“Plant Jesus, not churches” -Neil Cole. Neil did a great job talking about organic movements that are centered on Jesus, not a church. He makes the case that we should be planting Jesus first and the churches will take care of themselves. Definitely a good challenge to remember that all of this… missional, church planting, ministry… has to be all about Jesus.

My wife Jaya is incredible at this, having a kid helps though.  We’ll be at the store or a restaurant with our daughter and I can totally see it coming.   People will see our daughter Neela, and they just get that look in their eye, that look of amazement ( you know cause our daughter is pretty amazing:) ) and they’ll just start smiling and making faces and talking to Neela and I’m just like, “Who are you?!” And typically if it is just me, I’ll just keep on walking and be like, “I don’t know you, you’re not touching my baby :)”.   But not Jaya… Oh no, Jaya will hold Neela up, she’ll tell them how old she is, ask if they have kids and before I know it we are having them over for dinner :).

One time we were eating at a restaurant in downtown Dallas before we moved to Austin and Jaya has to run to the car with Neela to get a bottle.   Well, on her way back this very friendly, intoxicated man says something to Jaya about how cute Neela is and is kind of gazing at her.  And as Jaya is telling me this, I’m like “you didn’t stop did you?”  And of course Jaya is like, “I had to!”  I mean I didn’t let him hold her or anything, but I just talked to him for a bit and let him see Neela.   Kinda crazy, but when you think about it thats what Jesus did… he walked where people walked, he talked with people as he went about his day.  Here in John 4 Jesus just enters in to a conversation with this woman and before you know it, Jesus is in a spiritual conversation.  He begins to talk about the living water that he offers, the relationship he offers… to opportunity to know her Creator in a personal way.

If we want to be a people of influence, if we want to be missional people… we have to spend some time meeting people where they are and engaging them in conversation.

Then we see Jesus taking a seat by the well… again, some intentionality on the part of Jesus. The well in those days would be a central place where you pretty much were guaranteed to run in to someone. You notice Jesus didn’t go find a shade tree off in the middle of nowhere. He could have sat anywhere, but he chose to sit there. So we see right off the bat that to truly be missional, you have to be in the proximity of people… even just where you walk, where you sit. I think its safe to say that if we want to influence people, we need to be around people… I mean I just got a 3.0, but I’m pretty sure that would be a safe statement.

So many times as Christians we take ourselves out of the sphere of influence by only spending time with each other. Between church on Sunday, small group, ministries we are involved in, and our Christian friends… we don’t have time for anyone else. I mean think about it, when was the last time you had dinner or coffee with someone who didn’t know Jesus? Hey, I’m not saying that we don’t need other believers in our lives. If you hear that then you definitely heard wrong. It is good, right, and powerful to spend time with other believers, to disciple and be discipled, to look at Scripture and learn from others, and grow and mature in your faith…. but we can’t limit ourselves only to that context.

If we are truly going to be missional as God has called us, we must be a people who are building relationships with people who don’t know Christ… we must be a people who are showing compassion to others and pointing them to Jesus. That is what Jesus prays in John 17… that we would be IN the world. So we have to be around people, we have to be in the proximity of people, in order to carry out the mission of God.

One way to remedy this poverty of our interpretation is by reading the Great Commission in light of other biblical commissions. Depending on how we count them we there are at least five commissions, one in the Old Testament and four in the New.¹

The four commissions in the NT are actually variations of the same mandate (Matt. 28:18-20; Mark 16:15; Luke 24:48-49/Acts 1:8; John 20:21), each issued by Jesus, emphasizing a slightly different aspect of what it means to be a disciple. The operative verbs in these NT commissions are: make disciples, preach, witness, and send. They are gospel-driven commands. The OT commission, frequently referred to as the creation or cultural mandate, was issued by God before the Fall of humanity, emphasizing creative activity with the following verbs: be fruitful, multiply, rule, and subdue (Gen 1.27-28).²By producing more creators who rule and subdue the elements of the earth, the creation mandate is a command to produce peoples and cultures.

A surface reading of these Old and New Testament texts places them at odds with one another. In Genesis it would seem that the purpose of humanity is toproduce people and culture, whereas the Gospels appear to advocate pulling away from people and culture. As a result, many have chosen one reading over the other, soul-winning or culture-making, disciple-making or social action. These impoverished readings call for reinterpretation, one that that allows both Genesis and the Gospels to speak. In fact, reading the gospel commissions in light of the cultural mandate will reveal a multi-layered, missional mandate.

