The System is Broken

Recently my brother, who is also a church planter, wrote a letter to his boss asking some tough questions.  The letter was written so well that I asked if I could repost it here.  I’ve removed some information that is personal and altered the names, but for the most part, here is the letter reproduced in full:

This is my squeaky wheel email. 

I remember before I had even moved to [the conference], more than 10 years ago now, we came back to make a presentation to the Executive Committee when it met on the Western Slope.  It would have been April or May of 1998.  I remember you saying (my paraphrase recollection) that you were going to move resources (i.e. pastors) from the areas where no growth was happening to the Front Range where growth was happening.  I remember it well, because that was also my vision for the church.  And when you sat down next to me as someone else got up to talk, I said, “Please don’t ever move away from the RMC.”

I guess I would like some help understanding.  Has that happened?  I could be wrong about this, and I know that pastoral resources have gone down some in the outlying areas, but it feels like it is because of funding issues, not vision of moving to a better area.  

I was told by someone during pastors’ meetings, who wished to remain anonymous, that even though I didn’t “deserve,” according to the maintenance-based staffing formula, two pastors, I should still have that pastoral salary.  Here’s the reasons he said why:  No other church in this conference is baptizing the number of people I have been over the last 5 years.  And even though the numbers in the maintenance-based formula don’t add up, it seems like when something happens, we ought to be celebrating that, not punishing that.  And if Team1 is really a priority, we should be helping to make it happen, not hamstringing those churches.

Yesterday I found out from [someone] that [a certain city] has only 8,000 people in the community and the church has only 80 people [attending].  The other church supposedly has 20 and going down.  Although it was probably time for [my associate] to leave [this church family] for his own good and for ours.  I’m talking today about the funding of a salaried position.  [My associate] is only an example of what appears to be a systemic problem in the system.  [He and his wife] are leaving, likely to [another church], and they will be watching over less people there than they were watching over here.  Yet, the [conference] was going to make us fund the entire salary, but they are going to get their entire salary covered by the conference there – in a smaller church, a smaller community. Neither the church, nor the community is growing with the numbers we have here.  I could be wrong, but it appears as if less is more.

I realize there are historical issues to deal with.  I realize there are other extenuating political issues that must be dealt with also.  I also realize that I’m asking for some very tough decisions, or I’m asking you to talk to me and help me understand why this would happen.  I don’t think I understand it right now.

To be fair, you did tell me when we first talked about [him] leaving, that you were going to see if you could find me some money to help hire someone.  I believe that the church will be ready for that by November/December – after they grieve [my associate's] loss, and “new” money comes in.  You have continually reminded us that pastors can only really take care of around 150 or so people.  The Adventure is running at 250 right now.  It seems to me that the momentum loss of losing a pastor could send us backwards very fast.  

I am willing to come to the Executive Committee to help them see the inequity of this situation because I realize as you seek to move them to a governance model, this is really not their decision, but yours.  But I realize that they aren’t there right now, either.  So, I am willing to come and present to them the raw numbers – I don’t think you can argue with that, except out of historical and maintenance reasons.  It is my belief, and I could be wrong, that you cannot do what needs to be done in the 21st century with a 19 or 20th century model of maintenance.

WDYT?

My brother did a great job of outlining the problem.  These were exactly the same questions I had when we left Colorado Springs.  We had baptized about 50 people and had about 30 preparing for baptism when we left.  Attendance was averaging around 100 people per week and a large percentage (40%) were not members of Adventism, or even Christians.

If pastoral support had been withdrawn from two or three small churches, and the salaries applied to Common Ground, less people would have been hurt and/or affected than the loss of full-time pastoral support at Common Ground – which is now less than a third of it’s former self.

Experiencing God

So how does one begin starting a church from scratch?

We didn’t want to focus on “former” Adventists, or even those who may be considered non-regular attenders.  We didn’t want to focus on those who were currently attending church, but were bored with the music, order of service, or “dress-code.”  We didn’t want to be considered “sheep-stealers” or just be involved in moving the saints from one church to another.

Yet, within Adventism, there didn’t seem to be many church plants that had successfully gone into the unchurched population and built a church of “living stones.”  But, we knew, in our hearts, that if that were our intention it would become our reality.

As we moved into the Springs and began to get settled, we kind of wandered and studied the culture, the community, and the opportunities.  Before the first month was over, we had our first small group.

We had been invited to dinner by seminary friends Robert and Heather.  At this dinner we met Skylar and Jeff.  She was a recently re-baptised Adventist and her husband was a relatively new Christian.  Within 10 minutes of meeting Skylar she asked about the plant and after we explained it, she exclaimed, “I want to be a part of that!”

Skylar and Jeff brought two of their non-Christian friends too.  With that first small group, we began studying Henry Blackaby’s Experiencing God Workbook.  We had chosen the book before Sky and Jeff had invited their friends.  Chris and Kelly were very open to hearing the Gospel.  All four of our new friends were actively involved in the 12-Step fellowship and were relatively new in their sobriety.

