Leaving on a jet plane

Today, four of us in the core group are heading to Denver for a Church Planting Training put on by our denomination, the Evangelical Covenant Church. (No that is not Denver, but I did visit that beach this year. Pretty fun.) It will be a great time to learn, meet with other church planters, and refine our vision. We're all pretty excited.

I've had a few conversations with people lately about our plans to get our worship services happening. Our plan right now is to have one service in each of the coming three months. When I say this, sometimes I get the raised eyebrow response. And I understand that. People think pastors only work on Sundays. Apparently I'm only planning to work once a month!

This is where the planting imagery is helpful. Think of the public expression of the church--worship services, groups, outreach, ministries, service to the community, etc.--as the fruit. It's the good stuff. It's pleasing. It's tasty. Yum!

But in order to have fruit, there must be branches to support the fruit. There must be a trunk (or a vine) to support those branches. There must be roots to support the trunk. And there must be good soil to support the whole plant.

What happens if you focus on the fruit before the soil is tilled, the seed planted, and the trunk and branches have been established? You get a dead plant. If we put all our efforts into weekly worship right away, we'll never develop strong roots or branches. So in order to have a strong healthy plant, we're working behind the scenes to put together good systems and structures so that we will bear good fruit down the road.

What does this mean practically? This morning I met with Tony, who will be leading our worship. We spent a ninety minutes looking at our plans for communion, the use of scripture in worship, the value of liturgy and spontaneity, addressing the needs of children, etc.

Then I came back to my office and worked on my planning spreadsheet. We need to craft a communication plan for our worship (what kind of brochures or bulletins to use), figure out how to take offerings (and not lose track of the money), determine what children's materials to use, get communion ware, find a screen, get some music stands, make a plan for refreshments, confirm our location space and worship time, figure out how to follow up with people... There's a lot to do. Oh, and I'll also need to write a sermon.

Now, don't misunderstand me. We're all busy. We all have long lists of things to do. My point here is that we're starting from scratch. When established churches put on worship services every week, they're not having to invent all of the infrastructure each time. We're like a theatre troupe that has just gotten together. We're still just looking at scripts. Heck, we're still learning each other's last names. Our worship services coming up this year are like rehearsals. Of course we want to have everything together right away, but undoubtedly we'll be learning what will and won't work as we go.

So we're off to Denver. To learn from those who have gone before us. To see things that work. And to find out what doesn't. It's like a big bag of fertilizer for our plant.