Honestly, I could never understand church leaders and church planters who look super confident! You all know the type. They pray huge prayers, they look slick and their church is growing. I am not sure I should own up to that but it never works like that for me.
For me, faith doesn’t exist alongside confidence. Faith walks hand in hand with fear.
To really know faith is to know what failure is and then to step out anyway. If you are stepping out then you understand all that could go wrong.
Vicki always tells me off for this because sometimes when I articulate vision at church I will usually throw in a caveat like, “But this whole thing could fail” or, “We could make a mess of it” or, “It just might not work”.
Having said all that, being a bit scared (or genuinely petrified) is remarkably good for me. When I am scared, I pray more, I read the Bible more, I ask more of God and I am listening hard to what he might say.
In other words, I am at my best in God when I am scared, because at that point I am stepping out in faith.
A while ago, I stopped being scared. This meant faith faded. I wasn’t risking anything anymore. I was becoming confident in myself. It’s no good for me.
CCM:City is regularly filling the room. New people are joining almost every week, and they are good, good people. Sometimes, they are so good I wonder why they are joining my church! Thankfully, they join anyways. Momentum makes you look better than you really are.
I realised late last year that I needed some fear in my life. I need a risk. I need something to do that could go wrong. I need something that wakes me up in the night in a slight panic (this happened a number of times). I need something that makes me trust God because Jesus grows churches and advances his Kingdom.
So we are going to plant another church. I am scared again. Anxious, nervous, twitchy, distracted and happy.
CCM:Didsbury will start in a pub. We have 20ish people (14 more than last time – I ain’t stupid). I am praying for 30 people by the summer and 40 by Christmas.
We are believing God for big things in Manchester (unless it doesn’t work out…).