While Lori and I were visiting Boston last fall, we got to
meet several church planters. During our
time there, met their families, listened to their passion to reach Boston and
how difficult it was to reach the area. One
aspect that stood out was the grueling and demanding schedules. So here is a typical Monday in the life of a church
planter.
A Day in the Life of a Boston Church Planter
4 am – Get to go
into work. This pastor is a day shift
manager at Dunkin Doughnuts. This comes
really early considering the pastor stayed up late to build relationships with
new members of the church plant or the leadership team. This was hard to grasp because I have served
as a full-time pastor in the Bible belt for over 11 years and bi-vocationally
for 7 years. I never had to work a
full-time job just to provide for my family, while trying to build a church.
5 am – Open the
Dunkin Doughnuts store, while intentionally trying to build relationships with
coworkers, as well as customers.
2 pm – Leave work
to head home and spend time with family.
This planter has a newborn, still under the age of 1 and in
diapers. Before their daughter was born,
his wife also worked to help provide. However
she stays at home to take care of their daughter. So now money is tighter as they try to make
ends meet in an expensive place to live.
Unfortunately many church planters’ wives do not get the encouragement
they need, while they stay at home with the children and try to build
relationships as they have moved into a new area and not knowing anyone.
4 pm – Squeeze in
some sermon prep time before dinner.
5 pm – Eat dinner
with family.
6 pm – Contact
new visitors from Sunday’s service, either by email or phone call. Also make phone calls to communicate with
upcoming visiting missions teams. There
a lot of logistics to work on before a team comes to visit (i.e. nailing down a
project, housing, food and schedule).
7 pm – Meet with
leadership core team to evaluate Sunday’s service or to vision cast
9 pm – Spend some
time with spouse before having to get up early again for the next day of
work. Unfortunately, many times the wife
has to put the children to bed before the husband can get home.
As you can see, these planters have grueling schedules. This is one of many reasons why Lori and I
are going to Boston to serve as Mission Mobilizers. We will be coming alongside these planters to
help ease their schedules by meeting with visiting mission teams, running errands
and working on logistics.
Here is a website where you can watch video of each of the
church planters. http://www.bostonchurchplanting.com
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