Moving beyond poverty-ridden proof texts and into the wealth of the biblical commissions, we will reflect on the differences between the texts. This will require confrontation with the Bible’s demands to make culture and disciples, to care for creation and be agents of new creation. As a result, we will be challenged to understand and embrace discipleship as more that “spiritual disciplines” or an evangelistic program. We will see that Scripture calls us to missional discipleship, a following after Jesus that requires redemptive engagement not just with souls but with creation and culture.

Gospel of Matthew: Distinctive Discipleship

Part of what makes the Great Commission great is its scope. When Jesus said: “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations” he was orienting a primarily Jewish audience to a distinctly multi-ethnic mission. As Ralph Winter has advanced, the commission is not calling Christians to Christianize nation-states, but to evangelize ethnic groups. We get the word, “ethnic” from the Greek word for nations, which refers not to modernist geo-political states, but instead to non-Jewish ethnic groups. Christ does not advocate Christendom, a top-down political Christianity. Instead, in affirmation of the cultural mandate, he calls his followers to transmit a bottom-up, indigenous Christianity, to all peoples in all cultures.

As Andrew Walls has pointed out, the command is to make disciples of all nations not from all nations. The Great Commission is not about soul-extraction, to remove the disciple from his culture, but instead, to make disciples within their cultural context. Walls comments:

Conversion to Christ does not produce a bland universal citizenship: it produces distinctive discipleship, as diverse and variegated as human life itself. Christ in redeeming humanity brings, by the process of discipleship, all the richness of humanity’s infinitude of cultures and subcultures into the variegated splendor of the Full Grown Humanity to which the apostolic literature points (Eph 4.8-13).³

What we should strive for is distinctive discipleship, discipleship that uniquely expresses personal faith in our cultural context. Disciples in urban Manhattan will look different than disciples in rural Maehongson. These differences allow for a flourishing of the gospel that contributes to the many-splendored new humanity of Christ.

According to the Gospel of Matthew, distinctive disciples are those who who, in following Jesus, refuse a one-sided, soul-centered gospel, and instead live out faith in context. The distinctive disciple retains the image of Adam — a culture maker — while growing in the image of Christ and becoming a disciple-maker.

Gospel of Mark: A Worldly Gospel

Mark’s commission reads: “Go into all the world and proclaim the gospel to the whole creation” (Mk. 16:15).⁴ Where Matthew emphasizes the action of making distinctive disciples, Mark stresses the importance of preaching to all creation.

When Jesus used the word “preach” he did not mean converse. The Greek word for preach always carries a sense of urgency and gravity, as though what is to be proclaimed is of great importance. In this case, it is the gospelthat is of utmost importance. This gospel is a worldly gospel — a message that is culturally relevant and creation renewing.

The Greek word for “creation” can be used both broadly and narrowly, referring to the cosmos or to people. Here it should be taken broadly, referring to the world, its peoples and its cultures. Preaching the gospel of Christ has cosmic implications. So it is with Paul: “this gospel has been proclaimed in all creation under heaven, and of which I, Paul, became a minister” (Col. 1:23). Thus, Paul perceives himself as an announcer of a worldly Christ-centered gospel, that through Jesus all things are reconciled to himself, whether on earth or in heaven (Col. 1:20). Paul preaches with Mark’s great commission emphasis — preaching for the redemption of all creation.

While this worldly gospel saves, it also condemns. In Mark, Jesus explains that not all will believe this grand Story or receive its great Savior: “Whoever believes and is baptized will be saved, but whoever does not believe will be condemned” (Mk. 16:16). Mark’s commission reveals the divisive nature of the gospel. For some it brings life; for others it brings death, but all are to be given the opportunity to be written into the story of God’s redemption of all creation.

As with Matthew, the scope of God’s redemptive activity is important. From the beginning, God’s design for creation was for it to flourish and become inhabitable. Outside of Eden, the earth was uninhabitable. Humanity was charged with the task of caring for the earth and creating culture, making the uninhabitable habitable.

Adam failed to trust God with this task and sought to rule not only over creation, but also over God. As a result, the creation project was subjected to sin and calamity (Rom. 8:20). Israel would follow in Adam’s footsteps. Then came Jesus. Jesus preached a worldly gospel, a restorative message that put the creation project back on track. His glorified, resurrection body is clearly proof of the new creation to come.