About the time we finished the 13 week study in the workbook, Chris asked me if he could be baptised.  In the meantime, we began to make many friends in the Colorado Springs 12-Step community.  Because of Jennifer and my unique histories in battling drugs and alcohol in different ways, we fit in well with this group that is often not reached by Christianity in general, or Adventists.

We baptised Chris in the Summer of 2003 and the majority of people at his baptism were not Adventists and many were not Christians.  It wasn’t long before many of those people were in some form of a small group at Common Ground.  In fact, after the first 13 week semester ended with Skylar, Jeff, Kelly, and Chris, we added another six people to the group.

As the second 13-week small group semester ended, we were able to multiply into four groups; and by the Fall of 2003 we had six small groups operating with a total congregation size of about 50 people – mostly non-Adventists and unchurched.

This was exciting to have a reach so broad into the unchurched community, but now a new challenge was looming on the horizon.  Because of our “rapid” initial growth, we needed to clone Jennifer and I.  We didn’t have enough disciplemakers to go around.  We needed leaders, we needed solid Adventist disciples to lead by example, and we needed solid Adventist members to help us keep the foundation of Adventism in our midst.

Choosing the Experiencing God Workbook principles as our foundational message, was a great victory though.  It provided the direction and vision to create solid spiritual DNA.

Recent Comments and Replies

I have recently received a few comments and replies to the following blog posts.  In order to best answer these, and to save myself time, I will post excerpts of those comments below along with my replies:

I just read your blog, and can’t help but be a bit sad. Lots to learn there, though, so I’m hoping that the process of writing it is therapeutic! Have you shared these thoughts with administrators?

Yes, there is a lot to learn.  It would be good if there were an ongoing process of critiquing church plants and the church planting system.  One of my complaints with the current pastoral role is the lack of accountability in the system.  A bona fide system of annual performance reviews, goals, and objectives could greatly increase the effectiveness of the position.  At a minimum, even if we don’t hold the pastor’s feet to the fire, we could at least survey and critique individual churches.

What I have begun to do here is to document our successes and failures – the church, the leaders, the systems, and the various administrative functions of the denomination.  I’ve not shared this with them at this point, because I want some feedback from my friends first.  There are some significant failures in our current church planting systems, but I don’t want to be so pointed at those that I don’t take personal responsibility for my own failures first.

So, what’s going to be different about your current role? What have you learned that you will apply to the present? Are you enjoying your new churches?

The chief differences in my approach to pastoral leadership now are subtle, yet significant.  Now, more than ever, am I putting family before my occupation.  This has come about for a couple of reasons.  First, it is the right thing to do and I should have done a better job in the past.  Second, I’ve learned that no matter how motivated I am, I can never go faster than the lid of the organization that employs me.  Basically, this is the Serenity Prayer personified.

The new churches are challenging because of their traditional, yet liberal paradigm.  It takes time to build trust in a rural and traditional congregation.  I know that I’m going to have to be patient and wait for the right timing and that is a challenge for me.  In the meantime, because the process of moving these churches forward is slower than what I experienced in a plant, it allows me to spend more time with my family and readjust my workaholic habits.

I read your thoughts on the “success” of Common Ground. I appreciate the honest words and know that the emotional weight of a history of ministry that seems unsuccessful is pretty heavy. For what its worth, just knowing there are people out there who understand how difficult this church planting thing can be, means so much.

I believe we have grieved significantly for the losses at Common Ground.  Hardly a week goes by that we don’t hear of the demise of another former member into the abyss of worldly wandering.  The months of August and September were very hard, finding out that we were leaving and having to find a new position, a place to live, and give birth to our son – all that was difficult.

At this point, we are able to step back and take hard, honest looks at ourselves and the system that caused Common Ground to fail.  A year and a half to two years ago, Common Ground was one of the most successful church plants in the NAD – probably in the top 10 somewhere and quite possibly in the top 5.  But now, if I were there, I’d pull the plug.

It is clearly the hardest thing we’ve ever done.  We know that God used us.  But we also know that the denomination, AND the culture, were not ready for a church like Common Ground.  We were too experimental for the denomination and too traditional for the culture.  I believe we were about 10 years ahead of our time.

If we could have realized the funding to keep going, I do believe we could have acheived a financially sustainable attendnance and income.  However, we believe that five years is not enough time to raise up an experimentally evangelistic church within Adventism.

This was an excellent and honest (vulnerable) blog. Thanks for writing it. I’d love to share this with the group I’m training to become church planters if you don’t mind.

I agree with all your three points (accept the need for a mother church in point 3). After starting 4 plants I too have learned these lessons the hard way. Maybe your message here will save others from the same burn-out and help them achieve far greater personal & professional success.

Thanks for the feedback.  I also appreciate that this comment was also posted so others could see it, on the blog, in the comments.  Feel free to share it with your interns – or anyone else you think would benefit.

