Church Planters Serve The Gospel

 

Hello my brother; hello my sister, my name is Dean Davis, and this is a word of encouragement for village church planters.

I am so glad that you have chosen to be a church planter.  I am so glad that you accepted the challenge when a pastor or a trainer asked you to consider taking on the role of sharing the Good News of Jesus in a village without a church. It’s not easy. And I want you to know that I know it is not easy for you.  Your friends and neighbors may think it is easy for you, but they do not know what it means to plan and pray and speak so that people might know and follow Christ.  They don’t know what it means to long for spiritual breakthroughs in the lives of people you have chosen to love. They don’t know the sadness and even discouragement that can come when you long for people to trust and obey Jesus, but they just don’t seem to understand or to have the faith to make the hard decisions required to walk in the path Jesus is pointing out to them. It’s not easy.  But it is good. It is good that you are a church planter. It’s good for you and it’s good for the people you serve and it glorifies and honors the God who loves you and sent his Son to save you.

This is the second episode in a series of podcasts based on Paul’s letter to the Colossians.  Lord willing, there will be many more. Let me encourage you to read Paul’s letter to the Colossians or listen to it on your smartphone.  It is found in the New Testament after Philippians and before 1 Thessalonians. In the coming days, I will be speaking about many themes found in this letter that can help us understand Paul as an exemplary church planter. The more familiar you are with this letter, the more my words of encouragement will make sense to you.

Paul was a church planter and an apostle.  But he understood himself to be a servant.  He wrote about the Good News of Jesus in chapter 1 saying, “This is the gospel that you heard and that has been proclaimed to every creature under heaven, and of which I, Paul, have become a servant. Now I rejoice in what I am suffering for you, and I fill up in my flesh what is still lacking in regard to Christ’s afflictions, for the sake of his body, which is the church. I have become its servant by the commission God gave me to present to you the word of God in its fullness.

Paul understood himself to be a servant of the Gospel and he understood himself to a servant of the body of Christ, the Church.  This is amazing because Paul was a big man. Not physically big, big and important among the early Christians.  But he did not understand himself to be the boss.  He understood that the Gospel bossed him.  He was a servant of the Gospel. As a servant, he was willing to suffer to do whatever was necessary so that the Gospel could be understood.  As a servant of the Gospel, he did whatever was necessary so that the Gospel could transform the lives of people who heard it. Paul was a servant and the Gospel was his master.  Paul understood what the Gospel wanted and he worked to fulfill the Gospel’s goals.  The Gospel wants to be proclaimed.  The Gospel wants to be understood.  The Gospel wants to transform.  The Gospel wants to save.

Paul is one of our examples of what it means to be a great church planter.  Great church planters serve the Gospel.  They serve the Gospel even when it’s hard, even when they are misunderstood, even when serving the Gospel means personal suffering.

Ask God to give you the grace and strength you need to continue being a servant of the Gospel.  God is good. He longs to hear such prayers and to pour out his life-giving grace on you.

This has been a word of encouragement for Village Church Planters.

If you have found this message to be helpful, please forward it to fellow church planters and disciple-makers who may need encouragement.  Feel free to share it on What’s App, Facebook, and other platforms you use to connect with others.

Be encouraged, God is with us! EC-02

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