Why replanting me?
This year, I grew a garden.
See, if you knew me, you would know that is a crazy idea. You see, I hated gardening. The idea of spending time outside, in the heat with mosquitoes and gnats and flies, pulling weeds and putting down fertilizer and waiting, and waiting, and waiting some more seemed like the absolute last thing I would want to do with my time. It seemed so. . . . well, pointless.
Until I became a pastor.
The work of pastoral ministry, though difficult and tiresome, is very different than the work I’ve done most of my life. Most of my adult life, I have worked in some variety of maintenance or construction. I thrived in environments where I got to work with my hands, to fix things or build things.
And then I became a pastor.
It took me a while to really catch the similarities between my life experiences prior to pastoral ministry, and how those things have come to bear on the work of ministry now. In the meantime, I needed to do something, to get my mind and body busy when I got home. So, I started a little garden; nothing huge, just enough to keep my mind busy. But I learned so much. About me, about ministry, about godliness. And that’s how the idea for the name got started.
I planted squash. There isn’t really much to growing squash, comparatively. It isn’t the hardest thing to grow in the garden. It grows fast, it roots well, it has few special conditions or requirements. “Surely, I can grow squash,” I thought to myself. And then I tried it. I dug a hole, put in some very small, very frail plants, and gave it a shot. Except, it almost died. These relatively easy plants to grow were on the verge of death, and I thought I had done everything perfectly! But I had planted them too close together. They were actually choking each other out. So, I had to move a few. So, here I was, kneeling in the dirt, carefully digging up this little plant I had spent time and money on, sweat dripping off my head, into my eyes, mixing with the dirt I was smearing on my face every time I forgot that you shouldn’t wipe your face when digging in the dirt. I actually prayed “Lord, remind me why I am doing this” when it hit me.
This is ministry. This is what I am doing.
The language we use to refer to seeing a dying church come to life through the changing of perspective, personnel and policy is replanting. The other word that often gets thrown around is revitalization. I think that determining whether a church that comes back to life is a replant or revitalization is often difficult to discern; that’s been the case at our church. But either way, that was what I was doing! I was doing this work – carefully digging with the Word, patiently applying the Bible to the soul of the church, gingerly guiding and moving people to a healthy place. This was the work. But there was even more to it:
This is what ministry was doing to me. It wasn’t just that I was doing the replanting; I was being replanted. In the process of ministry, I was learning so much about me. In the midst of the faithful saints that were supporting and encouraging me, and even the ones who were speculative and fearful, I was being carefully dug. I was having the Word patiently applied to my soul, I was being gingerly guided and moved to a more healthy place. I wasn’t just doing the work, the work was being done to me as well. I was being, and am still being, replanted. And so, as I looked for what to call this blog, I came up with Replanting me.
And so, that’s my reminder, my lesson in this post, if you will. Pastor, whether you are replanter, revitalizer, planter, pastor of an established church, there is one common thread that we all need to hear from time to time: you are not the Savior. Jesus is. And you need His grace as much as the people you lead do. So enjoy the reality that you will learn far more than you will ever have time to teach. Enjoy the reality that God is doing a great work in you long before He does a great work in the people you lead. Enjoy the reality that you, pastor, aren’t just doing the work of replanting.
You are being replanted, too.
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