Steve, in the most recent post I don’t clarify the “mother church” statement.  But in another post I talk about not having an openly hostile, or antagonistic mother church.  Colorado Springs was in upheaval when we arrived and we didn’t even know it.  Shortly before our scheduled launch the primary church in the Springs went through a nasty and bitter split.

We were wondering why we were having so much trouble attracting visionary, evangelistic Adventists to our startup.  Once the split occurred we saw why.  They were all marshaling their forces to do battle with each other.  The very people that would have been an asset to the success of Common Ground, chose instead to follow their bitter friends to start a church focused more on style than vision.  It was really hard to watch when that split imploded and the people we thought could have been an asset to Common Ground, stopped being Adventists altogether.

I don’t believe it is necessary to have a mother church.  I don’t even think a plant needs the assistance or cooperation of area churches.  But for a community the size of Colorado Springs, with only 500k people and one numerically strong church.  The kind of controversy we witnessed really hampered our ability to gather some disciplemakers together.  Indeed, in the last few months, that church has undergone another split and the split has split.  <sigh>

Thanks for including me on your Common Ground reflections. I think you are a little hard on yourself at times, but if you are doing some hard self-inventory and reflection stuff, I think what you are pulling together is pretty amazing. I’m impressed. We all can glean from your learnings and insights. I know God would have to perform a miracle in order for me to even attempt something like Common Ground. I think you have plenty to feel affirmed about in that whole experience.

Are you able in your present situation to reach out to similar unchurched people now? If so, maybe your present situation will still allow you to fulfill some of the dreams of Common Ground.

We do feel affirmed.  We know that we fought a good fight.  We’re no longer discouraged and I don’t think I am being too hard on myself.  I just want to take a realistic view of the successes and failures.  I don’t think it is fair to point to some system and leadership mistakes if I’m not willing to point at myself in the mirror also.

Yes, we learned a lot about reaching unchurched people.  Even while practicing our craft as church planters, I became aware at how ignorant most pastors, and in turn their churches, are at reaching the unreached.  Our vocabulary, our cliches, our traditions, and much of our closed community actions do great damage to our ability to reach out into our communities.  It is amazing how far verbiage alterations, dress styles, and humility will open doors for shared conversations.

As we develop relationships and wait for permission to speak into people’s lives, they will let us and actively, and enthusiastically participate in the working out of their own salvation (and ours in the process)!

Working in a traditional church, it will take years before I am able to introduce some of these pardigm shifts to the congregations here.  Our goal is to stay here until retirement and to lead these congregations across the thresholds of misunderstanding so that they too can crash against the gates of Hell to save lost souls.

You know, I’m sure they *tried* to tell you how hard it was going to be, but who can believe it in the face of eternal optimism?

Yes, they tried, you’re right.  But in my family, we take the approach that we can do anything possible.  the impossible will just take a bit longer to accomplish.  Had we the money to continue, I believe we would be at that survivable mark in the next 3-5 years.  I had said that if the funding dries up, or the leadership changed, we would find a way to tough it out.

However, with the growth of our family, we decided to put our energy towards these two beautiful kids instead.

Excellent point that the institutional church manages to keep *miniscule* churches open. Of course, if they closed those churches in order to use our (limited) resources elsewhere, they’d be accused of playing politics.

One of the things I continue to wrestle with is the lack of leadership in this area.  I have never been dependent upon my current employment in such a way that I was afraid to do the right thing.  I keep saying, “If this pastoring thing doesn’t work out, I can always go run a backhoe somewhere.”

In my opinion, we need two things: 1) Church leaders who are willing to have one-term presidencies; 2) Church leaders who are willing to turn the reins over to younger leaders.

Most Fortune 500 companies are managed by their senior VPs, who are in their late 30s and early 40s.  Our church barely lets someone on the church board at that young age.  Lyle Schaller has said that if you are past the age of 35, you’re too old to affect change in the church.  I think more of our people need to understand this principle.

This is also another reason I’ve chosen to step back from the front lines and pour my energy into my kids.  I will prepare them to stand on my shoulders and change the world.  I’ve done enough world-changing for two lifetimes.  If I were in my 20s or 30s, I would not hesitate to give it another shot – maybe.  Going back to my earlier comment, I don’t think the culture or the church are ready for what we were trying to do at Common Ground.

It’s good to try to figure out what you’d do differently. Are you able to use those lessons where you are now?

Yes, see above.  I think I even have a couple of books inside of me – this is the beginnings of one of those.

_____________________________________

Thank you everyone for the great comments!  I’m looking for additional feedback as to tone/style before I pass this on to my overseers.  Have I been too harsh on them, not harsh enough?  Too real, not real enough?  Have I taken enough ownership for my own shortcomings?

I appreciate your help!

