Planting a Church without Losing Your Soul: Nine Questions for the Spiritually Formed Pastor
Overview
What does it take to be a church planter or other ministry entrepreneur? Most leaders start out with passion, a sense of calling, and a focus on building ministry skills. Such things might get some results, but they are not enough to sustain a healthy ministry—or a healthy life. Beyond the vocational capacities every church planter needs, there’s a range of capabilities more difficult to measure but even more essential: what veteran church planter Tim Morey calls spiritual competencies.
Morey provides here a practical guide to spiritual formation geared to the unique needs of church planters. He helps readers answer the questions, What are the spiritual capabilities that I as a church planter need to develop? How might I lean into the work Jesus is doing in these vital areas? Spiritual competencies have to do not just with behaviors but also with the motivations, agendas, and scripts that drive behaviors. Morey explores how church planters can become people who
- invest in their own physical, emotional, relational, and spiritual health accept limits and share responsibilitiescan be trusted with powerare able to stay resilient and grow through difficultiescan minister without being noticedfind a sustainable pace that helps them avoid burnout
The health of a church or any ministry organization is directly linked to the health of its leaders. Church planters may be used to improvising, but when it comes to their spiritual lives, they can't afford to just wing it. Featuring real-life stories from leaders, suggested practices, and discussion questions in each chapter, this book will equip individuals and teams (and those who coach them) to commit to an intentional plan for spiritual formation—for the good of their churches, their relationships, and their own lives as disciples of Jesus.
This is a Logos Reader Edition. Learn more.
- Features real-life stories from leaders, suggested practices, and discussion questions in each chapter
- Addresses common obstacles of church planting
- Provides a practical guide to spiritual formation geared to the unique needs of church planters
- Foreword by Scott Sunquist
- Introduction: What Does a Spiritually Formed Church Planter Look Like?
- How to Be Both a Pastor and a Person
- Growth: How Can I Plan for My Own Spiritual Formation?
- Suffering: Can I Embrace a Life Peppered with Difficulty?
- Power: Do Others Experience Me as a Safe Person?
- Obscurity: Can I Minister Without Being Noticed?
- Failure: Am I Resilient in the Face of Setbacks and Defeats?
- Pace: Am I Treating Church Planting like a Marathon or like a Sprint?
- Team: Have I Relinquished My Ambition to Be a Superhero?
- Conflict: Do I Handle Difficult People Graciously?
- Family: Am I Leading in a Way That Brings Life to Those Dearest to Me?
- Conclusion
Top Highlights
“Pastors don’t get in trouble because they forget they are pastors. They get in trouble because they forget they are people.” (Page 9)
“My health and my church’s health are inextricably linked” (Page 26)
“This person, like their highly needy counterpart, typically has been part of a number of churches. But where the highly needy person has stories of churches not meeting their needs, this person has stories of churches that don’t know what it means to be the church. It typically doesn’t take much digging to realize that they are very confident in their vision of what a church should be, and darn it all if these previous pastors just wouldn’t take their good counsel to heart.” (Pages 142–143)
“‘The number one hazard for pastors is isolation,’ according to Dr. Chris Adams.6 Pastoral leadership, we learn fairly quickly, is isolating. We carry secrets we cannot share, make decisions that will make us unpopular with those whose affirmation we desire, and endure jabs and bruises that we have to keep hidden lest we throw congregants under the bus.” (Pages 20–21)
“Our ministry is never just a function of what we do, but of who we are and who we are becoming. Consequently, whatever is in us overflows into those nearest us, and eventually into our congregation as a whole.” (Page 26)
- Title: Planting a Church without Losing Your Soul: Nine Questions for the Spiritually Formed Pastor
- Author: Timothy R. Morey
- Publisher: IVP Academic
- Print Publication Date: 2020
- Logos Release Date: 2020
- Pages: 178
- Era: era:contemporary
- Language: English
- Resources: 1
- Format: Digital › Logos Reader Edition
- Subjects: Church development, New; Pastoral theology
- ISBNs: 9780830853434, 9780830852796, 083085343X, 0830852794
- Resource ID: LLS:PLNTNGCHRCHPSTR
- Resource Type: Monograph
- Metadata Last Updated: 2022-09-30T02:15:07Z
Tim Morey (DMin, Fuller Theological Seminary) is founding and lead pastor at Life Covenant Church in Torrance, California. He serves as a church planting coach for the Evangelical Covenant Church and as an adjunct professor at Fuller Theological Seminary.