The honesty response

Who knew what kind of response a little honesty can bring.

Oh, that's right, you may not even know what I'm talking about, so here it is: I send out a prayer request update each week (well, almost each week) to a group of about 100 people who've said they would pray for me, my family and our The Point. The update I sent out yesterday contained some bluntness about the difficulty of this church planting journey. I mentioned that after our gathering on Sunday I was ready to quit. I then said that although I was having visions of leaving early, that there is nothing I'd rather be doing than planting this church.

Here's the thing, people were so responsive to my honesty. Why was that? Maybe it's because we so rarely see honesty. It's so easy to put on the happy face and act like everything is fine. It's definitely easy for a "pastor" to fall into that trap.

I guess why it's so easy for me to fall into this is because I don't want to be a failure. Who does? The thing about it, however, is that the standards that I use and that other pastors use to rate our success have nothing to do with the standards that God mentions in Scripture. We use numbers, money and momentum. I think God uses things like faithfulness, trust, obedience and perserverance.

But those don't always look as good as the other stuff.

Now let me say: Numbers, cash and momentum aren't bad. They can be evidence of God's hand. They could be the result of our hard work. I really don't understand that anyway.

All I know is that I want to be faithful, obedient and someone who finishes well. I'm not sure how well I'm doing. Ask me in a week. I'll try and be honest.