Church Planter's Wife

So, before starting this church planting journey, there were things that we had to do to prepare. We had to pack up our house, putting everything in organized or not so organized boxes. We had to look for housing in another city via video chat. We sold items that wouldn’t fit into our new housing situation. We met with people and fundraised for the mission God had put us on. My husband had to finish final examinations. And then there was senior banquet, graduation, truck rental, and driving 900 miles to our new home. 

These are all important things, logistics that must be taken care of when moving across country and starting a new “job.” But these things can all be done when starting any new “job.” But what should we as a family do to prepare for embarking on a life changing mission that God has sent us on? How do we prepare for something so weighty, and yet something that will impact us every day?

To make your lives easier, I have complied a list of the top five questions we-as the Beverly family-think you should ask yourselves before embarking on this church planting journey. Some of these questions we discussed before we moved to Louisiana, some of these questions we wish we had worked through before getting here, or we wish we were more realistic with, etc. 

So what are our top five questions that we think you should ask as a family before starting your church planting journey?

1. Are you actually called to church plant? (Along with this, are you sure of where you are to go/type of ministry you are called to start etc?)
   The first question should be pretty obvious, and yet it is so important. It is important to work through, not only for the one that is called to be the visionary leader of the church you are planting, but for the entire family to discuss together. What is God calling you to? Where? Why? What is the purpose? 
   
   One of the biggest mistakes that is made when church planting, is that the church planters decide to plant a new church because of a problem or dislike with their current situation. They don’t like the current pastor at their current church. They don’t want to submit to someone else’s authority. They think that moving up to lead pastor or “church planter” is the next natural “career” move or the next level in ministry. Maybe they have graduated from seminary, ministry school, Bible college, and have not received a call through their denomination, association, etc. and so they decide to just start their own church. Maybe they want to end up in a certain “destination” when it comes to ministry, and since they haven’t received a call to that location with an established church they feel the need to start a church there instead. Well, I am here to tell you, these are all terrible reasons to leave your current context and start a church. Of course you may be moving on from other ministry positions, graduating, etc. but these should not be your motivating factors driving you to plant a church! 
   
   The only reason you should become a church planting family is if God has called you to do so. I am here to tell you that God has a specific plan for your life (Jeremiah 29:11). God has called you and your family to a specific place for a specific mission. Where is it that God is calling you? What is the mission and vision God has given you for that community? Yes, you can and should do research, demographic work, and more logistical steps in preparation for church planting, but God can also give you insight that numbers cannot. God can show you the needs of a community before you intimately know the community you are being sent to. It is a wonderful and beautiful thing. And it is something that you can be praying through together as a couple from where you are right now. You can include your kids in this prayer time. Often God will work through the littlest people. They may have insight into your mission and God can speak to and through them!  
   
2. What will you and your family’s roles be during the church planting process?
   Before the gun smoked and we took off on this church planting journey, I envisioned my role as a church planter: it involved me in the trenches alongside my husband. I saw myself canvassing the neighborhoods in our community. I saw myself joining him as he met with influential people in our town. We had studied and trained for ministry together for six years. I saw us doing this thing side-by-side. And we have, but not in the way that I thought we would. My husband and I, along with our children, have been fully in this church planting thing. But it didn’t look the way that I expected.
   
   We started this church planting thing with two small children and another on the way. I did not expect to be as nauseated as I was while pregnant with our third child. Every pregnancy I have had morning sickness, but this was particularly bad. The move took a toll on me, and the heat and humidity of Southern Louisiana was quite an adjustment. So for this reason alone, my role looked a bit different from what I expected it to be. It looked like me trying to keep fluids up and enjoying as much A/C as possible.
   
   Many times we would go out as a family and invite people to church. We would go to parks, or even go door to door. But many neighborhoods here do not have sidewalks, so taking small children canvassing can be less than ideal. Other times, my husband would go to areas that really weren’t safe for families, even though children were there. One time someone even motioned to my husband, indicating that he had a weapon on him, and my husband was faithful and still offered an invite, but he had to do so cautiously in this situation to avoid harm. And this is a sad reality of the world we live in and the things that we see in ministry. Sometimes we see people living, working, and playing in conditions that are not ideal. You have to prayerfully decide what you will allow your children/family to experience and be exposed to.
   