Just prior to ascending to heaven, Jesus told those who believe that they will be given power to heal the sick, restore the demon-possessed, and to speak new languages (Mk. 16:17-18). This worldly gospel is for the redemption and renewal of the earth, the body, the heart, the mind, and the cultures of the world. It is a saving message that rescues people from their unbelief, not their world, and reconciles their alienation from one another, their world, and their Creator.

According to the Gospel of Mark, Jesus died to bring life to all creation, to restore the environment, renew cultures and remake peoples, spiritually and physically. We are called to preach a worldly gospel.

Gospel of Luke: Resurrection Stories

Luke’s commission also emphasizes preaching the gospel: “repentance and forgiveness of sins should be proclaimed in his name to all nations, beginning from Jerusalem. You are witnesses of these things” (Luke 24:47-48). In particular, we are called to preach “repentance and forgiveness of sins.” A social gospel will not suffice. Christ calls us to repent — to turn our heart allegiances away from all things other, and to receive forgiveness for betraying our Creator. But a forgiven and repentant person is not idle; they are compelled to witness — to tell the story of their transformation.

Where Matthew and Mark respectively emphasize distinctive discipleship and preaching a worldly gospel, Luke calls us to witness — to tell our distinct gospel stories. No two stories are alike, but all share the same Savior. What does it mean to be “witnesses of all these things”? Well, at the very least it means sharing Jesus’ self-sacrificing offer of forgiveness, but that is just onething. What of the other things?

We are to tell of Jesus’ death, but we are also to tell of his resurrection.

Consider the context of Luke’s commission. The eleven disciples were discussing the reliability of Jesus sightings, when suddenly Christ appeared in the room. Thinking he was a ghost, they were filled with fright. Jesus responded: “See my hands and my feet, that it is I myself. Touch me, and see. For a spirit does not have flesh and bones as you see that I have” (24:39). To make his point, Jesus proved he had a body by eating some fish and chips. In flesh and bone, Jesus charges his follower to be witnesses of hisresurrection.

The problem with many of our stories is that they contain all spirit and very little flesh. We communicate our mystical encounters with God, our mountain top experiences with Jesus, and our superhuman victories over sin. Many people see right through our spiritual stories, precisely because our witness is too good to be true. We fail to mention our bad, unless it is in the past, failing further to witness of resurrection, in the present. People want to touch redemption, which means they need to see resurrection power in our personal struggles.

Jesus’ body was resurrected as an expression of God’s commitment to creation (1 Cor. 15). God does not jettison the body for the soul. His gospel of redemption is for the whole world, beginning with enfleshed people. His resurrection is a bright reminder of new creation in the midst of bleak darkness, of tangible transformation in gross dilapidation. The stories we tell should boast of Jesus’ death and resurrection, of his forgiveness of sin and of his restoration of sinners — reconciled families and marriages, restored and housed homeless, renewed life among AIDS orphans, and so on.

According to the Gospel of Luke, we are to be witnesses of death and resurrection, to live and recount the stories of a resurrected, fleshly Jesus who lives in the midst of broken humanity offering healing and hope.

Gospel of John: Humble and Cultural Accommodation

John’s commission is short and sweet: “As the Father sent me, I am also sending you” (John 20:21). Whereas the previous gospel writers emphasized Jesus’ command to make distinctive disciples, preach a worldly gospel, and witness a fleshly Jesus, John stresses Jesus sending his disciples. As the text continues, Jesus makes plain that the disciples are sent as a forgiving community, offering the grace they have received from him to others.

According to John Piper, we are either goers, senders, or disobedient, but according to Jesus we are all the sent. Missionary activity is not the exclusive task of people who sell all their possessions and move overseas. All followers of Jesus are called to live as missionaries in their culture. If we are all sent into our cultures as distinctive disciples to share a worldly gospel about a fleshly Christ, how then are we to live as the sent? Jesus said, “As the Father sent me, I am also sending you.” Our paradigm for living a sent life, a missionary life, is the sending of the Son by the Father.

When the Father sent the Son, Jesus left the glory of his trinitarian abode and became a helpless infant in the care of humans he created. This required an accommodating humility. Jesus grew up and became a first century, toga-wearing, sandal-sporting, temple-frequenting Jew. He accommodated first century Jewish culture (also known as contextualization). So, within reason we should take on the trappings of our culture in order to contextually relate the gospel. This can entail wearing broken-in jeans, togas, hand-made sandals or a suit and tie.

