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Can’t See the River for the Water
When Mark Twain became a riverboat captain, his view of the river changed. Every ripple, wave, and adjustment of color brought new meaning—an opportunity to move faster, a hidden danger, a sign of bad weather to come.
Twain lamented that he came to view the river as a captain, not as a human. As he said in his book, Life on the Mississippi, “All the grace, the beauty, the poetry, had gone out of the majestic river.” I believe I understand a little of how he felt.
When I began my first ministry in New York, everything was new and exciting. I did not analyze church planting, I experienced it.
I studied the Bible with Charlie at his father’s candy store in Brooklyn. It was an unusual store in that there was a single shelf of stale candy. Naive as I was, it took six months to realize the real “candy” was in the back room, where bets were made on Sunday’s football games. I still remember Charlie’s excitement when I gave him his first Bible.
I baptized Jerry in the Schoharie Creek at a church retreat in the Catskill Mountains. It was late October. Jerry said he thought he saw the Holy Spirit as I spoke my words before immersing him. I told him it was just my breath vaporizing as it escaped through chattering teeth.
My memories of my time in Brooklyn are vivid, though I left there in 1989. Since then we have planted dozens of churches that have grown far larger than that one small congregation. But now I find real wonder hard to come by. How much is just the accumulation of days, and how much is because I have turned church planting from a passion to a production?
In the late 1980s the science of church planting was born. As hundreds of practitioners began to merge best practices, I became an enthusiastic early adopter of the new methodologies. No doubt all that hard work helped us see new churches grow tenfold in a 15-year period. But as my study of church planting increased, my wonder decreased.
Though I notice every ripple, wave, and change of color in the life of a new church, I rarely see the majestic river anymore. Though I remember Jerry’s face coming up out of the cold waters of the Schoharie, the thousands of baptisms since then are a blur.
Don’t get me wrong. I am thrilled with the growth and success of our church-planting ministry. But I must be honest. Sometimes I miss the simple, majestic, unanalyzed beauty of the river.
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