Mixed-up Priorities and Broken Relationships

I was told that church planting would be the hardest thing I would ever do.  They told me this.  I believed them.  However, they lied.  It was much harder than one could ever explain.  As we were winding down our stint as church planters, some friends of ours were starting plants in the Denver and Minneapolis areas.  It was hard for me to even be excited for them.  Knowing the task that lay ahead, I wanted to shout at them:  “Turn back!  Don’t go!  Danger!  Danger!”  But if someone had tried to disuade me before we started, there is no way I would have listened.

Bill Hybels has said that one cannot plant a church and remain balanced.  Ron Gladden has often repeated that phrase.  I wanted to prove them wrong.  Unfortunately, because of much of my background and personality, I was unable to do that.  I became quite unbalanced during the five years we were planting.  I believe this helped to create our lack of true success in our plant.

Zechariah 4:6 NLT  “This is what the LORD says… It is not by force nor by strength, but by my Spirit, says the LORD Almighty.”

Intellectually, we knew that it was prayer and more prayer that would ensure the success of this plant in Colorado Springs, but once one really gets into the accelerated growth curve of planting, it is easy to start pushing with all of our might and strength.  I confess that the details of administrivia and building relationships began to consume my time.

Coming from an unbalanced background, with an addictive personality, I now know that I needed to be more careful to avoid the pitfalls of devoting too much time to planting, and not enough time to QT3 (quantity, quiet, quality time) with God and my family.

It wasn’t until my daughter was born in January of 2005 that I realized how much of a workaholic I am.  But by that time I was knee-deep into the weeds of planting and didn’t know how to make changes.  Now, I don’t have good role models to follow, but the ownership was still on me to make changes.

It was also about this time that I lost my mentor and supervisor, Ron Gladden, to some internal church political battles.  In fact, the entire Church Planting Center was shut down and it left many plants and planters adrift in a sea of confusion.  Still, though, the ownership of balance was upon my own shoulders and I kept allowing myself to push too hard – all at the sacrifice of my family.

During this time, we continued to see great and explosive growth.  Our small groups multiplied like brush fires on a Southern California hillside.  Our contact and reach into the unchurched community was like nothing I’d ever seen before, within Adventism.  All this success becomes quite heady.  Like a drug, I wanted more and more.

Although workaholism, and its associated successes, can be viewed with praise from those around us, it is still rooted in unfulfilled needs.  I was, like generations before me, thriving off of the accolades of success.  I wanted more!

In the Fall of 2006 I hit a wall.  I was burned out.  The emotional toll of trying to be a good Dad and a successful church planter had become too heavy for me to carry.  I grew depressed and tired.  I needed a break.  The conference offered to give us a week of R&R in the Rustic Cabin at Glacier View Ranch.  Unfortunately that week ended up only being three nights.  Three great nights, but hardly the week that was promised.

During that time, as I reflected on the past few years and the future that lay ahead of us, I knew that I had to make some drastic changes.  I committed to my wife and family that I would end the 80 hour work week.  When we returned, I told our leadership team that I was no longer going to put in so many hours.  I asked them to step up and take more responsibility for the fractal they managed.  They willingly agreed.

For my Core4 leadership, this meant that if they didn’t do it, it wouldn’t get done.  For me, it meant that I had to release my grip on this church we had started from scratch.  Jennifer and I, at first, did everything.  We led the groups, led the worship service, recruited leaders, gave Bible studies, et cetera.  We did it all.  But as our leadership grew, we were able to let go and let them take over certain responsibilities.

Often, for me, “The Perfectionist,” it was hard to let go.  But this phase of burnout was forcing my hand.

During the same time, my superiors at the conference were urging pushing me to turn my core leadership into true leaders.  Its not that I’d not been trying to do that for a few years, but none of us were seeing fruit in that process. (I now know that those people didn’t want to be leaders)  This burnout phase gave us an opportunity for the Core4 to step up and lead.

After a few months of me taking more of a laid back approach and creating a leadership vacuum, I wasn’t seeing any real victories.  Around the Spring of 2007, I knew that Common Ground was going to fail if we didn’t get serious about the roles of our senior leadership.  It was at this point that I began to push the Core4 to step up and “make it happen!”

My Dad is a very competitive sportsman.  With a little parental support, he could have been a pro baseball player.  My brother and I have learned to play to win.  None of us goes into a game just to have “fun.”  Fun is winning.  I’m the guy that never gives up.  It ain’t over till the fat lady sings.

If it is the bottom of the ninth and we are down by three runs, I am still urging our team to get in the game.  Even if we have two outs and we’ve been playing cruddy, I’m still urging everyone to get in the game.  Don’t give up!  Don’t quit early!  This is the way I approached Common Ground in the Spring of 2007.

We only had a few months before we had to have adequate tithe and attendance to be considered a success.  I was getting the word that there was no such thing as partly successful.  We needed the full $265k annual tithe in order to continue to play in this church planting game.  The mere $140k wasn’t going to do it.

Indeed, though our congregation was around 150 people, the conference appeared to only be counting attendance (100) and membership (45).  Our opportunities for success was beginning to look pretty feeble.  But, I don’t quit until the final out.

