If I had a Million Dollars

So I heard today that a church startup that I knew about who had a significant amount of resources given to it is struggling to get going. Then I also saw some media from a new church plant that was amazing. I was looking around their website and they had on there what their “needs” were for the first two years. They want to raise over a million dollars to cover the first two years.

Veritas had some incredible financial blessings given to it. I am so thankful to Metrobrook for having me on staff for two years to start learning this church startup thing. We also had a very significant gift from a family and many normal people giving twenty dollars a month.

There are a lot of things I thought we needed that we don’t need. There is equipment, resources, and people I thought we needed that we really don’t need. Do I still want some of that stuff? Yep. But we don’t need it.

Is stuff wrong? No. But it is not necessary. This is what I would say to a person talking about a new church startup:

#1 Make sure you are called to do this. You have to KNOW this is what God is calling you to do. If you don’t you will give up. It is too hard. If there is something else you can do, Do it. If you are at a place where doing anything but a church plant would be a sin. Then do this.

#2. You need Jesus to grow a church. You don’t need Jesus to put butts in the seats but you do need Jesus to grow the church. You can do a church plant in a white suburb that targets families that has good teaching, music, and kids programs and put butts in the seats. You don’t need Jesus to do that. Your need for Jesus needs to be greater than the need to grow the church.

#3. You don’t need what you think you need because all you really need is Jesus. Remember this. All you need to be the church is a calling, vision, and Jesus. You don’t need a great sound system. You don’t even need a mediocre sound system. You don’t need a building. You don’t need a children’s director. You don’t need a seminary degree. You don’t need video projectors. The church grew and is growing all over the world with way less resources than most kid’s ministries have. The average global church startup leader is a 18 year old Chinese woman with no budget.

We have been lied to. Satan obviously does not want more churches to start up. He has convinced us that we need state of the art this or that. He has convinced us that we need mass amounts of resources to start up another church. Number one that creates a large obstacle for churches and number two puts our faith in the resources instead of Jesus.

You don’t need a million dollars to start a church. If you need Jesus more than you need everything else than go ahead and gather your resources. Our trust needs to be in Jesus and not a bunch of dead presidents.