The Journey Part 6: The Church Planting Years

It was early in December of 1980. I had just resigned from a church where I had served as an assistant pastor for all of 6 months. Upon assuming the position I became aware that the senior pastor was involved in all kinds of immoral and unethical behavior. Not wanting to have this revelation become a cloud of suspicion about my own ministry, I informed the presiding Elders of the information I had and quickly resigned, hoping that they would address the situation.

I was in prayer in the bedroom of our apartment seeking the Lord over what to do next in ministry. I sensed the voice of the Lord speaking to me. I was led to the window and through all of the clutter that was in my brain I heard, "What do you see?"

As far as I could see, there were endless numbers of homes and apartment buildings. The next question I heard was, "What is inside those buildings?" "People," I responded. Immediately the light went on.

My calling was to lead men and women to a saving knowledge of Jesus and to disciple them to live for and serve Him. I knew that as long as I lived I could expect to have plenty of work to do in this large, sprawling city of Chicago. Within 3 weeks we had secured a meeting place renting from a Baptist church that had been reduced to about 10 or 11 members all in their late 60's and 70's. They needed the rent money to keep their church open and we needed the space to start a church.

We began on January 4th, 1981. It was 6 degrees below zero. A perfect day to start a church. 5 people showed up and we were on our way.

As a young pastor, I didn't know any better so I started preaching and teaching on how I understood the church according to my understanding of the Bible. I fellowshipped with a handful of pastors and imitated some of what they did, but deviated whenever I saw no clear biblical reason to do what they did. God blessed us and we grew. Very slowly, but steadily we increased the numbers until we were in a position to buy our own building. I can write a book about this wonderful season in our ministry lives, but I'll cut to the chase.

During the time we were planting the church, I took on a side ministry job of teaching in a Bible college. This helped me to expand my studies in the Scriptures and the nature of the church. Over and over I observed that much of what churches did was steeped in tradition. Some of it good, some of it not so good. I noticed that the Pentecostals idea of history stretched all of 100 years. Reformed Churches went back about 500 years and Catholic and Orthodox churches went back 1500 years or more. With each succeeding revelation of the need for a correction, the new movement would pretty much abandon much of what the church had experienced before.

I also attended seminary at a Covenant graduate school. I was introduced to some beautiful liturgy that was absent from the typical charismatic/pentecostal church of my most recent experience. In the beauty of the liturgy, I saw God. Although I appreciated what I was learning and experiencing, I looked for ways to incorporate some of these beautiful elements into our church services. Occasionally we were successful. We began to experiment with novel approaches to the Communion table, we recited some of the ancient creeds, and studied some of the ancient fathers of the church in spiritual disciplines. But our efforts lacked continuity and consistency.

Our church loved to worship long, loudly and deeply. We incorporated all manner of instruments, dancing, and royal processions. We experienced spiritual gifts in abundance and the word of God was preached with liberty. The church was healthy. People were being led to Christ, discipled and equipped for ministry.

During that time I enrolled in graduate studies at the Moody Graduate School. Although Moody is not a full-gospel school the student body represented many different denominations. As I studied, I rubbed shoulders with many wonderful men and women of God. I saw their commitment to Him in the way they worked the ministry from the template that they had been trained in. I marveled at the many colorful threads that make up the tapestry of God's church. I desperately tried to glean and put into practice some of the elements of their understanding of worship and church life. The more I learned, the more I wished my other full-gospel colleagues would embrace more of a spirit of unity in diversity.

I started to seek out other ministers of other denominations to cross pollinate our understanding of God and how we pastored our respective congregations. The fellowship was sweet. I only wished that this kind of unity would grow, but I saw ever increasing division as new fellowships, denominations, and independent local churches continued to crop up during the 80's and 90's.

As my understanding of God's word increased, thanks to my studies at Moody Graduate School, and as our church benefited from the charismatic/pentecostal experience, I felt more complete, but also that something was still missing.

A big step forward occurred when we started our "Common Ground" services. More on that in Part 7.