   So, be realistic. What will your role be? Do you have children? Younger? Will you have someone to care for them when you do things for which they cannot join you? How might you involve them in things at home? Our littles helped us prepare flyers. It was great, because they got to serve the Lord and develop their fine motor skills. Older/teens? How much can they help and in what capacity? They could help with larger, more physical tasks, and can help to share the Gospel message with others.
   
   What are your strengths and weaknesses? Where do you and your spouse/church planting partner compliment one another? Is God calling you to church plant while working another career? Or is God calling you to live sacrificially during this time? If one of you will work outside the church, which one? What type of time, mental, physical, and emotional commitment will that take (realistically)? Each option comes with its advantages and disadvantages, and it is best to approach this with much prayer.
   
3. What will you do to maintain a focus on the Lord and not just the church planting process while planting?
   Church planting is a wonderful calling, but that is just it—it is a calling. It is not for everyone, not even for every pastor and their family. Church planting requires sacrifice, hard work, and determination. But it also requires love and obedience to the Lord, faithfulness, prayer, humility, dedication, and more. Being an American, I was raised with the mindset that if I work hard enough, if I try hard enough, then it will work out—I will get what I want (accomplished, earned, etc.). But God is funny that way, sometimes the harder we work, the farther from our goals we get (Psalm 127:1). You see, God wants us to fully depend on God. You must allow God to be in control of your life.
   
   Sometimes, in the midst of the church planting “thing,” church planting can become the main “thing” in your life. It can be all consuming. Your house is a meeting space, storage space, office space, etc. When you are about town, everyone you encounter is someone that you could potentially invite to your new church. You and your spouse will spend countless hours preparing for lessons, whether it be for Bible study, children’s ministry, sermons, etc. Maybe you help with music ministry? You see with all of this, it can be consuming. Church planting can become the focus of your life, but it shouldn’t. Your focus should always be the Lord! God is the reason you are church planting. No one just one day says, “Hey, I would love to give up any ounce of security I have left, drop everything, move “X” number of miles away from friends and family, just to take on the job of starting something from scratch with little to no income.” Church planting should not and cannot be your focus! The Lord is your focus, because the Lord is the one that has called your family to this ministry in the first place. Without the Lord’s leading you would not be doing this (If you are church planting and did not sense God’s call to this ministry, please go back and read through question number one).
   
   So what will you do to continue to focus on the Lord during these church planting years and beyond? Devotional reading? Prayer time? Personal/family retreats? And when I say retreats, I do not mean ones where your family is leading the retreat for the church or a camp etc. I mean a retreat that you go on to spend time listening to and worshiping the Lord as a family.
   
   Aside from trying to maintain a good prayer life and reading our Bible daily, our family likes to be able to go to worship together. We do this about once a month as a family. This is nice, because as leaders in our church we are often serving during worship, so it is good to be able to go and be filled and experience worship together. We have also gone on family retreats. And with homeschooling, we choose curriculum that is life-giving for our entire family, with Bible time, and godly values. What will you do to keep God the center in your life and the lives of your family?
   
4. Are you prepared to live on a more limited budget than you are currently?
   When we were in Iowa, we had it made. I worked outside the home just two days a week. We had a YMCA in town, that I would frequent on my days off to get a good workout in. The kids were involved in swim lessons. We had relative freedom even while my husband was finishing grad school. We were not swimming in money, but we were comfortable. We were still on a budget (I am very thrifty by nature), but we could take a vacation or visit family, eat out weekly, etc. When we moved to Louisiana, I prepared for the lifestyle change. I saw the numbers. The value of our money would be slightly less in Louisiana (about 1%), but not enough (I thought) to make a large impact on our lives or lifestyle. I thought I would have to trim the budget just a bit to make things work. But was I wrong. Everything, except gasoline, seemed to be more expensive here. Our car insurance about quadrupled in price. A gallon of milk went from about $2 a gallon to over $4. While there is a YMCA here, it is not nearly as close as we were used to, and the prices are about double that of the YMCA we belonged to in Iowa. And rent is much more costly. All of this combined with living with the budget of a church planting family was a huge blow. I wish that I had been more realistic when planning for this church planting thing. 
   
