The Church Planting School of Changing Diapers
How going on paternity leave during the second week of a church plant shaped my pastoral imagination
We planted Oikon Church a month and a half after my second daughter was born.
I cannot say that I recommend planting a church, and depending on your circumstances, I may or may not recommend raising multiple children at the same time.
But starting a new faith community while simultaneously being responsible for a newborn? This is a foolish endeavor on a foolish timeline.
But I confess. Doing precisely this set my footing in a proper place. I went on paternity leave during the second week of our church start.
Every day I fed, burped, changed, bathed, and held a little human instead of doing church planter things.
At the start, during every diaper change and bottle warming routine, my mind would be flooded with creative generative ideas of how to effectively grow and run a religious organization.
With the unique social context of a global pandemic, all innovations were on the table. I was anxious to experiment with all of them.
I realize now.
God saved me from becoming a busy and anxious church planter through the routine and responsibility of being a father of a newborn.
Because here is what happened.
The church did not combust or stagnate while I took time off.
In fact, it grew.
Some of our leaders ran with their own innovative idea of adapting some fashion magazine’s video campaign interviewing celebrities, except they would interview folks from our church. Genius.
Others stepped in to teach and preach. I wasn’t sure if I was supposed to be offended or threatened when the giving went up on the weeks I didn’t preach.
Some friends from North Carolina offered to record worship music and pastoral moments for Sunday worship. Actually this was a bad thing. As far as production value, we haven’t been able to live up to these guys since. They were a little too good.
About a month later, when I dropped off both girls at daycare for the first time to resume my duties as a full time founding pastor, I was eager to get to work, but being that my stepping away didn’t result in much chaos or difference, I wondered. What really is the role of a pastor? Am I even needed? What is the operative desire in a pastor?
Pastors love to feel needed. Indispensable. Who doesn’t? And what feeds that desire more than being the kind of pastor people need?
In retrospect I see.
As we were getting started, God took me to a different kind of church planting school - the diaper changing station, the bottle warmer, the crib, and the rocking chair.
Learning to be present with a helpless newborn. Learning to practice an extended sabbath. Learning to entrust the church to the spirit and well, the church. Learning to pray.
I miss those days of holding Haven close to my chest, the way that I miss spending long hours in the prayer room of a charismatic church in my formative adolescent years.
They were sweet wasteful hours in the presence of God. I would silently pray in tongues and recite simple phrases of Scripture.
With new life resting in my arms. Those were holy unproductive moments. Which I think descriptive of honest pastoral work.
Being unbusy, being attentive to life, entrusting and empowering the church to do the work of the church… theses are not tasks that feed the ego, but they create an active community of faith and a pastor whose joy is not in feeling needed, but feeling at rest in God.
The ship’s captain doesn’t need to keep his eye on the sextant and his hand on the wheel. He sets the course and lets his crew do what they do best. Good on ya, Cap’n.