Written by Bobby Jamieson, senior pastor of Trinity Baptist Church in Chapel Hill, North Carolina
Church planting is precarious. Even if you already have a group of believers newly covenanted together to form a church, you likely don’t own a facility. Your budget probably isn’t sustained entirely by member giving. Your family may be settling, or struggling to settle, into a new city, neighborhood, school, and (of course) church.
Uncertainties abound. You may feel like any given bad bounce could end the game. Will that partner continue giving in year two? Will that family that has been attending on and off for a year finally decide to join? Will the school you’re renting from sour on you when they discover your stance on sexuality?
Church planting has given me a whole new understanding of the Psalms’ repeated exhortation to wait on the Lord. “Be strong, and let your heart take courage, all you who wait for the LORD!” (Ps. 31:24). Each uncertainty is a test. Everything that makes your life and ministry precarious is a prompt from the Lord to wait on him instead of rushing ahead in the flesh. Will you trust him to provide, or let anxiety turn your stomach in knots? “Unless the LORD builds the house, those who build it labor in vain. Unless the LORD watches over the city, the watchman stays awake in vain” (127:1). Unless the Lord plants the church, the planters plant in vain.
A lead planter should first be a lead prayer and lead truster. Take each uncertainty, disappointment, and frustration and pour it out to the Lord in prayer. Whatever work the Lord intends to do through you, he also, and maybe first, has work he intends to do in you.
—Bobby
