Dealing with Loss and Disappointment in Church Planting

Dealing with Loss and Disappointment in Church Planting Dr. Dietrich Schindler Introduction: As church planters we are essentially wired for disappointment. Our task is huge: we endeavour to accomplish something that is above and beyond our means and capacity to accomplish. But because God is in it, we will succeed. But because we are in it, we will at times fail. Church planters are principally change agents. Leith Anderson writes: Some persons and organizations try to control change; we call them proactive. They want to be the change agents; they want to initiate. Their numbers are few, their failures are many (my emphasis), and their impact can be enormous. Prophets, reformers, and missionaries are all proactive change agents. They see the way things are and envision the way things could be. They attempt to create a new order which no one else may want (Dying for Change, p. 140). How do we emotionally and practically deal with disappointment as church planters? How do we handle setbacks, keep our vision clear and our hearts hopeful in the midst of wrenching pain and frustration that could otherwise send us packing? I would like to suggest eight practical ways of dealing well with disappointment and loss in church planting ministry. REAL HELP. Revisit your call from God (Jer 1,5-10) Every throwback throws us back onto our call. The call carries us. Jeremiah outlines four aspects of the call of God in our lives: 1. Emotional Attachment (5a) - Imagery: The feeling of love of a mother for her yet unborn child (bonding) - God s two-fold emotional attachment to us: 1. He made us (we belong to Him), 2. He saved us (we are rightly related to Him) - Got made you, God loves you, God knows you, God cares for you. This is the starting point for the call of God in our lives. 2. Divine Appointment (5b) - Illustration: Silverware for special occasions set apart; reserved for uncommon use. 1

- The call of God is a divine appointment which means that we are selected for special service, for something out of the ordinary. - Three-fold: Word of God in the Bible, encouragement of others, witness of the Holy Spirit - Illustration: My call was precipitated because of two minutes of encouragement by mature believers. 3. Strategic Deployment (5c) - Jeremiah was from an obscure country village, yet God deployed him to be a prophet to the nations. - Billy Graham calls himself a country boy from N. Carolina, but God has strategically deployed him to preach the gospel to more people in the world than any other human being. - Of necessity this produces anxiety a clear sense of inadequacy. 4. All-Sufficient Enablement (9) - This is God s grace. He always empowers those He calls, and His empowerment is always all-sufficient. - In ministry we will experience grace for grace (Joh 1,16) What s the pay-off of continuing to live under the call of God? 1. The joy of seeing lives changed; 2. Starting ministries that will out-live us (church planting is the gift that keeps on giving); 3. Strength to endure when disappointment and discouragement strike. Expect setbacks and frustration (1 Cor 16,9) The first sentence in Scott Peck s wonderful book, The Road Less Travelled, is this: Life is difficult. Peck s thesis is that although life is difficult, most people believe the myth that life is supposed to be easy, and are, therefore, surprised and dismayed when life indeed brings disappointment and hardship. The safest assumption a ministry can make is that a crisis is just around the corner, if it is not happening presently. This is not necessarily bad news just reality (Aubrey Malphurs, in Advanced Strategic Planning, p. 192). Along with myriads of open doors in Europe there are the manifold adversaries. The Apostle Paul knew of the many open doors. He also lived with setbacks and frustrations. And so must we. We must teach ourselves to expect them and to own them. Frustration can be a peirasmos, a testing sent or allowed by God to expose the angle of our hearts (James 1,2). The Lord will most certainly use setbacks to sanctify His servants. Our reaction is the key to winning out over hindrances. It takes a healthy leader to generate a healthy ministry. Part of being a healthy leader is acceptance of the trying times. 2