As I was seeking to motivate my team; and pointing out the options if we didn’t succeed, it was looking like they were losing heart.  My most influential core leader would usually respond with a desire to wait until September 1, 2007 (our deadline) and see what the conference would do.  I tried to explain that this would not be an option, but I was unsuccessful in my argument.

To try and get my point across to this man, I sent a heavy hitting email.  It was my intention to wake him up to the very real failure that was looming in the future.  I was seeking to knock him lose from his fear of attempting something drastic.  I knew I was taking a risk.  I knew that the email may not be taken well.  But I was getting desperate.

In retrospect I now know that email was a bad choice.  It wrecked my friendship with someone I admire and love.  And, it ended up serving no purpose.

A month later we had a heart-to-heart meeting.  It was a joint meeting with our governing board and Core4 leadership.  During that meeting we asked the leadership if they were willing to follow me?  For the most part everyone expressed love and appreciation for me and my family, but it was clear that they had lost confidence in my ability to lead.  Afterward, I sat down with my board chair and said, “I’m done.”

With that, we began to make preparations to leave Common Ground and to move onto another leadership position.

Here’s what I learned:

1. Stay balanced.  Don’t sacrifice your health or your family for the cause.  Play to win.  Play to succeed.  But keep the priorities straight.  God, Family, then Career.  Win with God first.  Win with your family next.  And then, finally, win with the task before you.
2. People before tasks. This is a lesson I’ve tried to learn before, but apparently haven’t learned well enough.  100 years from now, will anyone remember what happened at Common Ground?  Probably not.  But the relationships will last into eternity.
3. Don’t plant without the infrastructure. My brother tried to dissuade me planting as a lone planter, but I was unwilling to wait for that to happen.  I had two planting offers on the table and I wanted out of the small, conservative, rural church we were in.  The lack of one or two other planters to join me; the lack of sufficient denominational support; and the lack of regional support from a solid Mother Church.  All of these contributed to our failure.

The bottom line though and the only thing I have control over is my ability to lead.  Spiritually, socially, emotionally, and relationally.  I needed to lead by putting God first, always.  I needed to lead by putting my family’s needs above the church’s, always.  And, I needed to lead by putting the members of the church above the success of the plant.  I failed in each of these regards.

I don’t believe that five years is a sufficient time line to plant a church with an alternative evangelistic focus.  To plant a church using traditional Adventist public evangelism, I think there is potential to achieve success in five years.  But for the model we were pursuing, I don’t believe that was enough time.  Knowing that now, I’m not so sure I would have entered into a five year project to do what we felt called to do.

Jesus spent 24/7 with 12 men (and some women) for three and a half years.  I had about 4-5 hours a couple of times a week to spend with 5-10 people.  And!  I’m not Jesus!  It just takes more time to disciple people in our fast-paced, busyness that we call life.

Now, I continue to pray for the relationships that are broken.  I continue to recover from my burnout.  And I continue to pour more and more of my time into my family.  I am hoping that I don’t make some of the same mistakes in the traditional format where I am now working.

Good to Great. or Good to Mediocre?

From the beginning we wanted Common Ground to be fresh and new.  Not so fresh and new that no sensible person would attend, but fresh enough to be attractive to the average person.  But where to start?

Much of the advice I was getting back then, in the early ’00s, was to cast a vision so compelling, so audacious, and so, um, visionary that people would flock to be a part of our church.  However that didn’t seem to fit the way I see God.

Having recently read Henry Blackaby’s Experiencing God, I was struck that our role is to seek God and His will in our lives.  As we do that, He will show us how we can join Him in His work.  God has been at work in Colorado Springs much longer than any of us have been alive, He has a plan, and He knows how we can fit into that plan – isn’t that why He brought us there?

It isn’t that God has been sitting around for the last several years waiting for some bright church planter to show up and discover a way to bring more people into the Kingdom.  Quite the contrary, He just needs some illing individuals who want to be a part of something cool.

So, even before moving to the Springs, I began to seek God’s guidance.  About a month before moving to Colorado Springs, we stopped at a strip mall in Fort Collins.  While my wife was in the store, it came to me.  My role is:

“To gather a group of people who want to experience God, seek where He is already going, and then join Him!”

I pulled out a strap of paper (yes, this was pre-PDA) and wrote it down so I wouldn’t lose it.  And that’s where we began to focus.  Although I kept getting pressure to write out our vision, this is what I focused on.

It wasn’t until a couple of years later that I was reading Jim Collins’ book, Good to Great, that I realized how relevant this vision is.  Collins’ research shows that it isn’t the companies with a compelling vision that move from merely good to great, but the ones who seek to get the right people on the bus and in the right seats.  This is what we were seeking to do at Common Ground.

And that’s what we did, we begin to gather people who were interested in truly seeking God, then we devoted the majority of our meetings to worship, prayer, reflection, and the Word.  It was an awesome experience, and some say they’ll never enjoy church anywhere else again after being a part of Common Ground.  (Hopefully they’ll seek to move their future faith communities towards a better model, not just complain that those churches aren’t Common Ground!)

