Comparison, balance, temptation, and what to do when people leave.

Planting is a beautiful journey. The joy of seeing lives changed, honestly, there’s nothing better. The revelation of why you’re building, and your heart for your city and people, will always be your motivation if you keep it as your foundation. Within all of that, I’d be amiss to not share on the reality of the trials you’ll face.

There are plenty of planting tips and tricks out there, lots of great strategies for launching. What I don’t think gets talked about enough is the interior side. You may be stuck in one of these areas, or you may not have hit any yet. My heart in sharing is to give you some rhythms and ways to both prevent these struggles and overcome them. Above all, I want you to know you are not alone. If anyone ever told you a planter has to keep these things to themselves, deal with it only between you and God, I’m here to say you don’t. God is with you, and you can also place yourself around safe trusted people. If you don’t have that in your life right now, reach out. Don’t do this alone.

1. How to combat comparison

The early stages of planting are a vulnerable season. You have big vision and you can see where you’re going, but you can also see how far you have to go. You see the work, the years ahead, maybe before the God-vision comes through. It’s exciting, and it’s daunting. One of the enemy’s schemes in that season is to get you to compare yourself. With social media, the access to what every other church is doing is overwhelming.

Early on I made it a goal not to look at any other churches’ Instagram accounts during our launch. I didn’t follow many other churches or leaders. I knew if I constantly saw it in my feed it had the potential to encourage but also the potential to discourage. You have to discern in your own heart why you’re following someone and guard your heart accordingly. This isn’t from a victim point of view, we should celebrate others and cheer them on. But be honest if something deters you from God’s mission in your own life.

Be intentional with what you’re feeding yourself. What’s on your feed, what you’re looking at, what’s feeding your soul, mind, and spirit. Is it uplifting you and pointing you to Jesus, or is it deterring you from what you’re building?

Not looking at what others were doing made us laser focused. I wanted to do what God called me to, not what I thought other people would want me to. Not to imitate trends. The benefit was that we became more bold, more creative, more willing to take risks in our content. Our creativity wasn’t about keeping up. It was about what we actually were.

Every church is different. Every pastor is different. God has gifted you specifically for your church, your calling, your city. If he wanted someone else, he would have chosen them. You said yes. Comparison has to meet your self-talk, which has to be greater than the enemy’s lies. Any moment comparison sneaks in, I go back to the beginning. I remember the moment in Manhattan when God called me.

For great painters, there are seasons of training where they glean from other artists, learning the craft, the brushstrokes, the materials. But when they finally sit down to paint, they don’t look at someone else’s painting. They paint what’s on their heart. When you go to plant a church, you’re getting out a canvas. You’re putting pen to paper. You’re applying all you’ve learned and all God has placed in you. Don’t do it in a state of comparison. Do it in a state of creativity.

2. How to live a balanced life

There’s so much effort required in pastoring, and it’s very easy to fall into the flesh because it’s demanding emotionally, mentally, and physically. You can easily fall into striving. Results-oriented. In Genesis we see God’s pattern. He created out of the overflow of love. He spoke things into being. He shaped and he collaborated with humanity. All in sync with the Spirit. And after all of that, he rested.

If we don’t rest, we’re saying it’s reliant on us and we don’t need God. It’s important to stop, to turn devices off, to be unreachable so we can be reachable to God. We play God to others when we’re available to everyone at all times. We become their God rather than pointing them to the one.

Sleep restores the body. Sabbath restores the spirit. Sabbath impacts your leadership, your family, your parenting, your presence. The fruits of the Spirit grow when there’s a healthy rhythm of work and rest. When you’re in the flow of sabbath, the Spirit flows through you. Pastoring from a clear head is less reactive, less chaotic, less flesh-driven. A lot of what we face as pastors has a simpler answer than we’re looking for. Stop. Rest. Trust God.

Alongside sabbath, another key is practicing silence and solitude. Silence and solitude are critical because they give God space to speak. Much of our prayer life is petition, request, praise. A huge part needs to be listening. Stilling self in order to magnify God. Self is noisy. If we’re actually going to live a Christ-like selfless life, we have to practice silence.

