Come Hell or High Water

“Ready?” My instructor yelled to me over the rush of the wind and whir of the plane’s engines. “Let’s go!” I yelled back. And with that, my feet left the security of the plane as we began our rapid freefall. Interestingly, skydiving is a lot like following Jesus in His mission to build the Church. As a church planter, I’ve experienced this firsthand. When we moved 1,200 miles across the country to plant a church, I felt about as prepared to plant a church as I felt to skydive after hearing a briefing, watching a training video, and signing a waiver. I didn’t know much about either, but I knew enough. I knew it would be challenging. I knew I would be scared at some point. And I knew I had to do it. Now was the time. Come to think of it, the rush of the freefall, the blend of personal loss-of-control and complete trust in my instructor, the intense feelings of excitement mixed with the fear and risk of the unknown… those are all very similar to feelings we’ve gone through in the years leading up to church planting and in our first decade actually doing it. The difference is, there’s no waiver for planting a church or risking it all as you step out in faith. Planting a church is diving into the unknown. It’s plunging into the darkness holding onto the light. It’s reaching a community of people with the scandalous message of grace and the foolishness of the cross. The highs are heart-pounding, the lows are backbreaking, and all that you don’t know and wish you knew ranges from exhilarating to terrifying. No book, blog, podcast, or college course can ever fully prepare you for the stomach-dropping thrills and spills of parachuting into a community with the gospel, building a team, and leading into the unknown. Some people think they want God to give them all the details about the future, but I disagree. One of the ways God demonstrates His grace toward us is not by explaining the details, but by sparing us from them. There are many things we have endured in these first ten years of church planting that could have prevented us from launching out had we known they were coming our way, many of which I will share throughout this book. When it comes to details about the future, you are on a need to know basis. When you need to know, God will let you know!