Allow sadness and depression to run their course I have identified something in me that I like to call my McDonalds Days. It is a feeling that comes over me in reaction to failure or loss. When the loss is particularly perturbing and saddening, I say to my wife Jan, I wish I could get a job at McDonalds. Cooking and packaging hamburgers, not having to deal with people, seems like the best of all possible worlds. Dr. Archibald Hart talks about the loss-proneness of ministry. Ministry is all about loss: learning to say good-bye to things that will never return. We must give ourselves permission to be sad. Depression is a gift given to us by God that helps us calculate the seriousness of loss. The deeper and longer the sadness, the greater the loss. The good news is that the depression and sadness will lift if we let it run its course. What are signs that we could be depressed? There are three. 1. Anhedonia (the inability to experience pleasure and joy). This translates into loss of energy or a profound tiredness; 2. Withdrawal; 3. Low mood or sadness. Often this means that our immune system is at work. The body sends us a message to slow down in order for us to better battle sickness. Men and women handle depression differently. Women feel depressed, are in touch with their emotions, and will show them. Men, however, tend to act out their depression behaviourally, either through anger or compulsive work. After times of particularly intense ministry output, there will come post adrenalin depression (Elijah syndrome). In a chapter entitled save the leaders Brian McLaren writes: Psychiatrist Louis McBurney reports that low self-esteem is the number-one problem pastors face. Why? We are in a high-demand, low-stroke profession in a culture that does not value our product or our work. We labor among people with unrealistic expectations, and deep inside we expect far more from ourselves and the church. It s no wonder McBurney s study identified depression as the second most identified pastoral problem. Archibald Hart adds this: Contrary to what many laypersons believe, depression is a major occupational hazard for ministers. For many ministers, surviving the ministry is a major matter of surviving depression (Reinventing your Church, p.118). Dr. Hart helpfully lists four principles in dealing with depression. 1. The greater the loss, the deeper the depression; 2. The more we are willing to submit ourselves to the depression, the sooner we will get rid of it; 3. Grief is a process of discovering what we have lost and then saying goodbye to it; 4. The purpose of depression is to make known our loss. Look for the lesson to be learned 3

We have an inalienable right to make mistakes. It s part of being human. A mistake is simply one way of doing something. All of us produce our own special crop of failure, but we dare not waste it. For it is one of God s primary messengers sent to teach us what no book can convey. If you can t deal with failure, you ll never get to success (A. Hart). Illustration: Oberursel (failure of success) satisfaction is to be found in the Lord, not in the blessing of success. I have learned more about myself through failure than in success. Only failure has opened up to me new vistas of my pride, my drivenness, my impatience, my inattentiveness. I have learned most from my failures when having reflected on them. When I begin to write about them I gain clarity. Clarity brings insight. And insight leads to resolve. Resolve, for it to be translated into habitual changed behaviour, must be shared with someone who cares for us. To be vulnerable enough to talk to a colleague or spouse about a failure, weakness, temptation, is to invite accountability that will lead to learning our lessons well. Hold on to hope Proverbs 13,12 Hope deferred makes a heart sick, but a longing fulfilled is a tree of life. Hope revives and strengthens us. It keeps us moving in the right direction. Because it is anchored in the future, hope will always pull us into the future. None of us can live and work without hope. For the person who has lost hope, his first mission is to find a new hope. Those who cash in in ministry and in life are those who have failed to replace a loss of hope with new hope. In church planting we will often experience hope deferred. It makes for a sick heart. But hope deferred can also lead us to hope refocused. We need to hold on to hope. What are some principles that can guide us in doing so? 1. Foster an attitude of expectancy God is at work in our world. His kingdom is coming; it is breaking into our reality. Prayer is all about tuning our hearts to God s workings and then keeping watch for signs of God s working. Even blockage in ministry can foster expectancy. Illustration: Our last church plant in a cinema. After two years we wanted to find a place to rent on an hourly basis for Saturday evening meetings in a different location in the city. We wanted to do exploratory drilling to see if we could attract people that we had been unable to reach in our current setting. We turned over every stone, and found nothing. That was disappointing. But in the process we came upon an empty building that was ideal for further growth. Within a year we doubled our attendance. 4

The point is, had we not been disappointed in our search for an alternative meeting place, we would not have come across the former cafeteria that is became our new home. If God allows you to be disappointed in one area, expect Him to encourage you in another. 2. Strengthen your heart in the Lord David and his men encountered terrible loss. While on raid, their city of Ziglag was pillaged. We read, David was greatly distressed because the men were talking of stoning him; each one was bitter in spirit because of his sons and daughters. And you think you have problems! How did David respond to hope deferred? But David found strength in the LORD his God (1 Sam 30,6). When our spirits are low we need to retreat with the Lord. Take a long walk. Go on a spiritual retreat. Cultivate the discipline of silence before the Lord. There is nothing like being met by God in our lowest moments. God promises us: Do not fear, for I am with you; do not be dismayed, for I am your God. I will strengthen you and help you; I will uphold you with my righteous right hand (Isa 41,10). Engage in healthy relationships Once a month our family gets together with another missionary family from another mission. They also have three kids that are about the ages of our kids. We let down our hair; have lots of fun, pray together, laugh a lot. We have come to need those times away with our friends. One of our greatest sources of discouragement in church planting is people. The very people God has called us to reach are often sources of huge emotional drainage. Why? Because we are the care givers; they are the takers. We all need special friends that affirm and strengthen us. In his book, Restoring your Spiritual Passion, Gordon MacDonald writes: Special friends are part of the economy of spiritual passion, and in most cases an indispensable part. Unlike the very draining and the very nice people of our worlds, special friends are committed to helping one another discover and maintain spiritual passion (p. 175). Laud flexibility Church planters need to have a plan that leads to the fulfilment of the vision. A vision is useless until it is translated into performance. Planning is our resolve to take action. Church planters make plans that often, however, do not pan out. We are the Plan B, Plan C, and Plan D people. Without flexibility, we become rigid. What is rigid cracks under strain. What cracks is ultimately unusable. 5

