Vineyard Church North Phoenix | It Takes a Family

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In the Vineyard we value “starting new churches” way, way up there alongside the high priority of “worship,” the theological grid of “the Kingdom,” the foundational value of “the Word,” and the ‘don’t save the whole world and lose your own soul’ value of “FAMILIES.” Maybe you can’t drive through town without envisioning a new Vineyard church popping up, or you can’t drive past a new Starbucks without imagining yourself sipping a latte’ with your laptop open and a Kingdom conversation taking place. You’re probably eyeing major intersections seeing an ideal location for a Coke giveaway or driving past an apartment complex seeing a Matthew Party in progress. Whatever it is that makes the hair stand up on the back of your neck when it comes to starting new churches, if you have a family in tow, your family life and your ministry life will be challenged by every facet of the church planting experience.

“Doing the stuff” as a family

For me, “doing the stuff” as a family began at a young age. My dad started getting excited about giving God’s love away to others when I was three-years-old. In 1969 my dad started Teen Challenge of East Texas. As kids (my three brothers and I) we spent most of our evenings and weekends running around my dad’s coffeehouse, admiring the “art” on the psychedelic walls and wondering what that green grass was in the Ziplock baggies those hippies kept turning in to my dad. I remember my dad always being out on the streets on Friday nights, so my mom would take us kids to Whataburger for shakes…(we’d encourage dad to go evangelize…yum). One time there was a major decision that had to be made in my family’s future and I remember my dad sitting us down (I think I was 11 at this point) and asking the four boys how we felt about selling our home and BBQ restaurants and moving into ministry full-time. We all deferred to my oldest brother who replied that if God was opening a door, we would go through it together. And we did.

Calling

Ok, enough about my personal history, but things like that have set in my heart just how important it is to do ministry together as a family. A solid foundation for church planting as a family comes down to the issue of CALLING. Has God called you and your family to plant this church? Is there a knowing deep inside that this is God’s purpose for this time in the life of your family? For me and my wife, Noreen, there was a four year process of discerning the call to start a Vineyard church in our home town. We became so vineyardized during that time that we felt compelled to start the church. FYI-when we started I was 28 and my children were one and two-years-old. You come to a place of saying “as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord!”

A wild ride

Once you and your family have latched on to the promises of God and the call to church plant, as they say, the rest is academic. Ok, not that easy, but go ahead and jump in and swim yourself out. It will be a wild ride, especially for the first 18-24 months. For the first 8 years of our plant, I was bi-tri-quad-vocational. One summer I delivered pizza for a month to get cash for a family vacation. I didn’t mind hearing “the pizza man is here” until I was at the doorway of one of the families who had just started coming to the Vineyard. It was an awkward moment for all of us and I don’t think they tipped me. A defining moment during those days came one evening when I was making a sales call and my pager went off. I went to a nearby payphone to hear my wife saying, “That’s it, I can’t take this any more – I feel like I’m going crazy.” Having been raised in an alcoholic environment, her personal stuff was rising up, big-time. The next morning she made a call to the local AA office and was referred to an Al-Anon group meeting nearby. Finally, she had somewhere anonymous she could go and talk about how hard it is to be a church planter’s wife. Last summer we launched our own recovery program, Celebrate Recovery, so others can have an anonymous place as well. And how about the first public meeting of our new church? We had set up drums in the corner with no one to beat them. I remarked, “Hey, I played the drums once, when I was seven, how hard can it be?” The guitar player said I should hit the snare when the people clap and kick the bass on the off-beat. We didn’t have much time for worship practices, so learning as you go was how I launched my short and very off-beat career as a Vineyard drummer. Looking back I can now see why we struggled to attract people our first year.

Priorities and the Kingdom

Not having much time is normative in the life of a church planter. Along the way, you should resist the urge to let your very busy schedule become god of your life. The temptation is to so prioritize life that you’ve got the little ones scheduled in from 4:15-5:05pm Thursday, until oops, the second latte’ kicks in and that conversation gets really good, and then the dreadlock guy shows up to let you see his newest tattoos, meanwhile your wife is calling (or maybe your husband) but you forgot that you put your phone on vibrate while you were in court earlier that day to give moral support to a guy who has been coming to your church in girl’s jeans, plays guitar in an almost all girl band, and wants you to perform his marriage ceremony next week, just days before he starts his county jail time because he beat up the apartment maintenance guy for making fun of his girl pants (mostly true story). By now its 6:30pm, the spaghetti’s cold, it’s almost time for the once a month worship practice so you grab supper at Starbucks, call home to beg forgiveness, remind everyone, including yourself, that this is for the Kingdom and surely this madness will end as soon as that new all-enhanced Worship CD from Vineyard Music arrives, tomorrow.

Instead of having to put my priorities in some sort of descending order, you know, God first, family second, etc., I prefer to think of it as sort of like throwing it all in the washing machine and letting God and the Kingdom bleed through it all. (Hey guys, I’ll admit it, I do my part of the washing in our family.) It’s impossible to compartmentalize church planting life, there’s way too much to do, and there’s always something else that needs to be done. You have to see that everything you do, your work life, your church planting life, your family life (remember, no certain order here), your play life…all of it is from the Kingdom, for the Kingdom, and back to the Kingdom. Romans 11:36 says, “For from Him and through Him and to Him are all things. To Him be the glory forever. Amen.”

It takes a family

We’ve all seen church planters burn out, get discouraged, stress out, etc. and it seems to me that what wise people say is true, “If it ain’t going good at home, it ain’t going good at all.” Take care to include your family in the planting process, take advantage of any activities you can do together, and remember the Trinity is community, you know, family. If you’re not sure how you’re doing at the home front you can always ask your spouse or kids; they’ll tell you the truth.

Ps…Last Saturday night (say no more) my cell phone went off at 9:45pm. I got the call to find out that one of the kids in our church’s junior high ministry, Club 876, had earlier in the day jumped off a pier into shallow water, shattered his ankle, and was going into surgery within the next 60 minutes. A bunch of thoughts went through my head, not a few unloving. “Oh no, I gotta go to the hospital on a Saturday night, argh…” For the next 2.5 minutes my wife and my two junior high children followed me through the house into the back yard, reminding me how we as a family were called to pastor this family, that I as his pastor must go and visit with him before the surgery, and how that this boy is one of my son’s good friends. Three on one plus God; oh no, I’m outnumbered.

I reluctantly told my kids that I would take them on my visit to the hospital and that they would be the ones praying. It was soooo cool when my son grabbed hands with his friend and prayed for God to be with him in the surgery. And it was especially cool when my kids were holding up the back wall of the Vineyard the next morning, along side their friend who was standing there with his crutches. In case you’re wondering, I did apologize to my kids on the way to the hospital and they lovingly forgave me, saying they understand that it’s hard to be a pastor, sometimes.