Mixed-up Priorities and Broken Relationships

Jump to Comments

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.

4 Comments

Filed under Failures, Learning

Tags: broken, burnout, Core4, leadership, learned, lessons, mentoring, planting, politics, prayer, relationships, zechariah