However, our accommodation is not purely cultural; it is missional. It leads us to immerse ourselves into the humanity of our neighborhoods and cities in order relate the gospel to people and their needs. Being a local missionary requires more than relevant attire; it demands humility of heart to listen to the stories of others, to empathize with their frustration, suffering, and brokenness and to redemptively retell their stories through the gospel. To be sent by God is to follow the example of the incarnation, to redemptively engage others with a humble heart and cultural accommodation.

In John’s commission, the paradigm of accommodating humility is accompanied by the power of the Holy Spirit. The Spirit is not too holy for distinctive discipleship. After sending his disciples, Jesus breathed on them and they received the Holy Spirit (John 20:22). The power of missional living does not spring from cultural savvy or social sensitivity; it requires the otherworldly, utterly personal power of the Holy Spirit. Only the Spirit of God can make men new.

According to the Gospel of John, we have been sent as missionaries to humbly demonstrate and culturally accommodate the gospel of Christ through the power of the Spirit. In being sent, we do not abandon the cultural commission, but instead, unite it with our redemptive mission.

The Gospel of Genesis: Creation Mandate

The “good news” of Genesis 1-2 is that God created all things to be enjoyed, managed, cultivated, and recreated by humanity. The gospel of Genesis 3 is that, though Adam rejected God, God did not reject Adam. Still possessing the creation mandate, Adam was expelled from Eden, but clothed with the hope of a new creation (Gen 3:15, 21).

The creation mandate charges us to be fruitful and multiply, to rule and subdue the earth. This fruitful multiplication continues both physically and spiritually through the reproducing ministry of missional disciples, who increase in number and good works (Acts 6:7; Col. 1:6, 10). These good works include ruling and subduing creation through the careful, creative arrangement of the elements of the earth into art, technology, infrastructure etc. for the flourishing of humanity. The basis for our cultural activity is found in Genesis.

Retaining the cultural impulse of Genesis, the Gospels call us to a missional discipleship that entails creation care, cultural engagement, social action, and gospel proclamation. Missional disciples will not content themselves by preaching a culturally irrelevant, creation indifferent, resurrection neglecting message. Instead, they redemptively engage peoples and cultures through Christ for the renewal of his creation.

By digging deeper into the great commissions, we have unearthed a wealth of cultural and theological insight. This rereading of familiar evangelistic texts has demonstrated that God in Christ has called us not to mere soul-winning, but to distinctive discipleship, to heralding a worldly gospel of a fleshly Christ who humbly accommodates human culture and understands the human condition. These commissions call us to missional discipleship — to redemptive engagement with all peoples and cultures.

* * *

NOTES

1. It is certainly possible that there are more commissions. In fact, the Abrahamic covenant in Gen 12:1-3 contains a programmatic mandate for all of Scripture: Go and God will make you a blessing to the nations, which is progressively manifested in making a new people of God, comprised of Jews and Gentiles.
2. It too is variously repeated in the Old Testament, upwards of 20 times, e.g. Gen. 9:1,7; 17:2-6; 26:3; 28:3; Ex. 1:7; Ezek. 36:11; Jer. 23:3.
3. Andrew Walls, The Missionary Movement in Christian History(Maryknoll: Orbis, 1996), 51. The original Greek reading of Matt. 28:18is literally “disciple all ethne” or “make disciples all nations” and does not contain a preposition. However, the grammatical construction of the phrase leads to an “of” reading, not a “from” or “in” reading.
4. It is widely recognized that this verse and the latter portion of Mark’s gospel (16:9-20) is absent from many Marcan manuscripts. However, we can not be certain that the ending is missing from the original text. If it was absent, our point concerning the “worldly gospel” of Mark still stands in that Mark repeatedly depicts Jesus as the Restorer of creation: driving out demons, healing the sick, resurrecting the dead, calming the sea.

Luke 10:25-37

Matthew 9:12

Matthew 28:18-20

Jonah 3:1-2, 4:11

Jeremiah 29:4-7

Acts 18:9-11

John 4

Luke 19:10

Genesis 12:1-3

John 20:21

Mark 6:7-12

According to Andrew Walls, the word “conversion” has been used in two main ways throughout Christian history.[1] The first meaning of conversion denotes “an external act of religious change.” This act reflects a movement towards Christian faith, individually or collectively. The other meaning of conversion refers to “critical internal religious change” within the Christian community. This meaning of conversion gets at what we might call “gospel change.”