   So here is the tough question for many of us….Are you prepared to have a limited monthly budget (or more limited than your current budget)? Maybe this will not be an issue for you and the church you will plant. Maybe you will be fully funded and you and your spouse will make a reasonable income from the start. Maybe you are planting with an organization that will support you or you have found some great sponsorship. If so, congratulations.
   
   If, however, you are fundraising for your church plant, or you are depending on your congregation in a new church to give in order to support the cost of ministry and your living expenses, then I will tell you in all honesty, it can be tough. It is hard, because there is inconsistency with anything new. We had sponsors, and sometimes they would forget to give, which happens, but this can be very stressful/worrisome (we still have a few very faithful sponsors which we greatly appreciate). Churches aren’t generally self-sufficient for at least 3-4 years. So if you are moving someplace new to lay the groundwork for a church plant, then you should plan to live lean from the time you are preparing to start the church plus and additional 3-4 years once the church opens. If God works things out faster for you, then congratulations! For others it may take longer. But know, that as long as we have been doing this, with as much or as little money as we have had to work with, God has been faithful. We have always had food on the table, a roof over our heads, electricity (as long as the power wasn’t out due to one of the many storms in Louisiana), clean water, and clothes. God is good!
   
   But what can you do to trim the budget and prepare for church planting life? What are the things that you can give up? What are the things that you can’t live without? If you think that you can’t live without something, then God will probably show you a way that you can! God will see you through. I always want to be optimistic, hopeful, and rely on God, but I also wish I had been more realistic/informed when it came to jumping into this church planting thing with regard to finances.
   
5. How will you help your children adjust to a new life/home/town/economic status?
   As I said earlier, before church planting I was able to have a YMCA membership, and I thought that status would remain while church planting. Never in my wildest imagination did I think that it would be one of the things that would be cut from the budget, but sadly my gym membership was one thing that had to be given up. Maybe for you it is going out to eat, buying brand name, buying new, getting the latest tech/gadgets? Can you give that up? How about your children? How will you talk to them about the changes that might need to be made in a positive way so that they are glad to be serving the Lord and not resentful for what they have lost?
   
   Our children were relatively young when we started this church planting thing, and so they probably didn’t notice much of a difference. Two of our children were born while church planting so this is all that they know. But we did have conversations with them, and we continue to have conversations about how God has called us here to serve God’s people. We are called as a family. We buy the things that we need as God provides for us. We do not go into debt to fulfill the whims and wishes of our children.
   
   But, if you have older children that are accustomed to a certain lifestyle, housing situation, school/district, clothing brand, having their own room, etc., then it is very important that you have discussions with them so that they joyfully participate in church planting. The last thing we want to do as parents is to cause our children to be resentful of the church—and worse, resentful of God—while trying to live out the calling God has on our lives. This isn’t to say, there will never be moments that your children are upset that they do not have certain things. And our children do not prevent us as adults from living out our calling. But as a family we try to frame our wants and needs in a positive way. When your child asks “Why don’t we have…?” How will you answer? Will it be to blame God? Will it be to state that you have no money for the item? Will you complain about your situation in life? Of course we aren’t perfect and we fail at this at times, but we generally tell the kids “Not right now” to something we cannot get and “Why don’t you pray that God would provide “XYZ?””
   

As you consider these five questions, it is important to be on the same page as your church planting spouse. Start the discussion with your spouse now, so that you are in agreement. Your spouse may be so focused on getting the church going, that this may not be on the forefront of their mind. But that does not mean that these are not discussions worth having. And your partner may be relieved that you have thought to talk about them so that they don’t have to bring them up. When you approach your spouse about these topics, remember to do so in a positive way, not with worry. Give your worries and anxieties to the Lord (Matt 6:25-7; 1 Peter 5:7). He is sure to take care of you!

Do you have more questions about church planting? Drop them in the comments below!