The New Normal

One of the things I wrestled with as we considered the call to plant a church is that some things were going to have to change.

• We would have to be a lot more dependent upon God in prayer.
• We would have to be a lot more intentional about evangelism.
• We would have to be willing to risk a lot more in terms of our comfort and security.

Would we be willing, I asked, to live prayerfully and evangelistically? Were we willing to risk our comfort and our security for the sake of the gospel?

Put that way, there was no way to say no. In a sense, this is the new (old) normal. Not that everyone is called to plant a church, but all of us are called to live prayerfully, evangelistically, and to invest everything that we have for the sake of the Kingdom.

I began to envision what it would look like to not plant a church. In the end, it looked kind of the same.

I’m not surprised that we had to wrestle with that call to plant a church. That’s a good thing. I’m a little surprised that I had to wrestle with how prayerful, dependent, and “all in” I was prepared to be. That should have been settled a long time ago. Once you’ve encountered the grace of Jesus, is there any other way to live?