Starting in about 2006, the Rocky Mountain Conference staff began to move towards a new model of church governence and leadership.  Built on the shoulders of Paul Borden, and American Baptist Judicate Leader in Northern California, five churches were selected to participate in an experiemental program.  Common Ground was selected to be one of those churches.

Unfortunately, as we worked towards the governance model of church leadership, the coaching and mentoring also began to dabble in leadership style too.  I was pressured to develop a vision that was clear, compelling, measureable, and focused.  I have to admit, that I agreed to do this, so I really have no one to blame but myself.  However, in retrospect, I now believe that Common Ground hadn’t fully laid the groundwork to spell out the vision.

We were still in the “gathering a group of people” stage and we hadn’t fully sought to know “God’s will” or where “He was already working.”  So, the vision we began to spell out was crafted more from human might than from spiritual seeking!

Jesus spent 24/7 with 12 men for three years.  EVen when He departed, they still had lessons to learn.  My core team wasn’t fully established until about mid-2004.  We spent about six hours a week together for the next three years.  And I’m NOT Jesus.  That just simply wasn’t enough time to develop ourselves as fully devoted followers of Christ.

Given another five years, we could have begun to focus on the realtionship with God, and our pursuit of Him.

I so regret not standing up to the pressure to change our course.  Either way, we wouldn’t have survived the arbritrary five year timeline, but at least when it ended, we would have had the solid spiritually bonding experience together.  As it is, we lost that because of the pressure I put on my team.

I was an idiot.

In the end, I began to feel like for the denomination it was about success, even if that meant disabeying God’s calling.  And that’s what I let it become for me too!

Our Target

It has been said that if you don’t have a target, you’re sure to hit it!

Many church plants are started for a number of reasons.  As one friend says, all churches were planted at some point.  In fact, most churches started from a dissatisfaction with the status quo.  Unfortunately it wasn’t a desire to reach lost souls as much as it is a “felt need” to do church a different way.  In my not-so-humble opinion, this builds bad DNA into the church right from the start.  It’s no wonder then that the church isn’t involved in evangelism or service to those outside of the congregation.

Several years ago I heard that our typical evangelistic efforts are only reaching about 4% of the population.  This begs the question, what about the other 96%?  Are they not given an opportunity to experience the abundant life in Christ?

20 years ago, I was one of those 96 percenters.  I had given up on church, but I was looking for God.  There was very little about organized, denominational Christianity that appealed to me.  There was very much about the teachings of Jesus that did.  Unfortunately, there is a large gap between those two.

When we were given the opportunity to start a church from scratch, I already knew who our target was going to be.  Young, urban, postmodern, secular, professionals.  People who had given up on church, but were still looking for God.  Over time, this changed to include not just singles or young marrieds, but young families – because that is who I was becoming:  a used-to-be-young man with a family.

It is often difficult to know where to start.  Do I seek out a bunch of already churched people to build a foundation?  Or, do we go directly to the streets to seek out the unchurched?  As is usually the case, God answered that question for us.  Within four months of our start in Colorado Springs, we had gathered a small group around us.  Only two, besides my wife and I, of the eight were Adventists, two others came from different faiths, and two from a very broken past/present.

We immediately settled into the 12-Step community and began to actively build friendships with those who need God most, but distrust religion with a passion.

After the first year in The Springs, our core leadership consisted of my wife and I, a returning Adventist who recently wasn’t attending church, a 12-Stepper who I had recently baptized, his father who was a retired Air Force General (and an Episcopalian), and a man who had been baptized a few years earlier, but was never discipled.  It was an odd mix, but it worked.

This group developed our core values and the beginnings of our vision.

Common Ground became a place where the disenfranchised felt welcome, but the old-time consumer Adventists did not.

Can Leadership Be Learned?

There is a great debate that’s been taking place for years.  Possibly longer.  Decades, centuries, millinia?  In my last assignment, I was assaged constantly to grow a leadership team, to scale my efforts, and this would guarantee success.  Well, a funny thing happened on the way to the market: we weren’t able to grow our team.

Now, here’s the caveat, we were working with all volunteers (except me), in a hostile environment, with great baggage and social pressure for people to NOT join our team.  But all of my superiors, each of my mentors, and the various coaches we employed, were telling me that I could grow these people into leaders.  If I didn’t, it was mere failure on my part to be a good leader.

So, I read books, listened to my coach, attended seminars and lectures and conferences, and generally sought out all the resources I could muster.  But alas, after five years of hard work, I was not able to turn the tide.

We had been able to attract some hard working people to our team.  They were dedicated to the project, committed to the vision (even when they didn’t always get it), and extremely loyal to me, their leader.  I worked hard to break paradigms and instill values that would enable my core team to be leaders like me.  I pushed, I pulled, I nudged, and I led – all to no avail.

