I'm Telling You it's Going to Be Worth It
Confessions of a Successful Church Planter, The Final Chapter
This is the final chapter of Confessions of a Successful Church Planter.
Heather Weber is an ordained minister in the Assemblies of God, coach, and the founding pastor of CityChurch, Iowa City.
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. We invite readers to catch up on Chapter One, Chapter Two, Chapter Three, Chapter Four, and Chapter Five.
Before CityChurch launched, I attended a special guest service at another local church. Afterward, prayer was offered to those in attendance, so I approached a twentysomething man from a visiting ministry team and asked for prayer for my church planting journey. He prayed about some of the stressors I was experiencing, and, afterward, advised me, declaring something both audacious and naive: “Church planting is easy when God is your father.”
He had served on a house-church planting team in my city, he said, some years ago. The church he named no longer existed, and I was marginally acquainted with its name. Presumably, his assertion that church planting was “easy” came from his previous experience, which, I presumed, he characterized as untroubled, simple, calm.
During that conversation, my then-perspective on church planting flipped like a switch; I left that church with a new mantra: Church planting is easy since God is my father! Indeed, I told myself, this was the attitude that I should adopt, and I repeated the words in moments of worry over the next several months of pre-launch work. I reminded God that the church plant had been his idea, not mine, and that I was just being faithful and looking for him to provide. The next several years occasioned the mantra’s repetition, cued by bad weather, a trailer parked on an icy hill, our bank balance, the never-enough number of volunteers, goodbye after tearful goodbye to congregants moving away, and an encounter with a violent member of the public and, consequently, the police.
In truth, church planting wasn’t easy, but I labored for several years under the belief that it should be, if I could just capture the contentment of the Apostle Paul in all of his various hardships–nakedness, shipwreck, hunger, beatings1–restfully content in the trajectory of his life. I blamed myself for an inability to attain Zen-like calm.
By now, however, I am disabused of the notion shared by that well-meaning young ministry team member, a soul who was then incapable of naming the tensions in which we pastors live: the now and the not-yet, the light and the dark, the miracles and the waiting, the labor and the deliveries, and rejoicing at all times, including the objectively bad ones.
On one hand, I appreciate both Paul’s claim of contentment and the young man’s implication that ultimately we church planters are in the hands of the loving Father, that in the end “all shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well.”2 This we can take to the bank. However, the journey of church planting and pastoring (or ministry of any kind, really) was never supposed to be easy, if by easy we mean free from challenge, opposition, mockery, sweat, hard work, early mornings, late nights, goodbyes, abandonments, writer’s block, mental fatigue, technology failures, pre-service conflicts with spouses or teens, gravely ill congregants, and, in my case, a global pandemic–not to mention the normal-life things that must be attended to before or alongside pastoral obligations–a hungry family, a post-surgery child, a weak or sick body, an acutely broken heart. Easy? Even Christ, the Son of Man himself, could not Zen his way around the onslaught of blood-saturated sweat on the eve of the cross.
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A few moments after writing the preceding lines, I glanced over at the cabinet in the high school chemistry classroom I inhabit today. (Substitute teaching is a new-normal feature of my life; I have plenty of prep periods at high school to think and write). Taped to the cabinet is a black-and-white poster of Einstein and his famous words: “Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.” Next to the Einstein poster is another with an uncredited quip: “I am not telling you that it is going to be easy. I am telling you it is going to be worth it.”
By Einstein's definition, I might have driven myself insane with the expectation that, if I could just think properly about God as the capable Father that he is, then ministry would be a cakewalk. Giving a wholehearted Yes! to the King of our hearts may be simple at the start, but seeing it through will take us to excruciating places (think of Peter, on the night of Jesus’ arrest, ready to die with him one moment and quick to deny him at the first sign of trouble). Yet, arming ourselves with this particular knowledge in advance may guard our hearts against despair.
If you’ve been with me through this Confessions series, I thank you for your time. I pray that something you’ve read helped you feel normal and exactly where you ought to be on the map of your life and ministry. If not, I pray that what you read helps you get to get there.
There are a few more things I’d offer you before this series ends if you care for unsolicited advice. (Also, my Substack host and editor has kindly suggested a series recap).
So, humbly, here:
Assume that the reality of ministry will not usually match up with what you envisioned at the start. Roll with it.
Don’t worry about the wrong things (money, tomorrow’s troubles), because God will take care of them.
Every experience of displacement or exile (aka things not going as they should) is a place to dig, plant a seed, and build a shelter. There’ll be fruit to harvest by and by. You’ll thank yourself for the work of shelter-building when it storms.
Seasons of unknowing darkness are inevitable. Embrace them. Keep walking. God is as much with you there as he is in the light. And there are things he will only teach you in the dark.
Yield to the transformative work of the Spirit for the sake of God, yourself, and others.
Faithful pastors will often struggle to confess the desire to leave, resign, or transition. There’s a difference between callousness toward your calling and divine discontent. Prepare for the day when your current ministry, like a well-worn pair of shoes, can’t hold up on the unique path He’s asking you to travel. You may need new ones. Transition with trust, knowing that every end is a new beginning.
None of this will be easy. But it’ll be worth it.
2 Corinthians 11:23-27
Julian of Norwich, Revelations of Divine Love.
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