Read an Excerpt
Picture a bucolic midwestern town. A little blue collar. A little university. A little conservative, and of course by a little conservative I mean a lot conservative. This is an American flag T-shirt kind of town. This is a Republican think-tank kind of town. It’s the kind of town where “rapid change” is measured in decades, not minutes, hours, days, or weeks.
In many ways it’s the perfect kind of town. People say hello. The quaint coffee shop remains quaint because people love and support it accordingly. The town even supports a few “unconventional” types, like the skinny, long-haired middle-aged guy who runs the used-record store, because somewhere in the cosmos there’s a bylaw that says all used-record store owners are skinny, long-haired middle-aged guys.
In this town there happens to reside the national headquarters of a large church denomination, which, culturally, resides someplace in between mainline and evangelical. The denomination’s showpiece church resides in town and is the biggest, most impressive building in town. It’s also, maybe, the town’s most successful business. Like most churches birthed out of the Hybels/megachurch/’80s model, it is large, taupe, carpeted, comfortable, and well appointed, and there is also a café. This, I’ve found, is a staple of all churches of that era.
Into this scene steps my friend. My friend has been an independent thinker, an entrepreneur, and a musician his entire life. He’s recently moved to Midwestern Town (henceforth MWT) from Los Angeles, California, where he would routinely spend two hours in traffic each evening and where change was breakneck and constant. In L.A., change was the only constant. Not so in MWT.
For a time, there was a mutually satisfying honeymoon period in which the American flag–shirtpopulation was enamored by my skinny-jeans, faux-military-jacket-wearing Los Angeles friend. He couldn’t have stood out more if he was walking down Main Street each day wearing an astronaut’s outfit. Each trip out for a latte he would be regarded and talked about as though he were a real living, breathing celebrity, with people’s reactions ranging from “Tell us about the music industry!” to “Why on earth would you move to this town?”
For a while my friend and the town reveled in their mutual discovery of each other. Antique stores were frequented. Autumns were enjoyed, and fallen leaves raked. The first winter was quaint. Photographs of the snow were taken and of course Instagrammed, and comments were made like, “How are you and your wife surviving winter?” to which my friend would guffaw good-naturedly and say something polite about how much they were enjoying it. What’s weird is that they actually did enjoy it. A series of get-to-know-you dinners were had and enjoyed.
My friend took a job as a worship leader at the Hybels knockoff, and the moment he signed his contract he became the hippest person who had ever darkened the door of said church. While the rest of the aesthetic was all taupe and faux ficus trees, my friend’s office was a minimalist’s delight replete with art books, vinyl records, and a reformed book collection that made his office look like an annexed Crossway Publishing warehouse in the way that all reformed pastors’ offices should look like annexed Crossway Publishing warehouses.
But the thing was my friend loved the Bible, loved the church, and loved ministry. He did his best to lead worship, teach Sunday school classes, and lead small groups. He longed to do more than pick three praise songs to play each Sunday, but for a long time did the picking and the playing of those songs, steadfastly, each Sunday.
At some point the joy of discovery waned as joys of discovery always do. This is why people don’t spend forever falling in love, and if they say they do, they’re lying.
My friend, being creative, entrepreneurial, and eager to minister, began longing to preach. This longing to preach was met, initially, by some opportunities, but later those opportunities began to diminish. His ideas fell on deaf ears in a town and a church where change happened at a glacial pace. Discouragement set in, but then, in time, discouragement gave way to inspiration.
Concurrently, harmony and mutual discovery gave way to acrimony and conflict. A conflict that, as all conflicts are, was distressingly living and active. The kind of conflict that loads a glance in a hallway. That loads a previously unloaded comment in a meeting. That thinks the worst of the other. The kind of conflict where the idea of grace given because of the boundless grace of Christ we’ve received is somehow but also understandably forgotten. This is the Enemy at work in concert with the still-live cultures of sin nature, ego, and pride that swim in our hearts—hearts that are capable of nothing good apart from Christ.
Sometimes we forget this and wield the kind of power that the world wields. People do this. It’s not unusual. People hurt other people. Commitments are broken and motives are im pugned. There’s usually someone involved—usually a strong, charismatic leader—who has never had his motives questioned before or, at least, has never met an argument he hasn’t won. He sees human interaction as competition and perhaps sees church as a territory that must be either annexed or protected, because he has been fed a steady diet of the world’s constructs of power via 1980s corporate culture and his steady diet of John Wayne movies, which are both “clean” and “wholesome.”
For the record, I love John Wayne, and I met and really like the John Wayne figure in this anecdote, which all serves to almost hopelessly complicate these sorts of conflicts.
