How to Plant a Church from Scratch

A Few Tips:

1. Start your day with God: Spend enough quiet time with God each morning so that He shapes your perception of reality.
2. Embrace Servant Leadership: Allow God to work through you and lead by serving others.
3. Anticipate Discomfort in Change: Understand that organizational change can be unsettling. Expect chaos, resistance, and the feeling that systems are failing as you work through changes.
4. Lead with Collaboration and Humility: Develop a leadership style that prioritizes collaboration and humble resilience. Abhor manipulation and coercion. Challenges that seem slow, complex, or impossible may be your key to significant personal and group growth.
5. Return to the Garden: Reflect on the Garden of Eden and the two trees. Steer clear of the one with slippery slopes. Take long rests under the One where the God hangs out.

The Bible Story, in a Nutshell:

1. God’s Blessings: God desires to bless people and work through them.
2. Human Struggles: People struggle to believe this and choose good and evil on their own terms.
3. God’s Persistence: Despite the consequences, God continues to work with willing people.
4. The Holy Spirit’s Guidance: The Holy Spirit aids us, particularly when we prioritize spending personal time with Him.
    

Paul’s Summary Hymn

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“Now to Him who is able to do far more abundantly beyond all that we ask or think, according to the power that works within us, to Him be the glory in the church and in Christ Jesus to all generations forever and ever. Amen” (NASB, Eph 3:20–21).

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Darrell Bock described how “the power and working are from God for us. In fact, that power is at work in ways we cannot even conceive of as taking place. The key word here is hyperekperissou; this is an emphatic superlative meaning ‘very much in excess of’ or ‘beyond all measure’. It is beyond all we ask or can even think…. God can deliver on the hope being expressed here. In fact, he can do so in ways beyond what we think about or plan to do.” One conclusion from this commentary is how we still struggle to believe that God desires our best. We are sometimes tempted to create our own controllable Garden of Eden and invite God to our Garden. Thankfully, God has given us some unexpected gifts to help us stay on track.

References

Bock, Darrell L. Ephesians: An Introduction and Commentary. Edited by Eckhard J. Schnabel, vol. 10, Inter-Varsity Press, 2019, p. 112.