Thanks, for your recent kind feedback last week. As I read this feed,I again am thankful for my church in oceanside, CA! During worship each week, someone from the small worship team, reminds us and visitors that our church is "a friend of sinners and a maker of saints", and the leadership team has creative options for men and woman, to join in times to build community and make new friends. One event was the Santa stocking surf competition on Christmas Eve morning, the person that could surf the longest without their stocking on was the winner and another one is a sip and paint time. Also, I love the multigenerational quarterly 'table" invites to share a meal with new people. Lastly, each week our teaching pastor encourages us at the end of church, to go and be the church. He does not puff up that he is a police chaplain and a High School football position coach, he just lives out the encouragement, he offers us.
You have given clearer words to my at times foggy experience as a church planter. Folks leaving our church has been the hardest part of this calling. This has encouraged a soul weary from exits. And gives me hope that by God’s grace I may be such a pastor.
Andrew, thank you for this. And thank you for what you are doing — because church planting is among the most demanding and most exposed forms of pastoral work there is. You build something from nothing, you pour yourself into people, and then some of those people leave. And unlike an established congregation with decades of institutional memory to absorb the blow, a church plant feels every exit personally. Because it is personal. You can't pretend otherwise.
The fog you're describing is real. And I want to say something to you directly: the fact that it hurts is not a sign that something is wrong with you. It is a sign that you are doing it right. A pastor who stops feeling the exits has already lost something more important than the people who left. The wound is the vocation. The weight is the calling.
What Eugene Peterson understood — what I keep coming back to in moments like this — is that the pastor's primary work is not to keep people from leaving. It is to keep showing up. To the Word. To prayer. To the one or two or ten who are still there and need someone who has not given up on the room.
You are that person, Andrew. Soul-weary and still standing. Still planting. Still believing that the grain of wheat that falls into the ground is not wasted — even when it feels exactly like waste.
Thanks, for your recent kind feedback last week. As I read this feed,I again am thankful for my church in oceanside, CA! During worship each week, someone from the small worship team, reminds us and visitors that our church is "a friend of sinners and a maker of saints", and the leadership team has creative options for men and woman, to join in times to build community and make new friends. One event was the Santa stocking surf competition on Christmas Eve morning, the person that could surf the longest without their stocking on was the winner and another one is a sip and paint time. Also, I love the multigenerational quarterly 'table" invites to share a meal with new people. Lastly, each week our teaching pastor encourages us at the end of church, to go and be the church. He does not puff up that he is a police chaplain and a High School football position coach, he just lives out the encouragement, he offers us.
You have given clearer words to my at times foggy experience as a church planter. Folks leaving our church has been the hardest part of this calling. This has encouraged a soul weary from exits. And gives me hope that by God’s grace I may be such a pastor.
Andrew, thank you for this. And thank you for what you are doing — because church planting is among the most demanding and most exposed forms of pastoral work there is. You build something from nothing, you pour yourself into people, and then some of those people leave. And unlike an established congregation with decades of institutional memory to absorb the blow, a church plant feels every exit personally. Because it is personal. You can't pretend otherwise.
The fog you're describing is real. And I want to say something to you directly: the fact that it hurts is not a sign that something is wrong with you. It is a sign that you are doing it right. A pastor who stops feeling the exits has already lost something more important than the people who left. The wound is the vocation. The weight is the calling.
What Eugene Peterson understood — what I keep coming back to in moments like this — is that the pastor's primary work is not to keep people from leaving. It is to keep showing up. To the Word. To prayer. To the one or two or ten who are still there and need someone who has not given up on the room.
You are that person, Andrew. Soul-weary and still standing. Still planting. Still believing that the grain of wheat that falls into the ground is not wasted — even when it feels exactly like waste.
That is the work. And you are doing it.
Grace to you. Keep going.
Yes, A “soul weary and still standing” and still showing up.
Thank you for your encouragement to keep showing up.
Thank you. That means a lot. I am curious - what resonated with you?
Goodness Gracious! This is good.. thank you!