The bottom line is, they didn’t want to be leaders.  They didn’t know how to be leaders.  They were too scared to step into any place of leadership.  Oh they tried.  Their loyalty to me,  coupled with their strong work ethic, made them put in the 110% it takes to push to a new level.  But, like I said, they just didn’t want it bad enough.

Meanwhile, I was getting a lot of heat to shape these folks into leaders.  And like any good dysfunctional co-dependent, I pushed my people to be better leaders.  The more pressure they felt, the more afraid they were to make decisions or screw up.

A few months ago, my brother-in-law, who is a self-made successful CEO of his own enterprise, said something interesting.  He told me he wasn’t interested in scaling.  This isn’t the man I knew seven years ago – the one who wanted to grow big enough to own his own jet.  Nope, this is the married five years, soon to be dad, approaching 40 years old man of new faith.

I asked him about this.  It was quite fascinating to me, because I had come to appreciate similar thinking in my new endeavor.  I’m no longer interested in saving the world and leaving a lasting legacy.  I see now that if I do my job well and focus on the task at hand, the rest of the pieces will fall into place.  If it grows, that’s fine, but if it doesn’t, at least we can have quality.

I can’t make leaders, but I can work with the ones already on my team.  Right now, what I see are a bunch of hard working administrators and doers that are hungry for vision and leadership.  And that’s what I have to offer, realistic vision, and solid leadership.

I was so caught up in pleasing my superiors in the church plant, that I pushed the people I was trying to get to step up.  I pushed so hard that they are no longer in my life.  I ruined friendships to please my superiors.  And even that wasn’t recognized.

Never again will I put tasks above people.

Style vs. Substance

(Note: This is a copy of an e-mail replying to a criticism of our church plant.)

Thanks for the comments on Common Ground.  It was tough, but we knew that being missionaries to an alternative culture would be that way.  They lied to us however, “they” said this would be the hardest thing we’ve ever done.  It was much harder than that!

I think you are assuming that we focused on felt-needs and seeker services.  That is actually far from the case.  We went into this seeking “to draw a group of people together who wanted to truly experience God and then to seek His will for us and the church.”  We were probably one of the most theologically conservative churches in the NAD.  In order to be in leadership, a person could not participate in any unhealthy practices as prescribed by the Adventist Church (e.g. food, drink, adornment, and other lifestyle issues that are plaguing many of our existing church families); in addition, in order to be in leadership positions at Common Ground, one had to be active in soul winning, faithful in sacrificial tithes and offerings, and seeking regular/daily QT3 (quality, quantity, quiet time) with God.

Although we used non-traditional soul winning methods (cell groups, outdoor/public worship in the park, service/friendship evangelism, etc), we also used traditional public evangelism in cooperation with the other six churches in town – although we were the primary drivers behind this.

Over 50% of our congregation was unchurched, not Christian, or from other denominations.  This provided its own set of unique challenges – especially given that about 1/2 of these folks were actively involved in 12-step recovery programs.

Willow Creek’s model will not work in Adventist churches, and we didn’t even try.  It has never interested me to try someone else’s model.  In fact, Common Ground was unlike any church you’ve ever seen (Adventist or other).  We were a hybrid of what worked, minus what didn’t work, to reach the secular postmodern subculture of young families.  (I could go on about what Willow Creek actually discovered, but that is outside of the scope of this reply)

Too often people assume that church plants are about jewelry, music, and blue jeans – but at Common Ground and The Adventure, it would be unfair to classify these churches in that pack.  Both CG and TA were/are successful, but without adequate funding to staff for the growth achieved, many of the gains are lost.  With 150 in our congregation last Summer, it was time to add additional staff to take people to the next level of discipleship.  For this was our focus.

It was our intent to lower the bar for entry into the church community, while drastically (radically) raising the bar on what it means to be a disciple of Christ.  Simply fulfilling “most” of the 28 fundamentals isn’t even close to what Christ is proposing in a walk that reflects His character.  In fact, those may just be the beginning – something a Laodecian culture has forgotten.

We were teaching our people to fast, to pray (and listen) to a real God, to meditate, to worship (truly, in Spirit and Truth), to read the Bible with discernment and insight, to serve, to be joyful in the Lord, and to trust in the power of the God to transform lives.  Indeed, we saw this taking hold in a small percentage of people.

I have watched too many milquetoast churches circle the drain as their flushed right out of the realm of being real, authentic, relevant, and transparent before the culture they hope to infect with His love.  There was no way I was going to lead a church down that path.  Indeed, many plants and splits are all about meeting “our” needs, or doing church in a way that “I” like.  You are absolutely right about a culture being driven by selfishness!  However, CG was never about that.  Instead, our sole purpose, from the beginning, was about evangelism.

Indeed, there are 50-60 people now baptized because of the direct work of CG.  There were another 20 who were preparing for baptism.  I wonder what the long-term, indirect impact this will have on the area?

