4 Mistakes I Have Made As A Church Planter

I've made a lot of mistakes since we have started New City Church. There has been quite a few failed ideas and dumb decisions. But in order to keep the list short, I wanted to share four overarching mistakes I have made on this journey so far. Perhaps you can relate to some of these as well.

1) Moving too quickly on new ideas

I love trying new things, and it is important if you want to innovate and grow. But that doesn't always mean you need to implement a new idea right away. I have been guilty on more than one occasion of doing or trying something without fully thinking through the best way to execute or pull off the idea.

2) Allowing my attitude to be dictated by how the church is doing financially

For any church plant, finances are really tight and one of the major reasons why many new churches never get off the ground. While it may be understandable to be worried about how the church is doing financially (especially when it impacts your family's well-being), there have been many times where I allowed that to affect how I treated others and my joy.These days I do think I have gotten much better with this, but now my worry often shifts to how productive I think I have been or if I feel like I've actually been making a positive and helpful impact on people. Learning to trust and find our joy in Christ is a never-ending journey.

3) Thinking the growth of New City depends on me

Our mission at New City is to help people meet Jesus and grow in a relationship with him. It really is all about Jesus. But let's also be honest; a brand new church also needs to grow and have enough people to sustain itself. For much of the first year when I often wasn't sure if New City was going to make it (even if God was doing awesome things and it was mostly just in my head). I falsely believed if I didn't preach great sermons people wouldn't come back.And just so you know, even if you think you preached a decent sermon (which isn't often) there are still things you wish you would have said or communicated differently.Instead what I have found is that it's our people that make all the difference. Almost every single story I hear from new people as to why they stuck around has to do with how they felt welcomed or cared for by someone else when they came for the first time. And if you ask our people, they'll probably tell you they are still waiting for someone who preachers great sermons :).

4) Wanting personal success over faithfulness

So often I have been trapped into thinking that if I was better at [fill in the blank] then New City would do "better." What that really means is that I must be doing something wrong and not being faithful enough if things aren't going the way I want. If I was then our church would be growing more, doing bigger things, and having a bigger impact. But that is confusing faithfulness with results.However, God doesn't call us to measurable fruitfulness, he calls us to be faithful. And being faithful often does not mean we get the results we think we should get. For one, we have no idea the impact we really have on others. And two, we have no idea what God may be up to and what he is trying to teach us.Honestly, there are many times that I want to make an impact not for the sake of the Gospel, but for the sake of myself. I want people to think I've "made it" and somehow and know what I am doing. In my experience, that is really what is going on when I get frustrated.When it becomes about me, I'm never satisfied. When I get frustrated, that is almost always the reason why; I put my desire to be successful over my desire to simply be faithful.