When It’s All Up To You: The Value of Legacy

Church planting is like parenting. It’s exhausting, and in the beginning, you’re doing all the work. It’s a good thing you love your new, baby church.

But as it grows, it gains independence. It can tie its own shoes. And eventually, you get to go to the bathroom unaccompanied. 

Okay, it's not a direct analogy, but you'd be surprised by the similarities.  

If you're a church planter, you know: the policy writing, program development, volunteer training and recruiting, preaching and teaching, discipleship of new converts, janitorial duties, midnight counseling, Sunday bulletin design, weddings and funerals and hospital visits and baby dedications are simply all part of the job. Your job. 

But this is only the infancy of the church, the stage of greatest need and dependence, and in many ways, the highest level of pastoral involvement. But it's not supposed to stay this way.

After my son was born, we returned home from the hospital and tried to adjust to life without sleep. I remember hearing him cry one day and wondering when his mother was going to come and help him out. It was dreadful to realize I was the mother. Who gave someone with no parenting experience a new child who has no use of the English language? 

Like parenting, church planting is a startling thrust into the fire. When we got the 2 AM call from a local hospital that the husband of one of our parishioners passed away suddenly, we searched about wildly. "Someone should call her pastor," we muttered in our groggy stupor. And then we realized we were the pastors. We left our three week-old infant with my mom, who happened to be in town, and hurried to the hospital to comfort our friend.  

Even if you've never comforted a new parent, cooked a casserole for a potluck, or provided the homily at a funeral service, suddenly, it’s up to you. You’re up. 

Like parenting, it's almost a given that whatever needs to be done will fall on you in the beginning. But that's only the beginning. 

When we see a five-year-old who still requires diaper changing, or a ten-year-old who cannot feed himself, we know something is wrong. 

The same is true with growing churches. Independence and growth are signs of maturity. It’s a good thing when a pastoral team successfully delegates much of the every day church life to its lay leaders.

It's the "I'll-just-do-it-myself" mentality, however, that keeps your growing church in the baby stage. Unless you go through the weaning process, encouraging the healthy balance of dependence and independence.

I know from experience this is hard to do. But it’s the true work of church planting. It’s called legacy.

After only a few years of church planting, I know this: 

When it's all up to you, it shouldn't be. 

When it's all up to you, you have not done the work to raise up your next generation of leaders. 

The greatest work in church planting is not realizing you have an entire community of people who cannot envision life without you. That is church planting failure, in the same way it is parenting failure for me to decide it is too much effort to toilet train my son. 

The greatest accomplishment we experience as parents or church planters is legacy. It is the labor of raising up a new generation. It is in leading leaders, scouting and discovering them, breathing life into them through encouragement and opportunity, letting them fail but propping up a high standard, and watching them catch the vision and run off with it. 

As a mother and church planter, I know baby churches and baby people need extra care. There will no doubt be sleepless nights and on-call duty and more work than I ever signed up for. But investing in the next generation ensures the longevity of the vision God entrusted to us, both with our children and with our churches. 

And even if the organization or churches we plant do not morph or even dissolve after we are gone, it is worth it to invest in the lives of young leaders. It is worth it to leave a legacy of Jesus followers who know their value in the kingdom and have the ability to reproduce themselves, who are empowered to develop other leaders, wherever they are sent in the future. 

Identify your place in the growth process with these five questions:

1. Are you actively valuing legacy and raising up leaders successfully or do you find yourself in a “I’ll-do-it-myself” mindset or needing to be needed?
2. How confident do you feel in delegating a task or ministry to another person, knowing it will be done with excellence?
3. What steps are you taking to give your identified leaders room to grow, risk, fail and take off?
4. How do you know your leadership team shares your vision? 
5. If you take a weekend off, how do you feel about missing church? Are you nervous, checking your phone for calls and problems, or can you relax knowing your people are in great hands?