Greg Austen

For the last ten years, my life passage has been Ecclesiastes 9:7-10. I’ve written about that here, but for our purposes in this three-part series, David Gibson’s insights bear repeating:

“It’s vital to see that the eating, drinking, and loving in these verses do not form an exhaustive list of God’s gifts. Rather, it’s a representative list of what it means to love life and live it to the full. These things are a way of saying: when God made the world, he made it good, and no amount of being a Christian, being spiritual, ever changes the fact that God put you in a physical world with hands and food and drink and culture and relationships and beauty. Sin fractures everything, distorts everything. It means we cannot understand everything. But sin does not uncreate everything. So, if we tap into the Preacher’s worldview and train or thought, I think an expanded list would look something like this:

Ride a bike, see the Grand Canyon, go to a theater, learn to make music, visit the sick, care for the dying, cook a meal, feed the hungry, watch a film, read a book, laugh with some friends until it makes you cry, play football, run a marathon, snorkel in the ocean, listen to Mozart, ring your parents, write a letter, play with your kids, spend your money, learn a language, plant a church, start a school, speak about Christ, travel to somewhere you’ve never been, adopt a child, give away your fortune and then some, shape someone’s life by laying down your own.”[1]

As I look back on why I decided to plant a church, there’s no doubt that this “expanded list” influenced me. Further, despite recently discontinuing our efforts, I’m grateful for our shared attempts to “love life and live it to the full.” In what follows, I want to give an honest post-mortem for all who would benefit. Indeed, as you’ll see, many of the insights or lessons have application far beyond church planting.

1. Origins affect outcomes. I secured funding to begin a part-time church plant in Gloucester County, NJ literally two weeks before the pandemic hit! I did it as an empty-nester, in a university town, and as an EPC pastor already working full-time in a parachurch organization. Digital services rather than live gatherings were seen by many church leaders as the way forward and, initially, the only option we had. Additionally, traditional, heavily funded planting models were out of vogue, and bi-vocational models that prioritized emotional health were the way of the future. Using this latter model, I began this passion project with a certain group of people. Church hurt, deconversion and deconstruction themes, and a passion for healthy parenting were all part of our stories. What’s more, all of these unique factors (plus more!) set us moving in certain directions. None of this was good or bad, necessarily, but these circumstances, choices, and opportunities led us to certain places. I say all this to underscore that there is no surefire, silver bullet, or cookie-cutter approach to church planting—or life, for that matter. On a related note…
2. Church planting is slow and at times seemingly impossible. As a fellow planter said, “There are no ‘hail, Mary’s;’ church planting is a game of inches.” What he was getting at is that this work is more difficult and involves more sacrifice than most people understand (including some church planters!). As I often said in my first three years describing what it is like: “Church planting is like trying to fly a kite in a hurricane. Nothing good happens unless God shows up!”
3. There is no way to keep work like this from affecting your spouse. When I decided to plant, I had my wife Pam’s blessing, but she had a high-level, people-intensive job in healthcare. I tried hard to keep my responsibilities from affecting her but, more often than not, it was impossible. Detached from real life, my thinking was, “Pastoring and church planting is my job, not hers. I’ll put appropriate boundaries up to protect her so she can function like anyone else in our core group.”  But when volunteers got sick or didn’t show up, there was no one else to make things happen. Over time, our plant began to take more of a toll than I understood. After getting much counsel and realizing our efforts threatened to crush us long-term or keep us from other opportunities, we decided to pull the plug.
4. Always prioritize building a caring church family over building a sustainable institution. I say this not because the institutional part doesn’t matter (I’ve written more on that here), but because it’s not as important as a loving, unified core group. Individuals in a healthy church family see themselves as needing help, get therapy as needed, and have strong marriages and homes. In other words, achieving “mission status” or becoming “localized” isn’t as important as a healthy church body that lives joyfully and generously, gets proper rest, are good neighbors, love their enemies, and treat others with gentleness and respect on social media. For the most part, we did this well and to the best of our ability. As a result, when we ended—gratefully, there was no collateral damage. However, leaning into this conviction meant—when a few of us went through serious and unexpected trials—canceling church plans and events rather than insisting that “the show must go on.”
5. Stories of flourishing matter far more than numbers. When I was preaching through 1 Timothy as a way of cementing certain core values into our DNA, the following quote by Scot McKnight arrested my attention: “When ‘success’ is measured by ‘numerical growth,’ we have abandoned what the gospel says flourishing is.”[2] I had learned long ago from Rick Warren that church health trumped church growth. However, four years into my planting journey, I needed McKnight’s strong words to deepen my convictions in this area. After reflecting on the truth behind his words and from this point on, rather than fight discouragement over how many we did or didn’t have on a given Sunday, I began to laser focus on the stories flourishing associated with our core group and my ministry. In doing this, I became greatly encouraged with our investment. Moreover, to date, this reorientation has kept me from any sense of failure in discontinuing our plant. And this leads to a related point…
6. God is building His Church through your efforts whether you end up with an established, sustainable institution or not. One of the joys we had in finishing well was to see all the fruit we had: 2/3 of us were not going to church at all or regularly when we began; now all were going weekly or semi-regularly. And we had influenced others outside of our core group: One of our donors started a small group in his neighborhood; our parent church joined us in running The After Party before the election; we modeled Christ’s heart of unity for His Church by working closely with a Baptist and Christian Missionary Alliance (CMA) church. Through our association with these two churches, our fledgling church touched another 30-40 lives, strengthening others who were part or would be part of other churches. When we disbanded officially, although most in our core group had no special loyalty to the EPC, they all cared more deeply for Christ’s Church with a capital C. For a variety of reasons, they all went in eclectic directions—some to independent, Episcopal, CMA, United Methodist, and Calvary Chapel churches.

Next week, we’ll continue to look at more lessons learned.

[1] David Gibson, Living Life Backward (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2017), 114.

[2] Scot McKnight, EBS: 1&2 Timothy, Titus, and Philemon (Grand Rapids: HarperChristian Resources, 2023), 98-99.