Pull away from the stress Stress is a modern phenomenon that was unknown in biblical times and unknown until recently. In cultures were there is no electricity and no fast means of travel, where most must walk to get anywhere, there is no stress. But we live and minister in a very different context, where bad stress, dis-stress, is part of our economy of living. In managing stress we can manage to run the marathon of ministry until the end without burning out in the process. Here, too, some guidelines: 1. Create definable boundaries Spurgeon once said: Learn to say NO; it will be of more use to you than to read Latin. Saying no is another way of saying yes. But if no is not a part of our lifestyle then we will find that we are unable to say yes to the opportunities that God brings our way. When does your workday end? What criteria do you use to either take on or reject a ministry opportunity? 2. Get enough sleep Many people live continuously sleep-deprived. Dr. Hart maintains that we need nine hours of sleep. Those that get less than eight hours of sleep deprive themselves of mental regeneration, which is the last phase of sleep. They will thus feel disjointed or out of sorts. Dallas Willard teaches a spiritual disciplines course at Fuller Theological Seminary. The context for the course is a retreat setting. The only assignment for the first three days of the course is for every participant to sleep ten hours each night! 3. Learn faceting A diamond has many cuts that are called facets. Each facet lets in light at a different angle, which enables the light that enters the diamond to refract in many directions. Faceting makes for a beautiful diamond. Faceting in our lives means finding a variety of interests outside of ministry that recharge us emotionally. I myself have for years enjoyed hunting for lost and old coins. Often I ll pack up my metal detector, find a promising spot and shoot for coins for the next couple of hours. It does wonders for my emotional tank. Hobbies, sports, travel can become important avenues for us, too. 4. Resolve conflicts quickly An ongoing problem with many of us in ministry is low levels of assertiveness. We hope that the problem will resolve itself. It rarely does. 6

Major stress lingers where conflicts or problems are not dealt with swiftly. I have written an assertiveness prayer for my own emotional health. Lord Jesus, Maker, Redeemer, Sustainer of my life, you have asserted yourself - by becoming a man to die for the sins of man, by risking the rejection of thousands in order to capture the heart of the one, by stooping to ascend the throne of my sinful self, by entrusting me with the lives of people precious to you. Lord Jesus, Lord of the Risk, today I choose, in your power, to step out to do the difficult, to unobtrusively, freely, lovingly, expeditiously address the flawed character, the leashed potential, the insufficient service, the wounded heart, the weak faith. Grant me today the gift of assertiveness, for in myself there is no real courage, there is no great desire, there is no selfless abandon, there is no God-sized love, yet with your love and power alive in me, I receive the determination to risk rejection, the boldness to speak truth lovingly, the sensitivity to your promptings, the joy of seeing your will done on earth as it is done in heaven: freely, fully, joyfully, assertively. Amen. 5. Improve tolerance for low-arousal Archibald Hart maintains that our western culture has become adrenally addicted. Ministry is often high on adrenaline. But the way that we conduct our lives is also often high octane adrenaline: loud music, fast driving, full schedules, and multiple tasks at once. Learning to slow down, plan for low-arousal times, will help us reduce stress. Conclusion: The maxim holds true: If we keep doing what we ve been doing, we ll get what we ve been getting. Do we want what we have received up to now? If not, then we will seek change. If we seek change, then we ll have to take risks. Ministry is all about taking risks, making mistakes, seeing failure, trusting God, not losing hope, carrying for our own emotional 7

health, staying close to the call of God, seeing something emerge that is above and beyond our means and capacity to create. Go for it! 8