“Our Church is Finally Successful” and Other Lies Pastors Believe

Our fledgling inner city church plant does not look so hot on paper.
We bootstrapped our launch & had very minimal funding — I mean very minimal. The day we launched we had $800 in the bank and I had never received a penny from the church by way of compensation at this point. We gave our entire launch offering to Hurricane Maria victims — $1200. That was hard as hell.
I was a 30 year old, bi-vocational Anglo lead pastor, never had been a lead pastor before and in a community primarily of immigrants and people of color. I had a pastor of a local church sit me down and holler at me across a table that, “I was planting the gentrification church of The Bronx” That was not my idea of pastoral fellowship.
My wife and I came to New York with no team and had to raise up leaders from every walk of life you can imagine to be part of our launch team — majority of who fizzled out within a few weeks of launch. We also did this as transplants in a non-hip, non-gentrified neighborhood.
We’ve had people join our church for a week or a month or two and leave — all for a variety of reasons. That never gets easier and I would worry about myself if it did. The hardest part of this is not judging future attendees based on previous attendees behavior.
We lost our venue 6 weeks after launch, we had our sound system and lights stolen from us on Christmas Eve and our largest Sunday attendance post launch was 40 people. Or 38 to be exact. But we pastors love to round up.
From the outside looking in, we appear as “The Little Engine that Could” Church Plant.
And we’re a year in. And we’re still going.
We’re still climbing — “I think I can, I think I can”
And we’re successful.
But we’re not successful because we survived a year post launch with very little resources even though that is something to celebrate.
We’re not successful because on Sunday morning, doctors and lawyers worship next to addicts & the homeless even though churches long for that kind of sign of the Kingdom.
We’re not successful because our church is primarily single and under 30 even though we’re grateful to a have a young, energetic church ready to take on the world.
We’re not successful because we have aspiring leaders growing into ministry discerning the call on their lives even though that’s the vision; the make disciples & plant churches.
We’re not successful because I know people in my community by name and they know me even though that makes me feel loved and known.
We’re not even successful because my family, health and those closest to the mission are still intact though that is something to thank God for.
We’re successful because we said yes and we continue to say yes.
That’s it. This is the only measuring stick that matters.
Obedience.
The rest will chew you up and spit you out.
Excite you and disappoint you.
The only people more down on themselves than so called failures are so called successes.
The corporate cancer that infiltrates American churches would tell us success is a linear trend up and that success is buildings, budgets & butts in the pews.
If that is the case, I could buy a few Macbook Pros or a vacation package to Hawaii, send 5000 mailers out and raffle it off and this Sunday, we’d see revival break out.
Or at least I could snap a photo of a full room, post on my social media and have all my pastor friends “Like” it.
If that’s the goal.
But it’s not.
Jesus said, “Go” we’re going and we’re figuring it out as we go and He promises, “He is with us always” and has been and continues to be.
Joining Jesus, His heart, His mission and trusting His plan, His timing, His provision.
That’s hard but that is what I would call success.
