It's easy for church planters to share the highlights of planting and not be straightforward about the very real challenges. Here, Chris Logan of Crosslife in Alberta shares some insight into his current experience of church planting.
You come into church planting both geared up and praying into the challenges ahead, but they don’t always show up as expected.
Two of the biggest battles over the past year we have had to face in our Crosslife leadership are disappointment and uncertainty. These battles are not yet won, although we know in Christ the war has been!
While we continue to see God open doors and do amazing things in our lives, it seems the disappointments of unmet goals and desires deliver a crushing blow. On the surface it feels like these hits push us back farther than we’ve come forward. They come in unmet expectations, lack of fruitfulness and spiritual warfare on our marriages and kids. They cause us to look deep within, examine if we are focused on the visible or the eternal, and evaluate if we have indeed placed our full identity in Christ. If properly processed they become redemptive moments of refinement, but we when we try to "push through" our striving is quickly exposed as insufficient. Pray for us, “Let us hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering, for He who promised is faithful” (Hebrews 10:23), that we may sing ““What heights of love, what depths of peace, when fears are stilled, and striving ceased.”
Equally challenging is the uncertainty. Over our four-year journey we have seen people come and go, receive and reject the Gospel, become friends and turn away. Every change in the journey has begun with an exciting new chapter. We found people to meet with, grew to a small house church, rented our first facility, and now we face the new chapter of changing direction again. Our core group has matured and hung in through it all, our calling strengthened, our resolve and endurance tested, but still with an uncertainty of how this will all play out. We have been taught that our daily bread is enough, and vision and strategy are not supplements of moment-to-moment surrender. What is clear is that the path of faith and the path of fear are irreconcilable, and the heart of our Father is persistent after His lost children.
Pray that we continue to serve with the strength God supplies, sharing His heart for those He loves!
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