I need to finish Dustin's questions for him, since this is and assignment and all...
But one thing I wanted to revise and expand from my previous answers. The most frustrating thing about church planting?
Learning lessons.
I think this is true for much of pastoral work, but in church planting, where everything is basically a learning curve (unless you are subscribing to some out-of-the-box, do-it-by-numbers kind of thing where they tell you when and where and how and how much and for how long...) this can be especially frustrating. Why?
Because in every lesson, you really are learning how to do things right in the context of doing things wrong... and in a church plant, doing things wrong just seems to cost more.
It costs for more for a number of reasons- sometimes because as a church plant in this emerging culture kind of space, we're the community "closest to the door," as some have said. That is, many people come through our community either on their way to Christianity or on their way out. For many, evergreen is a last-ditch effort at church.
That's a lot of pressure.
So, when we make mistakes (as we often do), I really feel the weight of it.
The past few weeks I have learned (or begun to learn) a lot of lessons on helping new people come and integrate into the community, helping people leave well, communication, pastoral care... a lot of things. I just hate that every lesson represents a place where a mistake was made- and every mistake impacts real people. Real people whose real relationship with Jesus and the community gets impacted by stupid stuff I/we do or fail to do.
So- biggest frustration? The process. Which, coincidentally is also the biggest joy in the whole thing, but that's for another time.
