At the urging of many friends in the summer of 2003, I began to explore the possibility of starting a church in Oklahoma City. As I shared this idea with a pastor friend, Vance Martin, he began to share that same desire and burden. So the second Sunday in September of that year, not knowing how we were going to do it or if it would ever get off the ground, Heartland Baptist Church of Oklahoma City had its first worship service in a downstairs conference room at the Hilton Hotel on NW Expressway. This makes this coming Sunday our fifth anniversary since we began as a church. Next month will mark our first anniversary in the sense we constituted as a church with an official membership list.
It's hard to believe that I have gone full circle. In 1981 my wife and I loaded all our belongings in a Jartran rental truck and upon graduation from seminary in Ft. Worth, Texas, we moved to north of Detroit, Michigan, to pastor in the start of a new church. We left Texas on January 2 in 75 degree weather. We arrived in Detroit on January 4 with the temperature at minus 12 and about a foot of snow on the ground. When some would ask me later if I ever had any second thoughts if I had done the right thing, I would say "yes", and all those thoughts occurred on January 4, 1981.
Now at middle age I have come back to where I began. The unwritten, but often assumed, process for a pastor is to start small and work oneself up the ladder to pastor bigger, more established churches as one gets older toward the retirement years. There is nothing wrong with that, I suppose, but for me, I could never be satisfied with having just a maintenance ministry at some place, even if the salary package was tempting. I need challenges, or I shrivel up on the inside.
There are naturally a lot of advantages that come with pastoring at a larger, more traditional church setting. For me and how I am wired, the disadvantages outweigh the advantages, and I always have preferred the idea of starting a church from scratch. It is definitely not easy at times, but the rewards more than make up for the tough, lean times.
In the summer of 2003 before we had our first worship service, among the many things I did to prepare myself for this new church start, was to read John Piper's book, DON'T WASTE YOUR LIFE. If I ever had any doubts about starting a church at middle age, those doubts were completely erased after reading that book. God used that book to help me see that by living a comfortable, predictable Christian life would be a total waste. It is easy for Christians to fall into a rut where their faith is never stretched and where their walk is never bumpy. My flesh would much rather take up my cushion to follow Jesus, rather than to take up my cross and follow Jesus. As Vance Havner was fond of saying along these lines, "Get out on a limb. That is where all the fruit is anyway." It would be so much invigorating for more Christians if in their spiritual journey they would get out on a limb more.
Alex and Brett Harris, 19-year-old twin authors, say in their increasingly popular book, DO HARD THINGS, that teens are hungry for challenges, far more than they are given credit for. They define hard things as those that: take one outside one's comfort zone, go beyond what is expected and required, are too big to accomplish alone, don't earn an immediate payoff, and challenge the cultural norms. Perhaps more teens would attempt to do hard things if they were to see more adults attempt to do hard things.
A wise pastor in Michigan who became my mentor, who gets these email devotionals by the way, told me a couple of things in his counsel back in 1981 that has stuck with me to this day. One is that I should not be surprised if the people we end up with in a church start situation would be a completely different group than the group we started out with on day one. The other thing he told me is that it takes a special type of Christian--not meaning they were more holy or more spiritual--to be a part of a new church situation. For that person, he has to be willing to give up a lot of customary church amenities, like not having many organized programs or activities for their children, or like not having a church choir or top-notch music ministry, or like not having one's own church building, or like not having a paid church staff, or like living on a church budget shoestring. The real "heroes" of a new church start, from my way of looking at things, is not the pastor or pastors involved, but the faithful, steady, committed group of folks who make up the body of a new church start. Bro. Vance and I feel very privileged to be surrounded by a great bunch of loving heroes each Lord's Day.
All this brings me to what has prompted me to write these articles from week to week. I looked around and saw that a lot of churches spend a lot of advertising dollars on making their church known by highlighting its special attractions that might appeal to folks. A new church does not have a lot of money to spend on advertising dollars, but email sure is affordable. Secondly, I have always had a problem with standard operating procedures where churches try to put their best foot forward. "Let another praise you, and not your own mouth; someone else, and not your own lips." (Proverbs 27:2)
I send out emails regularly to our own church members that detail about things that are happening in our church, but I wanted to send out something else to a much wider audience that has more to deal with eternal truths rather than giving a plug about our church. Our church and your church may or may not be around in five more years, but God's Word "abideth still." What is sorely lacking in a lot of church literature is anything of biblical substance. Regardless if a person comes to our church or not, I want through my writing and all our church literature to teach truths that are life-changing and that will be around forever, for "to say something relevant, one must say something that is eternal."
So in another five years, if the Lord wills it, I may write another blog similar to this one, but until then, I want to get back to what I love best, and that is the communication of those things that are eternally relevant.
Yours in Christ,
Chris
P.S. I just dawned on me as I finish this before dawn on Sept. 11, that seven years ago today when our country was attacked, I was getting ready to leave home in Crescent to drive to Del City for a pastors' fellowship that was meeting at a church where Vance Martin was the pastor. Little did we know then the plans the Lord would have for us together almost two years later to the day.
