I was asked by someone recently about 2-3 things I’ve learned about church planting since we launched our church. I think there’s a lot of lessons to be discovered. In fact, I feel like right now I’m being stretched as a leader and pastor in a way I haven’t been in a while and that’s a good thing.

1. Decide what it will take to last. When you start a church, a marriage or a business, you start with the intention of finishing. Again and again, I’ve seen it not last for people.

For church planters, sometimes their churches didn’t last, so they found a different job. Some got caught in failing morally; pride took them down, their church fired them.

Lasting isn’t just a matter of morals or not sinning or getting caught with your pants down. It also means you need to build a church that will last, that has a strong foundation of leaders. It means making a solid team and knowing that who you put around you will determine how far you go.

It also means making a plan with your spouse about what it will take to serve joyfully side by side for decades. It involves determining how to keep your soul fresh and alive with the passion you had when you started as that will wane over the years.

From an energy perspective, this will go down and the way you ran the race as a 27-year-old will be different at 37 and 47 and 57. You must learn this early on and choose to be wise when it comes to food, exercise, and sleep.

Also realize, you will retire as a pastor. This point will help you prioritize relationships and know how best to spend your time.

2. Know that not everyone will finish with you. One of the most painful realities of life is the loss of relationships. It becomes even more pronounced in a church.

I have tried numerous times to explain to someone the pain a pastor feels when someone leaves their church, but there is not a comparison I’ve been able to make.

There is something deeply felt when you spend time with someone in a hospital, weeping at a funeral, walking with them through cancer, parenting or marriage difficulties and then have them meet with you (or not at all) and say, “we’re leaving because this church isn’t meeting our needs.”

This makes what I said in point 1 so important. This is when you will cling to the calling God placed on your life.

It also means that your spouse needs to understand the road ahead. One of the things that have been the hardest for Katie is facing the hurt when someone leaves our church, meets with me but says nothing to Katie.

You will feel discarded.

If you’ve read your New Testament, this shouldn’t surprise you, but it will still hurt.

You will also have elders and staff members you will have to fire or ask to step down. Sometimes that will be for obvious moral or theological sins, and sometimes it will be a judgment call. No matter how blatant or not apparent, you will lay awake at night replaying conversations. Your soul will ache when you tell someone they no longer have a job. You will know the pain of betrayal as people who loved that person leave, as that person goes down the road and starts a new church.

That is why friendships will be so crucial to your health, whether they are other pastors or people inside/outside of your church. They will bring normalcy to your life and a listening ear when you need it.

3. Hold your methods loosely. What you plant your church doing, how you do church, that will change. I know you don’t think it will, but it will. Candles and incense, cover songs, lights and haze, dialogical preaching, small groups, missional communities, long series, short series, all these things will work and excite you for a time.

Never say, “We’ll do this forever.” You probably won’t.

And that’s okay.

Notice, this doesn’t have anything to do with theology or the message you preach, how you do church. Hold that loosely. What works today and reaches people will not in 3 years and that’s okay. Cultures shift and so do people, so churches must adapt how they reach people.

There is a passion and maybe even a naivety when you start a church, and in many ways, that’s a good thing. You don’t know the road ahead, much like when you have your first child. There is so much hope, so many dreams, and passion at the beginning. It is natural the longer you are in church planting to lose this, to forget this, but stay fresh and close to Jesus so that you will finish the race He has given to you.