Church Planting is Hard: Loneliness

File this under the category: things they don’t tell you about church planting.  Many church planters relocate to start a new church.  Relocating can be fun and exciting, but once the newness wears off, you quickly realize you don’t know too many people.  Church planters often feel alone in a couple of ways.

1.  The Elijah Complex.  1 Kings 19 tells the story of a depressed prophet.  Afraid and alone, Elijah prays that he might die (v.4).  Later in verse 10, Elijah tells God that he is the only prophet left.  He felt alone and isolated.  God created us for relationship and being alone, even when on a mission for God, isn’t fun.  I have heard several times from church planters that they feel as if they are the only ones trying to reach a specific niche of the community.  I spoke with a church planter last week who said, he just wanted to find other church planters in the area to connect with to know he wasn’t alone.  Can you relate?  God’s answer to Elijah is instructive.  First, God says there are 7,000 who have not bowed to Baal.  While you might feel like the lone Christian, you aren’t.  There are others.  Second, God gives Elijah a task.  When you are lonely, it’s easy to dwell on your feelings.  Getting focused on the job at hand can be a welcome distraction and can help you initiate relationships as it did for Elijah.  Third, God gave Elijah an apprentice, Elisha.  Elijah mentored Elisha in the ways of a prophet.  He discipled him.  Equipped him.  While not everyone can have the luxury of multiple staff, those that do find it can help beat the feelings of isolation and loneliness.  Just be careful that if you have multiple staff you are not just hanging out together.  You need to build relationships with locals.  Fourth, pay close attention to whom Elijah turned to.  He turned to God in prayer, even though it was a frustrated depressed prayer.  He may have been a little suicidal, but he was turning to God to take him out rather than taking things into his own hands.

2.  Who is on my team?  When you first get started it’s just you and the family.  Most leaders feel completely out of the water when they have no one to lead.  Add into the mix that many church planters are extroverts who get their energy from interacting with people.  It can lead to a crisis of identity.  I spoke with a planter today who was struggling with this one.  He had a great outreach event this weekend.  But he needed help getting set up.  He realized he had no one to call.  Note: He just moved to the area a couple weeks ago.  There were people who were potentials to be on the team, but none committed yet.  No one sold out to making things happen.  This is a lonely place to be.  In the end, he asked one of the potential guys to help out and they did.  During the event, he connected well with a person who didn’t know Jesus yet and the conversation was sustaining.  I told this planter a couple of things.  First, loneliness isn’t a bad thing for him to experience because people in his community experience it daily.  Those of us in the church have built in fellowship.  But those outside the church don’t necessarily have that.  It’s the reason why bars and clubs are popular.  People go there to seek out relationships.  I encountered lots of lonely people when planting in Charlotte.  For those of you in growing areas this is especially true.  Second, I said that loneliness is good because it provides an urgency to build relationships.  There is nothing more important in starting a church that building relational momentum.  If you start with a bunch of close friends, you run the risk of not feeling the need to build new relationships.  Loneliness can actually propel the mission.

The best medicine for loneliness is to talk about it; not to yourself but to God and others.   Don’t let your loneliness be a foothold for the enemy to destroy the church plant.