25 Things She Learned from Church Planting

Christine Hoover, church planters wife and author of the book The Church Planting Wife featured the top 25 things she learned from church planting on the Gospel Coalition Blog. Below are a few of the ones I resonated with, for the rest go here.

• Hospitality is essential.
• Church planting teaches two things more than any other: that God is faithful and that we must learn how to depend on that faithful God.
• The Word is living and active. When we let God speak through his Word, he changes people. Every church plant must gather earnestly around the Word and the Christ to which it points.
• Most people, especially outsiders, don't know what it means when you say you're church planting. And they think you're a little crazy.
• The calling to church plant must be sure since you'll need to return to it again and again in the face of discouragement, defeat, and uncertainty.
• The gospel is everything: it sustains when discouragement comes (and it always does), it keeps a church planter and his wife in their city (because there will be times when they want to give up and leave), it compels its ministers forward (and sometimes it's the only motivation left), and it changes lives (which makes it all worth it).
• Slow and steady growth is healthy growth. Explosive growth can be fragile growth.
• Church plants should never be started by someone disgruntled or unable to sit under authority at his former church. Church plants cannot be rebuttals to another pastor's methods and ideas.
• They must be built on a clear call from God.
• There is unimaginable joy and reward in sacrifice and service.