Not All Gospel Change is Identical

Missionaries of the 19^th and 20^th centuries exported their understanding and experience of Western “gospel change” to non-Western peoples. This often included a conversion that issued “in a holy life typically marked by a period of deep consciousness of personal sin followed by a sense of joyous liberation dawning with the realization of personal forgiveness through Christ.” In other words, missionaries expected Non-Western peoples to undergo a pattern of gospel change similar to their own. However, while the gospel certainly changed the peoples of Africa, India, and Asia, not all change produced by the gospel was identical.

Gospel change in some cultures is more gradual than instantaneous. The American Evangelical tradition of “deep consciousness of personal sin followed by a sense of joyous liberation” is not common to all cultures. Missionaries labored for years before they saw a single conversion, and even then, the conversions were sometimes very different than what they expected. Cultures that are more communal experience conversion differently that cultures that are highly individualistic. In many African and Asian cultures, conversions come in pairs or families instead of by single individuals. Not all gospel change happens identically, especially across cultures.

The Emerging Post-Christian Context

What these missionaries encountered “on the field” is beginning to occur in the U.S. Many church planters have a pre-Christian past that is very “Christian.” We inherited the evangelical, pietistic conversion experience of our forefathers. Like the conversions of our missionary forefathers, our personal conversion relied heavily upon a prevailing Christianized culture, common basic knowledge of God, sin, faith and Christ. But America has changed. We cannot assume our listeners possess the same knowledge and experience that we did, which is precisely why it is so crucial that we exercise pastoral wisdom through contextualization.

In regions such as the Pacific Northwest, New England and spiritually similar cities of the U.S, we are now encountering a post-Christian cultural climate. No longer can we assume a basic level of evangelical capital upon which the Spirit of God may act. Instead, we are engaging un-churched and resistant peoples who have forgotten, redefined, or never known the Gospel. As a result, the conditions of conversion have changed, as should our methods for sharing, telling, speaking, teaching, and preaching the Gospel. Our idioms, illustrations and language must change if we are going to reach the unreached, the unchurched, and the resistant peoples of America.

Like the former missionaries, we must reconfigure our understanding and expectation of how people undergo gospel change and how disciples are made. We must be more open to “process conversions” while also guiding that process toward full commitment to Jesus as Lord. Our goal should not be to replicate our personal conversion experience, but to preach the gospel effectively so that we can make disciples in the emerging post-Christian context. We must heed the failures of the past and call people, not to our experience of conversion, but to the experience of the Spirit’s converting, whatever that process may entail.

After looking back over the last year we saw a few patterns that were helpful for us to move our burden into activity. We hope it is helpful.

Observing Context: Spend time in a community, neighborhood, city getting to know their rhythms. Ideally, you are already from this context and it is just taking the time to articulate what you already knew was there, however, if not take the time to listen and learn. Talk to people. Talk to strangers. Ask them questions about their community. Most people love where they live and they will enjoy talking about their community.

Gathering Others: If your burden is something that doesn’t peak curiosity in others then it might not be a burden but more so just something fun to blog about! This can’t be done alone. There must be others. It will make it messy, complicated, slow it down, but without others you are just some weird person.

Common Vision: After taking the time to connect with others and find like minded people we began to spend some time sharing our vision and dreams with one another. We Gathered with meals once a week in our home and spent time looking through scripture, discussing spiritual backgrounds, spiritual perspectives, and encouraging one another. The intention is to share and build community at the same time. Most people don’t accomplish something purely because of a common vision. There has to be relational connections and we wanted to spend the first 1-2 months establishing a common vision.

Common Values: After spending time discussing and sharing our vision and burdens we wanted to begin to establish common values. What is most important to us? What do we want to replicate? What do we want to avoid? For our group we are big on Jesus and getting to know him and live like him so we spent the next 1-2 months establishing common values. We continued to share a meal together, dialogue, involved a little more teaching from scripture and even invited others to participate in this journey with us.

