Article
Church Planter Identity Crisis
You are not your church plant. Here's what to do if it feels like your identity is merging with it.
Most Americans don’t just work; we tend to derive identity from our work. Secular research confirms what many of us already feel: our careers don’t simply provide income; they shape our sense of self.1
It’s no surprise that this is the case when we live in a culture built on the morals of the American dream, fueled by entrepreneurial aspirations and hard work. With hard work comes pride, and along with pride in one’s work comes a tendency to find identity, or a sense of self, within the work itself. My speculation is that this tendency is exacerbated among church planters, and I think it has its roots in something inherently good—the fact that we see great value in the work we do.
Somewhere along the way, “I plant churches,” can quietly shift to, “I am this church.” However well-intentioned it may be, finding our worth in what we build for the Lord will always leave us short of true worth in Christ and purpose in life. Even worse, it will create an idol out of the churches we plant, and our hearts will drift from the gospel.
Church planters are especially vulnerable to this dangerous tendency because our fingerprints are on every part of our local church. We were the ones who crafted vision documents, wrote mission statements, raised funds, gathered core team members, set the pace for volunteer teams, and found the necessary logistics to launch a new local church. With so much involvement in the beginning of an organization, it can be hard to tell where we end and the church begins.
How To Know if Your Heart is Finding Identity and Purpose in Ministry Rather Than Christ
If you can’t imagine your church without you or you without your church, then you’re probably in an identity crisis already.
Ministry is about equipping the saints, so we should always be preparing our churches for the day they no longer have us. I don’t say this so we can feel free to move on to greener pastures; I say it because we never know what tomorrow may bring. Now, in a deep theological sense, most pastors know that the church doesn’t actually need them. Every local church belongs to Christ, the Chief Shepherd, and He will tend to His flock. Where our hearts go astray is when we begin to feel as though we need the success of the church we planted to be loved by God.
Most of us would never say these things out loud because we know the theological truth of God’s unconditional love. Before we were church planters, we were redeemed sinners adopted into God’s family. Although we know it intellectually, do we feel it relationally? How can we identify if identity is sitting in results rather than God’s love?
One clear marker of this identity drift is when our joy rises and falls along with our attendance numbers. When higher numbers of people come to church, we’re on cloud nine. But when numbers dip low, we’re down in the dumps. Or what about our giving numbers? Do you experience intense anxiety about the church’s finances? Sometimes an identity crisis is seen through criticism—if every criticism or question feels immensely personal, perhaps you’re beginning to see yourself as your church a little too much.
For myself, the red flag came in how I viewed rest. Rest began to feel irresponsible. If your own rest feels like you’re letting the church down, you’ve mistakenly believed you were the one holding it up. It is foolish for us to believe that Jesus loves His church so little that He would be willing to put the health of it into the hands of one weak sinner. As church planters and pastors, we certainly have a valuable role in the church, but we are not the ones holding her.
What To Do To Correct Your Heart’s Wandering
1) Focus on faithfulness instead of fruit.
Fruit comes in seasons, but faithfulness can be consistent. Our goal should always be faithfulness to our calling without an idolatry of the fruit that comes or an existential crisis when it doesn’t come.
2) Give some responsibility and praise to someone else.
Identity crises are often the result of being in charge of too much too often. Make a concerted effort to entrust some of the work of ministry to faithful people that God has placed around you. If you feel like you don’t have the help you need, reach out to some like-minded churches in your network for help and commit to working at leader development.
3) Preach the gospel to yourself.
Pastor, if anyone you lead confessed that they were finding their worth in their work rather than the work of Christ, you would lovingly preach the gospel to them. The gospel says that Christ has accomplished the work to save us on our behalf, and all of our value rests in Him. Preach that same message to yourself. A helpful exercise could be to literally write out a sermon about your identity in Christ in a journal and apply it to your specific situation as a church planter.
4) Talk about it.
Confess your sinful tendency to wrap your identity up in what you achieve. Talk about it with faithful brothers in Christ, your wife, or even your kids if they’re old enough to understand that struggle. When we walk in openness with those closest to us, help is close to us.
5) Be encouraged by Scripture.
Dig deep into the Word to see that the unbearable weight that we’re tempted to try to carry alone is not God’s call to you. Jesus says in Matthew 11:30, “My yoke is easy and my burden is light.” Even the most successful church planter in history, the Apostle Paul, couldn’t do it all. In 1 Corinthians 3:6, he said, “I planted, Apollos watered, but God gave the growth.”
