Always and Never Ready to Reproduce

Someone recently asked me how could they know that they were ready to launch a new church. My answer was “always and never.”

Consider giving birth to your first child. After achieving puberty I was always ready in one sense but never ready in another.

In fact, I was so immature that I held my wife off for five years after we were married and then I wasn’t too happy about the situation until I saw that little face that looked a little like me.

Maybe we should ask a different question…how pregnant are you?

Studies about readiness for multiplication and determining the right time to let go can become obstacles in themselves.

I have a friend who who recently married a wonderful woman whose parents thought he wasn’t good enough for their daughter—then they got pregnant. The parents still opposed the union, even renting an apartment for the woman in hopes that they might forestall the wedding. But then the baby came.

Guess who paid for a delayed honeymoon and showed up with gifts galore.

For those of you still wondering, yes they did get pregnant before getting married but that is between them and the Lord, not you or I.

Back to my point, is your church pregnant? If so, you are ready. Not pregnant, then still “always and never ready.”

Always ready in that you have the capacity to make disciples who become leaders who might plant a church among their peers. Never ready until you recognize those leaders and their capacities. In other words you do need to impregnate the church but after doing so you must go along with the program. Endless hand wringing wont accomplish the task.

Sometimes a pregnancy in a church is unwanted. I had a friend who got caught up in a doctrine different from our own. No problem until it turned ugly, or didn’t depending on how you see it. I confronted our differences, reminded him that I loved him and offered to help him launch a church taking his large handful of followers with him. We birthed a baby and it grew healthier as time went along. Because we had taught through the Bible rather than topically he did the same only to discover that his pet doctrine wouldn’t stand up to that kind of scrutiny. He’s moved on to heaven but the church he planted still stands four decades after the birth.

But the real gold isn’t in unwanted pregnancies, it is in unrecognized potential in our midst. Sometimes it is our polity or ecclesiology that hinders a New Testament approach to disciples becoming elders. Other worries, like finances, can hold us back. In the end we need to look at our potential for doing something that fulfills the Great Commission.

You, like me, were always but perhaps never ready to birth a baby after achieving puberty. Your church may be much the same.