I’m not trying to brag, but I am trying to say that God was using us to do some truly amazing things in the Springs.  Unfortunately, not only did we not get additional staff, but we lost the one full-time staff that was there (me) – all because of a lack of funding.  God put us in the midst of an unfamiliar culture to reach people who would never be introduced to Christ in a traditional church.  I’m just thrilled I was used!

Thank for giving me a moment to clarify.

Funding Issues

(NOTE: This is from an email I recently wrote to a friend asking about why we lost funding for Common Ground.)

I know, most people assume the worst regarding church planting and I can get a bit defensive.

Pastors are paid by the local conference, but that doesn’t take the science of finance out of the equation.  It takes about $265k in tithe to support one pastor in a local church.  Because of the subsidies that go to the Union, Division, and GC, – as well as into our black hole of an educational system, very little of that $265k is left over to pay a pastor’s salary.  It costs around $80k to pay a pastor’s wages, benefits, and taxes – even though pastor’s make less than about $45k.

The MAUC and NPUC entered into a special program about 10 years ago to fund church plants.  They set aside tithe money to fund plants and the extra monies generated from those plants would fund additional plants.  That program is working remarkably well and explains the 20+ plants that has occurred in those two Unions.

When a plant is started, a pastor is selected to lead the plant.  They attend a five-day assessment and are evaluated spiritually, emotionally, socially, culturally, for balance, for theology, for leadership gifts, and in their personalities.  Only after successfully passing the assessment, are they selected to lead a plant.  Then, they are given five years to bring that new church to a self-supporting status.  In addition, they are granted $15k for each of the first three years.

At the end of five years, it is expected that they will have achieved spiritual, numerical, and financial maturity.  This generally means that attendance will be somewhere around 200-250, tithe will be around $265k, and the church will have an evangelistic, discipling approach to ministry.  Of the 20+ plants in the last 10 years, only a few have achieved this.  Common Ground did not.

Although we had a congregation of 150, our average attendance was only about 100.  Our actual Adventist membership was 45.  We were bringing in about $140k/year in tithe, which is more than enough to pay my salary and benefits, but not enough to cover the additional “taxes” on those monies.

The short story is that we didn’t make our goal and there was no money in the general fund to cover my salary.  Five years ago, my brother’s church plant, The Adventure, added a second church planter.  They were given five more years on their original contract, but it also doubled the numbers.  They now had to reach over $500k in tithe and around 4-500 in attendance.  They didn’t make it, so they are losing their second pastor.

To be fair, the Adventist church is one of the fastest growing in the world.  We have one of the largest and strongest mission organizations in the world.  There is nothing that says North American baptisms/conversions are more important than on other developing continents.  I am actually grateful that my returned tithe money can be used in ways like it is.

Small churches like yours are supported by the larger churches.  Outside of Adventism, few of those churches are pastored by professionals – most are led by lay leaders.  Conferences have formulae that they use to balance the workload, finances, and members served.  I have two churches here, but the smaller one is a losing proposition unless the members step up.  Either way, it is a drain on the system and is filled with consumers.  If I could be turned lose to work solely in the larger church, I could maximize my personal resources (time) and grow it to be healthy and productive and reproducing.  A non-reproducing church is not a healthy church.

In addition, there are other efficiencies that could better fund growing churches.  Our schools are probably the biggest drain on our churches right now.

In the Rocky Mountain Conference, they had been telling the small, non-growing churches to get their act together or they would withdraw resources (eg; pastoral support).  If they did this, they expected about 36 churches to close – this would have affected less than 100 people, but they would be able to redirect resources to churches like Common Ground, The Adventure, Denver First, and NewDay.  Unfortunately, this political football was too tough for the Executive Committee to handle and they dropped that ball.

Those 100 people in those 36 churches still have their pastoral support, but over 100 people at Common Ground have already stopped being a part of any regular church.

Its all about being willing to make the hard choices….
….and the people were forced to wander for another 40 years…

Initial Retrospective

Leaving Colorado Springs and Common Ground is one of the saddest things I and my family have ever done.  Common Ground was our baby, but more importantly, there were about 30 people who were on a discipleship journey to Christ, but hadn’t arrived at a stable place in that growth.  When we left, many of those people fell away.  A few went back to drugs and alcohol, several stopped attending church, and many more with less than evangelistic values came back to fill the pews.

We now have come to realize the following:

1. Five years is not long enough to plant a church targeted towards the deeply entrenched, secular, postmodern seeker.
2. Funding for Adventist church plants should not be determined by pre-defined funding formulae, but by the growth and ROI, independent upon established churches.
3. Church planting pastors should not work without a team.  Planters should follow the biblical model and be sent out in twos.
4. Church planting pastors need closer support and supervision than established church pastors.  Mentoring, coaching, and prayer support are essential.  Clear boundaries and protocols need to be developed.
5. Church planters need to be involved in the establishment of protocols and strategic planning at a much higher level than is now allowed.