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True Confessions of a Church Killer

A few years ago, I was the pastor of a small church plant. The congregation was less than seven years old and had only been in the community for a couple of years.

Circumstances had taken their toll; the energy and life expected from a young church was gone. The church was the baby of the plant pastor, and he had unexpectedly resigned. The people were scared. And depressed. The weren’t sure where to go. They didn’t know how to move forward.

So they hired me.

Like a lot of first-time pastors, I expected that things would get better. I was naive and so were the members.

We all assumed that a fresh voice was all the church needed. We expected that the numbers would go up — that the people would grasp the new vision; that the part-time gig I signed on for would quickly become full-time.

Three and a half years later, the church was dead, and I felt like I’d killed it.

In reality, there were a lot of factors involved, but for the longest time I felt like I had failed the people I pastored. Looking back on my time, I see five specific lessons that have shaped my ministry moving forward, and I share them with the hope that they can be instructive for other church planters/pastors.

1. I wasn’t the best fit as the leader.

Before I list any other factors, I have to own up to the fact that I wasn’t the best candidate for the job — I was simply the best available candidate at the time.

I was coming off an intense period of grieving (my wife and I had our first child stillborn only a year earlier), and I was still feeling my way through a radical shift in my understanding of God. As a result, my leadership was scattered, and it amplified the other factors that hurt the church.

2. The church was not the right fit for the community.

The location was a rural, semi-agrarian community that thrived on tradition. The church was contemporary, relaxed, and aimed at well-educated middle-class families.

Why the misalignment? Because the church expected the community would change to fit them and never assumed otherwise.

To be honest, the church was never designed for the community it was in; it was always built with the idea that the community would one day become an extension of the suburbs down the road. When the economy slowed down and the demographic projections didn’t come to fruition, the church was sorely out of place and without a real plan.

3. The people were wrong for the community.

The members were mostly college educated young adults with kids who lived 15-30 minutes away. The community was mostly older, high school educated adults with vastly different perspectives on life.

The only time the members interacted with people in the community was when the church held outreach events on the church property, or when church members stopped for gas at the local filling station on Sundays. Even when the members and community interacted, the differences in worldview and lifestyle were obvious, and neither group was interested in changing.