Silence identifies fears and anxieties. It turns down the volume of other voices, but initially turns it up, because you realize how loud your fears and anxieties actually are. It’s a chance to identify weaknesses and attitudes that aren’t aligned with him. Without silence and solitude, we can be unaware of what’s causing us to be off balance.

Henri Nouwen put it this way: as soon as we are alone, inner chaos opens up in us. It can be so disturbing we can hardly wait to get busy again. Entering a private room and shutting the door doesn’t mean we immediately shut out our doubts, fears, and unresolved conflicts. When we remove outer distraction, the inner distraction often manifests. We use the outer to shield ourselves from the interior. That makes the discipline all the more important.

Turn down the volume of the other voices so you can hear the true umpire of your heart. Let Christ be the center and director of your life, leading you into good decisions and the right path.

3. How to handle temptation

The first thing in combating temptation is being really honest about where you’re weak. If you aren’t aware of your weaknesses, the specific sins you fall into, you can never combat them. Like a married couple realizing the thing they struggled with before marriage doesn’t magically go away, it just gets highlighted. The same goes with planting. The struggles in your personal life and early leadership get magnified when you’re leading a church on your own.

Here are four windows when temptation can creep in:

When you’re busy. Business is inevitable. You’ll have a lot on your plate, face pressure, not have enough hours in the day. The way through is personal devotion. Focus on your own walk with God, and it will help you fight the moments when shortcuts look appealing under stress.

When you’ve failed. Either a personal failure or something in your team you end up wearing. Maybe criticism over your leadership. Failures come. They aren’t avoidable. What you fight is identity drift. Keep a buoyant spirit that knows your identity is in Christ and not in what you do, so when failure comes you aren’t so hard on yourself that you give in to temptation just to feel good about yourself again.

When you’ve had a huge win. Sometimes your most vulnerable points are your biggest successes. Wins are a great outcome of ministry, but temptation loves a mountaintop. Stay in a posture of humility. Awareness of God, less ego stroking, less vulnerability.

When you’re bored. Temptation loves you off purpose. David’s story with Bathsheba started when he wasn’t out with his men in battle. As the ministry grows, stay in the fight. Don’t let idle hands or an idle heart make you vulnerable to the enemy.

4. What to do when people leave

New York is transient. People come and go. Some stay for a year, some for two, some stay for life. At the beginning I would take it personally when someone moved. I felt like they were leaving me, giving up on the church, the vision. You try to control it, push people to stay, and sometimes that’s right, people need to be challenged to build something greater than themselves. But sometimes it’s things out of your control. Jobs, families, life circumstances that have nothing to do with you or the church.

God gave me a revelation to combat the feeling of rejection. Whether someone is there for two weeks or twenty years, at some point they are going to be sent. So invest in them while they are there. That freed me up from trying to control timelines. Anyone can be sent. When someone is sent, it’s different from when they leave. The idea of sending is biblical, and it’s far greater. They are commissioned into the next season.

As far as it’s up to you, in your spirit, send them. Personally pray for them, that you have sent them, given them, that seeds would bear fruit in the next season. That posture releases you from the burden. It frees your spirit to feel only joy and love for the time you shared and excitement for what God will do next through them. You know you poured in while they were there, and they will be blessed because of your investment.

There’s no other job quite like pastoring where you get close to people over time and then they leave. Having a sending and sowing mentality keeps you from being over-burdened. It protects you from being an overbearing, controlling leader. Your identity isn’t in what they bring to the table. You live in faith, not fear. Sometimes we don’t want to release because we fear God won’t raise up others. Rid yourself of that fear. Faith gives a buoyancy to leadership where you can care deeply and also release cleanly.

Change the narrative

These are four specific struggles. I didn’t cover every trial. My heart was to show specifics so the principle is clear. Whatever the trial, the deepest work is often the same.

You have to change the narrative of the story you’re believing in your mind. This is one of your greatest strengths in leadership, knowing when the narrative needs to change. Comparison, temptation, a member leaving, a member saying something discouraging, the narrative has to come from God, not the enemy.

Sometimes the story you’re believing is true. Usually it isn’t. In most cases there’s a better narrative in Christ. So the way through any of it is a better revelation. A God revelation. Asking him what he is doing in the middle of the trial.