Confessions of a Successful Church Planter

Introducing Pastor Heather Weber

Dear Christian,

Here’s a questions for you: what does success look like for the church? Dig deep into this:

• What does it look like for your church, the one that you attend?

• For church planting, church revitalizations?

• For rural and urban and suburban churches?

• For the one holy worldwide and apostolic church?

I think that my movement, the Assemblies of God, has at least in certain sectors defaulted to pagan standards of success. Over and over again I am told that success looks like exponential numerical growth, new building projects, platforming of the pastors, and media-savvy broadcasting.

But is any of that biblical? (I’m really asking).

I have invited a guest author to help us probe this question in a series of six posts. Allow me to introduce my dear friend and partner in the gospel, Pastor Heather Weber.

Heather is an ordained minister in the Assemblies of God, coach, and the founding pastor of CityChurch, Iowa City. She planted CityChurch about the same time that I came to Resurrection Assembly (formerly First Assembly), Iowa City to lead a revitalization. Because both church planting and church revitalization require miracles, our stories intertwined as we supported each other in prayer and fellowship. I prayed with her through the conception, gestation, and delivery of a church. She prayed with me for the healing and resurrection of a dying church.

CityChurch was planted in 2016, and it closed in August of this year.

I have asked Heather to write a series of posts under the title “Confessions of a Successful Church Planter.” The title is intended to poke at, deconstruct, and contradict prevailing, unreflective (and indeed unChristian) narratives of church success.

Too many will automatically think that the church plant was a failure because it closed. The work died. But I am here, as is Heather, to remind you that we worship a Lord who died. So death can be no measure of failure or success.

Look for her first post right here on Pastoral Theology with Joseph Lear tomorrow.

Heather is the author of Dear Boy: An Epistolary Memoir. You can subscribe to her Substack newsletter, Dear Exile, here.