He is a strong figure. John Wayneian himself in stature and stride. He was probably a college athlete of some kind. The church is “protected” and prospers. People feel safe. Coffee flows. Conflicts are somewhat gray and difficult because that’s pretty much how they always are. My friend loses sleep. He knows his days are numbered. His chest pounds while he lies in bed, and the house and town, which once seemed so quaint, now fill him with questions like, “Should we have come here?” and “What are we doing here?” and “Why is this happening?” The coffee shop that once held fawning, curious admirers now holds the aroma of distrust and anxiety, which is perceived even if not actually there.
This kind of thing happens outside and inside churches every day because we need Christ desperately, and we don’t just need Him on that one sunny day when we’re six, by the swing set, when we “ask Him into our hearts.”
E-mails are sent and, as is often the case when people are in a deep state of conflict, misinterpreted. The John Wayne figure feels especially at odds with the Los Angeles figure. Meetings are held. Forgiveness is asked for and, perhaps, not given. Spiritual rhetoric is thrown around via words like character and concern. This is a time in which it’s not especially advantageous to be perceived as a flaky former California rock star with one too many fast-paced ideas. Ideas are currency in some places and threats in others.
Eventually Ronnie leaves the church. He has three weeks to dismantle the minimalist office (which takes only a few minutes for obvious reasons germane to minimalism). He has three weeks to return things like staplers, three-hole punches, and antiquated Toshiba laptops. “How are we going to live without the Toshiba?” he asks bravely. This is what is called “gallows humor.”
He is told he will lead worship for one more Sunday. He is trotted out in front of the congregation one last time—a congregation that is fed words like blessing and phrases like “wish the best to,” et cetera. False smiles are affixed and held. He is told that he’s not to say anything, at the front, about the fact that he’s leaving to plant a church
In these situations, mathematics often takes over. Calculations are done furiously as questions are asked like, “How long until we go broke?”
Sometimes, in these situations, people become embittered. Hearts become hard. Cynicism becomes the operative flak jacket that makes life livable. The church that was once a haven of peace and sometimes even joy becomes something to be endured.
Sometimes, in these situations, people give up and leave, forever.
Sometimes, in these situations, a man’s pride and ego are broken and that man has no choice but to fling himself at the foot of the cross
Fallout Boy: This Is What It’s Come To
Scene 1:
Drug Mart in MWT (Midwestern Town) could be a setting in a Wes Anderson film about a depressing midwestern drugstore. It’s that unintentionally stylized. You can buy whiskey and convalescent toilets there. Drug Mart has all the tools, under one fluorescently lit roof, for getting addicted, ruining your life, dealing with the ruin, and then getting healthy. They also have a coin-operated copy machine, which is why I’m there with former rock star and current church planter Ronnie Martin.
Welcome to the glitz and glamour of church planting. It’s not all skinny jeans, Toms, cowboy shirts, planning coffees at Starbucks, and iPads. I mean, it is, of course, but you get the idea.
Copies are fifteen cents, and we need change. We’re directed to the Courtesy Center, where no courtesy (or change) is actually doled out. Ron screws up the first copy. More coins are dropped in. Coin noises happen.
“Coins are vintage,” he says.
“This is what it’s come to,” I reply.
Scene 2:
I’ve never been to a church plant on opening day. I enjoy the crunch of gravel under my car tires in the parking lot. I spend a few minutes walking around the church building (a loaner from another church). I smell the basement, which smells like all church basements, everywhere. I see a copy of Why We Love the Church (my book) sitting atop a pile of Amish romances—all of which look like they’ve been read way more than my book. I count four hipsters and twenty-one regular people in the fresh, new congregation.
Church planting (and, by extension, going to church plants) isn’t only for the young and fashionable. You don’t have to know the collected works of Thom Yorke.
You can be an athlete. A salesman. A housewife or (gasp) a woman without a husband or (gasp again) with a job. It’s true.
There’s comfort in a church that’s planted by a guy who’s been hurt and humbled and is trying, in Christ, to deal with it the right way. And who loves the Bible and loves people.
I can relate to hurting people. I can’t relate to a church planter whose sum total is some blog posts, designer jeans, and a dream. Dreams aren’t enough. Dreams disappear and inspiration wanes. Christ remains and is the same yesterday, today, and tomorrow.
There is comfort in “Jesus Paid It All” and “All I Have Is Christ” sung to an acoustic guitar. There is comfort in the gospel of God’s grace for sinners (of which, to quote Paul, I am the worst).
