Bob Hyatt:Brightest and Darkest Moments in Church Planting

Great post: 

Brightest and Darkest Moments in Church Planting

 

excerpt:

What are the darkest and brightest moments of church planting for you? And for me, there have been plenty of both- but probably the darkest has been over the last couple of years realizing that no matter what we do, we were going to be a church that hurt people.

I first started getting an inkling of this when I noticed that though we saw many people coming into church and coming to Christ or coming BACK to Church or back to Christ through our community, we saw just as many for whom we were the last stop on the way out. They had grown up in the evangelical church, many were even pastor’s kids, and they would come to our community as this last ditch effort. We meet in a pub, we’re not happy clappy, we’re not trying to be slick or production-oriented- for a lot of them, we were something still Christian that they thought maybe they could stomach. We even had some tell us “This is my last try- if this doesn’t work, I’m out.” I mean, no pressure, right?
And time and time again, though we saw many stick and find what they were looking for, we saw just as many turn around and walk out the door again, some with real anger towards us, or towards me. And in trying to pin down why this would happen, we’ve never come to any real conclusions, other than that some people are just going to be hurt, no matter what you do- their issues with God and with church are going to bubble up. Which church in inconsequential- it could be any. And quite often, it’s going to be yours....continued