I led a breakout session on prayer at a church planting event a few years ago. Each of us gave a short explanation of our topic. After I shared why someone would want to come to a session on prayer, the church planter after me said, “I will show how you can grow your church without praying more or preaching better. I will show you a system that I used to grow my church.” Two people came to my session after that. I overheard one church planter tell an intern from his church, “I don’t need to learn to pray. I need to learn that system.” That same planter came to a meeting a couple of years later and confessed to all sorts of burnout, anger, anxiety and discouragement. If you could grow your church without prayer and a vibrant spiritual life, would you do it?
When I returned to seminary to finish my master’s degree, Dr. Don Whitney’s Personal Spiritual Disciplines was the first class I took. Because he lectured through the topics from his book Spiritual Disciplines for the Christian Life, I took my class notes in the margins of the book so that I have my own annotated and expanded copy of the book. I learned several lessons that I use everyday and every week including how to lead my kids in family worship without going crazy. The lessons he taught that are most important, though, are how to meditate on the Bible, how to pray the Bible, and the value and methods of fasting. He taught us to live out Psalm 1. That is the secret that applies to every ministry.
We don’t say it often enough to church planters or established church pastors. I don’t say it enough to myself. Psalm 1:1-3. “Blessed is the one who does not walk in step with the wicked or stand in the way that sinners take or sit in the company of mockers, but whose delight is in the law of the Lord, and who meditates on his law day and night. That person is like a tree planted by streams of water, which yields its fruit in season and whose leaf does not wither—whatever they do prospers.” That is the secret–rejecting, delighting, and meditating.
Most of the time, we measure the fruit. It’s the part that we can easily count. We can also measure the first part of that passage. That is the secret. Do we spend as much time measuring our rejection of the way of the wicked, our desire for the LORD, and our delight in his word as we do attendance and giving trends?
I don’t know that we will understand what flourishing and prospering look like in God’s eyes until we get to heaven. Sometimes our ministry goals sound spiritual and godly, but we realize later were selfish and self-glorifying rather than God-glorifying. Our definition of success can be messed up, but we can be sure that we are on the right track if we stop focusing on the prosper part and instead focus on the desire and meditation parts.
I suspect that there are some pastors reading this that are discouraged. Church planting might be harder than you imagined. Growth is coming slowly. You might be nearing retirement and frustrated at the end your ministry has led you to. You might have children that have rejected the LORD, and you are weighed down. You might be discouraged at the lack of visible fruit in your ministry–there were no visitors, new members, or baptisms again this week. Please remember the secret of Psalm 1. Leave the results in God’s hands, and go all in on rejecting, desiring, and meditating.
The secret is not about the church you plant; the secret is being the man that God plants.
