I was talking to a pastor that I highly respect the other day about the church we are planting and he said something that I have been thinking about ever since. We were talking about keeping things simple and not deviating from the core values that God has given us and he said “there are some aspects to your vision that can be changed but there are some that are non-negotiable. Determine the hills that you are willing to die on!” I thought at first that maybe he had been watching a little too much Braveheart 
but the more I thought about it, I realized that he was speaking the truth.
I have seen SO many church planters filled with passion with a vision directly from God who are intent on changing the world but when you talk to them a few years later, they’re burnt out and on the verge of quitting. Why? There are many different reasons but the primary one that they all have in common is that they let someone come in and steer them away from the simple, powerful plan that God gave them in the beginning. I heard so many of these guys/gals say that God gave them a clear, concise vision to reach their context but slowly but surely, they got bogged down in womens ministry, men’s softball ministry and dozens of other “specialized” ministries within the church. There is nothing inherantly wrong with any of these ministries…they are just wrong when they muddle up the beauty of simplicity.
So, I know that I will not discover most of my “hills” that I’m willing to die on until we’re a fully functioning community but I know that God has spoken to me over the past few years about a hill or two that we will protect with our lives.
Hill #1: We will not measure success or failure by how many people we can cram into a building for a church service…getting “butts in seats” does not a disciple make. Success for us is measured by the quality of life in our faith community and the people that we serve. I once talked to a pastor that I highly admired that planted a church from scratch and within a few years his church was running over 2,000 people on Sunday morning. I thought he would be pumped up, excited and full of insight on what I could do to replicate his success. Instead, I found a man that was miserable! He was miserable because he admitted that while they were drawing bigger and bigger crowds every week, barely anyone was becoming true disciples of Christ. He admitted that even those in his inner circle had shallow spiritual lives and were not manifesting the fruit of the Spirit. His simple vision for reaching the lost was turned into a chase for numbers.
Success for this type of church can be measured by 3 stats: how many, how much and how often. How many people are coming on Sunday morning/how many services are we having/how many decisions this month. How much tithes and offering is coming in/how much was given in the stewardship campaign this month. And how often are people coming to church sponsored functions/small groups/youth group, how often is my church mentioned in Christian magazines, etc.
Now, before any one jumps on me, I’m not against church services, small groups or tithing. I just think that we need a different scorecard to measure success for a church that expects to reach the unchurched/dechurched in 21st century America. I mean, come on, even Willow Creek, the Mecca of seeker sensitive, realized that though they were drawing a heck of a crowd, they weren’t making many true disciples (see the Reveal study). I am hoping to free myself up from depending on the church for any type of salary/housing/insurance so we can focus on making disciples and serving the community around us and not be held hostage by ‘numbers’. The entire reason that I want to plant a church instead of pastoring an existing church is because we want to create a culture of humility, service and focus on others right off the bat without having to deconstruct 50 years of “church culture” that has impeded the mission of God. The key to this actually working is me being accountable to people that will hold my feet to the fire and not allow me to fall into the how many, how much and how often trap that is natural for a pastor to fall into.
Hill #2: We Will Be Known for Our Love. We will try our hardest to live out all of the red letters of Jesus in our lives but this one is a deal breaker. In John 13: 34-35, Jesus said “I give you a new commandment that you love one another. Just as as I have loved you, you should also love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.” Wow!!! So simple yet so absolutely mind blowing! The ONLY measuring stick for discipleship as far as Jesus was concerned was love. Not Bible knowledge…not church attendance…not $130 million church buildings…just love, love, love! How did we screw that up? This mandate from Jesus gives me hope for the future of the church in America because you don’t need a campaign with a cool tag line to love. You don’t need a super charismatic leader to whip up a frenzied crowd to love. You don’t need a denomination to love. You just need regular people transformed by the love of Christ and then turning around and showing that same love to everyone that they encounter on a daily basis. How revolutionary yet how countercultural that would be for the church.
We should be having committe meetings on how we can love each other better! We should be having conferences with thousands of Christ followers brainstorming on better ways to love and then go directly into the city where the conference is and putting those ideas into practice. Love should shape our budgets, our gatherings, our ideas and everything else we do as a church. If it doesn’t, we aren’t a church, we are an institution who has lost contact with it’s founder. I so desire to be a part of a community of people that just love, plain and simple. We ravenously love God, we sacrificially love people and we make disciples who will do the exact same thing.
Well, those are our 1st two hills. I hope there aren’t too many more but we I will definitely be willing to die on these 2 hills!
