Church Planting is Hard!

We were told this when we began this whole adventure, and I believed it, but it is so much more real now that we are in the midst of it! I shouldn't complain because I do believe it is where God wants us to be. My husband has an incredible vision, and I love to watch him as he makes this vision clear to others, and I know that he would not be happy if this was not the journey we were on. And the truth is I like Church planting - I like what it can become - but all the steps that have to be taken to get there are not fun for me. The hard thing is that it is not always fun for Brent either, even though we are where God has directed us. God does not always take us down paths that are fun and easy. In fact, often he takes us down very difficult ones so that we can learn and so that others can learn and so that He can be glorified. I look at my own history; I look at the lives of my friends and family; most importantly, I look at the Bible. I read about Paul. His path led him to prison on more than one occasion. Jesus's path led him to the cross. And there are many more examples, all of which we can learn from.

My question is, "What am I supposed to be learning right now?" Sometimes it is so easy to look for what others should be learning. I need to just look inward! However, while I know that, it is still hard, and I feel like writing about it and not necessarily about what I need to be learning, just about the frustrations. It will be interesting to look back on this one day.

Sometimes we feel discouraged not because of what people say but because of what is not said or what is lacking. We have been experiencing some of this. On the other hand, people can also use their words to be so discouraging without probably even meaning to be. I am grateful that we have a lot of encouragers in our lives, but we have a lot of discouragement also. It seems like it often comes from the same place over and over, which is a struggle. Sometimes I just want to slap people and say, "Do you NOT get it?" Why is it that the discouragement always speaks so much louder than the encouragement. My opinion on that is that we are not listening closely enough to the encouragment and hearing God's voice in it. If we did, it would be much louder than anything else! God does not discourage; He corrects, He teaches, but He does not discourage.

Another area that is hard is trying to figure out what to do next. What does God want us to do? If He would just write it on the wall or email us, we would be so obedient. I want it to be so obvious, but it isn't always. We are seeking to do God's will in every step, but we are having such difficulty seeing clearly what our next steps should be. The church is not where we dreamed it would be after two months, so we are trying to figure out what is next. How do we reach the people? What people does God want us to reach? What strategies should we use? We have tried to build relationships, and I feel we have done a good job of that! But it takes time, a long time with some of the non-christians that we have relationships with, such as the Sikhs who live across the street. We have taken the truck out and given out a lot of ice cream, as well as cards about the church, but that has not produced results yet, either. What is next? Everybody has different opinions about that.

The schedule that we are keeping is hard, too. I so wanted to have a few days away at Spring Break, but that is not going to be possible, I don't think, which is frustrating to me. When you are church planting, and don't have a large launch team, it is impossible to work only five days. Pretty much, Brent works five very full days and two partial days. There are nice things in that he can take breaks here and there during the day and he is around the kids since he is officing at home, but it is not ideal. It would be much better if his office were not here, but that is not the situation in which God has put us for now.

The final thing that is hard is that I feel like everyone thinks I am trying to befriend them in order to get them to attend our church. I seriously doubt that is the case, but that is how I feel. I feel like all of my life is about recruiting, and I don't like it. I hope people realize that I am just like everyone else. I want friends, people who I can enjoy life with, who I can share with and who I can learn from. If they want to attend our church, that's great, but it is not my reason for befriending people! I have kind of shyed (sp?) away from inviting people, which is not good either. I say this a lot, but this is another one of those places where there is a fine line to walk on in order to keep balance.

So, now that I have finished that, Lord show me what it is that you want me to learn from all of this. How can I grow to be more like you as a result of church planting? And what should our next steps be?