019s discerning and joining God\u2019s <\/em>initiative that makes the difference.<\/p>\n The work of getting things started is so close to the heart of church planting there\u2019s all the more reason to stop once a week to remember: it doesn\u2019t all depend on us.<\/p>\n Finally, practice silence. In silence we get to know the voices that drive us\u2014and often they are not the voice of God. We are driven by the need to succeed, to prove ourselves, to \u201cget this ship off the ground\u201d or \u201cturn this ship around.\u201d Many of those voices aren\u2019t the gentle, wooing spirit of God, but are the voices of our own frail egos (and of our judicatory leaders). In silence, we can see them for what they are: smoke screens, concealing the real voice we need to listen to\u2014the voice of God and the voice or own vocations, which, if we listen carefully enough, we might discover are one and the same.<\/p>\n We chatted for an hour, then my friend had to hurry away. He had another appointment at nine o\u2019clock. And I knew he had another meeting that afternoon, because it was with a friend of mine to talk about small group ministry. Then back to the worship space tonight for the weekly community meal. Such is the life of the church-planter.<\/p>\n A life that can be sustained\u2014and even flourish\u2014when soul friends, sabbath rest, and silence give us the space to discern the voice of God, remember who we are, and rest in a Love that will not let us go.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n The Rev. Dr. L. Roger Owens is associate professor of Christian spirituality and ministry at Pittsburgh Theological Seminary and teaches courses in the MDiv, Doctor of Ministry, and Continuing Education programs. Before coming to PTS he served urban and rural churches for eight years in North Carolina as co-pastor with his wife, Ginger. He has written multiple books including <\/em>The Shape of Participation: A Theology of Church Practices which was called \u201cthis decades best work in ecclesiology\u201d by <\/em>The Christian Century.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" This morning I had breakfast with a church-planter. Starting a new worshiping community is a different beast from pastoring an established congregation. To quote The Wizard of Oz, \u201cNow that\u2019s a horse of a different color.\u201d \u201cThere has been vocational confusion, dark times,\u201d my church-planting friend told me, now four years into this endeavor….<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":2425,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[3,4],"tags":[243,317],"series":[],"class_list":["post-2424","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-church-planting","category-ministry","tag-church-planting-for-new-communities","tag-what-a-church-planter-needs"],"yoast_head":"\r\nHave a Soul Friend<\/h2>\n
Keep a Sabbath<\/h2>\n
Practice Silence<\/h2>\n