Implement and Activity: After 2-4 months of talking about something, finding common language, sharing ideas, and understanding one another it is time to implement. It can’t remain ideas forever. We need activity. For us it was a huge bonding moment when we partnered together to expose some of our vision and values to the community. For our group one of the biggest values was being a benefit to the community so for us we wanted to do something for the community. In the end it was something that added momentum to our group and helped us to refine our vision and values even more.

Neighborhood Gatherings: At this point we would began to find others who were intrigued and interested by our vision and values and we wanted to provide a place for them to go through this experience with us. We created “neighborhood gatherings” which is simply meeting in someone’s home, sharing a meal, and continuing in this journey with us. We spent 2-4 months in this phase.

Public Gatherings: As we continued to meet in homes, continued to refine our vision, and implement activity it became appropriate to host public gatherings. We meet every Sunday morning at 10am to encourage one another and continue to make progress toward our vision and values. It has been a lot of fun.

I hope this outline is helpful and it allows you to take the burdens that you have been given and instead of just remaining frustrated but allow those frustrations to turn into activity and hopefully see something different.

Knowing what is involved in justification and why it is necessary is extremely important, but it means nothing if it does not move us to mission. Realizing that we are justified by and before a holy God through Jesus should move us to invite others to experience the same justification. This should not be an aspect of theology that we casually graze over, but rather it should be a heart-felt mentality that we embrace deeply and live with consistently.

We can approach God confidently as a justified people because we are not coming to God based on our actions or ability to obey. Whether we are living in obedience, disobedience, good deeds, or bad deeds, we are still approaching God in the righteousness of Christ. On our best day we are unable to please God with our good deeds. In fact, God declares that our righteousness is like a filthy rag to God. While this belief of justification is common amongst evangelicals in theory, it is not usually lived out in practice. Most evangelicals, myself included, get so caught up in following moral checklists and rules that we forget the fact that if we are believers in Christ, we are standing in the righteousness of Christ. When we do all the right things, we are standing in the righteousness of Christ. When we fall into sin, we are standing in the righteousness of Christ.

I am not making a case for anarchy or disobedience for believers once we are saved. God makes it clear that he expects us to follow him in faithful obedience and to walk in good deeds all the days of our lives. However, I am saying that because God through Christ justifies us in salvation, our access and approach to God is never dependent upon our righteous, but rather the perfect righteousness of Christ. This is the beauty of justification. This is the truth that should cause us to fall at the feet of Jesus daily, thanking him for this gift of righteous.

The truth of justification also enables us to focus on Jesus and point others to Him. So many of us are so consumed with our sin struggles and our own righteousness that we do not have the time or the energy to minister and serve others. We often feel this way because we are bearing all of our sin and grief and do not have any room left to bear the sin and grief of others. The problem with this mentality that plagues so many of us is that we cannot bear our own sin, much less others. However, the beauty of justification is that Jesus bore all of our sin and actually became sin for us so we could be declared righteous.  If we truly get the idea of justification in our lives, we will be able to listen to others and equip others to know Jesus and experience the justification he offers.

Church planting is difficult… plain and simple. It is not for people who just want to be a senior pastor. It is not for people who just want to preach on a stage. It is not for people who just want to work at a church. It is not for people who want to implement all they learned in seminary. To be honest, church planting is not for many people at all. Sometimes I wonder if it is for me. I did the whole seminary thing. I interned for churches. I led small groups and mission trips, but nothing has truly prepared me for church planting.

I am only about a year in, but so far what I know without a doubt is that church planting is primarily about connecting with people and then connecting people to Jesus. I never took a seminary class on this, never picked it up in church, never really learned it in a small group or even a mission trip. I’m not saying those things were pointless, they definitely had value, but not necessarily value for being a church planter.

I think maybe the best preparation for being a church planter is meeting with Jesus and diving into people… Spending time praying to Jesus, listening to His voice, meditating on his words in Scripture, pondering his nature and character… Meeting your neighbors, praying for people you come in contact with, talking to people at the gym and the coffee house, inviting people over to dinner, actually leaving your house!!! To be a church planter, you have to love Jesus no doubt. He has to be your treasure above all else. But, after that, and I mean in a close second, you must love people. And once you learn to genuinely love people, you must learn the art of connecting with them.

Church planting may not be for everyone, and it may not be for me after a few years of this, but if it is too be tried, you must abandon any preconceived, romantic notions of being a “senior pastor” or “having some people to preach to”, and you must learn how to connect with people.