One of the most surprising mistakes mentioned in Griffith and Easum’s book, Ten Most Common Mistakes Made by New Church Starts, concerned church planters having “no plan for the other six days of the week.”[1] The authors explain how churches that are built around a model based on codependency to the pastor will only have as much capacity to grow as the pastor’s abilities to handle everything themselves. Sundays become the main event in these churches, and the pastor is the main minister.

Easum and Griffith rightly state that this kind of model, “borderlines on immoral,” where people do not learn to depend on God more than their pastor (and they may not even realize it until it is too late).[2] For instance, if the pastor were to leave, the church is likely to cave in on itself because of its lack of leadership and strength. Instead, building up the whole body together into leadership will cause the church members to depend on God and not look to the pastor as a kind of savior.

Learning this was truly eye opening. I have seen the codependent pastoral model so many times that part of me, though untrusting of it, felt that it must be a valid church expression. Before reading Griffith and Easum’s perspective, I could not pinpoint exactly what made me feel so off about churches that were a one man show. This both confirmed my suspicions and encouraged me to move forward in the right direction of being sure to pass on responsibility and leadership in any future church plant.

I learned that church planting should keep the spiritual formation of its congregants at the forefront of its mission. The church is meant to build people up in their giftings and callings. Some of the ways to avoid the pitfalls of becoming a Sunday only church that depends on one pastor, is to focus attention on the rest of the body getting involved. Certain concrete actions should be taken from the beginning, such as, developing small groups and small group leaders from the outset. Here, the focus would be to get the congregants deeply rooted in community with one another so that they may develop strong church relationships. Another concrete action that may be taken is training and putting together a pastoral ministry who can be trusted to care for various aspects of church needs. There can be some pastors over healing ministries, intercession teams, evangelism ministries, food drives, outreaches, and so much more. It wouldn’t be long before someone can be trained to even take the place of the pastor someday. This should always remain a goal and is central to the growth of the church. In all, being concerned with training up leaders and passing along responsibilities will prove both God honoring and effective for the growth and maturity of the church plant.

Another mistake that surprised me to learn about was what Griffith and Easum called, having “a love affair with one’s fantasy statement,” which “blinds the planter to the mission field.”[3] Leaving aside models and ideas of what a church will be, it is important to allow the church to be formed around the mission field it will be in. Griffith and Easum write, “The difference between a fantasy and a vision is a fantasy never gets translated past the sheet of paper.”[4] In this, a church planter can easily get caught up working towards a vision while turning a blind eye to his or her surroundings. Ironically, the results of this mistake would be a failure to reach the very meaning for all the visions, plans, and models: the harvest itself.

Both having a fantasy vision and, as Griffith and Easum call it, “using the “superstar” model as the paradigm,” are surprisingly wrong.[5] We live in a day and age where so many models and visions are constantly thrown at us and the temptation to copy other church models is very real. In some ways it may even seem like the responsible thing to do, after all, it proved successful for “those people over there”. Someone who is genuinely called to ministry can easily go to social media or the television in order to develop a model, only for it to become a huge mistake. Instead of dreaming of the end results, which is an idea often put forward in our generation, church planters should dream of the people themselves that they will reach and allow God himself to give them a vision. Often, models prove that they cannot be repeated because they are God given. Though this was surprising to me, it also gave me a sense of deep relief that I need not look at someone else’s dream or story because God can write a new story with me and with his new church plant.

Instead of focusing on a plan or model, church planters should keep their eyes on the goal: to reach the people around them. That is, the people who make up the very mission field that the church plant is in. Much of this will take a course of action that involves guessing, checking, and revising. With a listening ear to the Holy Spirit and attention to the fields, the church may adapt into its final expression. This allows the church to grow as an actual living organism, trusting and depending on the hands of God to grow it. In this sense, it is a form of dependence on God to allow the church to grow in a more organic way than a model can sometimes afford.

One step to avoiding this mistake is getting out of the church office. Griffith and Easum encourage the church planter to spend time among the people instead of behind a desk, “perfecting their fantasy.”[6] By doing actual outreach and spending time with people, the church planter may then get a good grasp on who to reach them. Once the people are targeted, a method to reach them can be developed.

Griffith and Easum rightly remark that “God honors only those planters who love the people more than their fantasy church!”[7] In line with understanding the people who make up the mission field, is allowing God to share his burden with the church planter. To build a church is to be able to carry God’s heart for the people. That heart will only come by going to the people, learning their stories, weeping with them, laughing with them, and truly getting to know them. The church plant should be treated as a living thing that grows as a result of the people around it. Our visions, ideas, and models are not the harvest and so to put them first would be out of line and prove useless.   

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[1] Griffith, J. and B. Easum, Ten Most Common Mistakes Made by New Church Starts (St. Louis: Chalice Press, 2008), 61-72

[2] Griffith, J. and B. Easum,69

[3] Griffith, J. and B. Easum,21-32

[4] Griffith, J. and B. Easum,23

[5] Griffith, J. and B. Easum,111-118

[6] Griffith, J. and B. Easum,25

[7] Griffith, J. and B. Easum,26