Article
Why You Need More than Passion in Planting
What if we set aside passion as our primary pursuit and focused instead on affection?
Many of us grew up in a church context that emphasized passion for God. Some of our favorite theologians and preachers from history are known for their passion. This emphasis set a standard, an objective, for us—to pursue passion for God. Measure your spiritual vitality by passion. Passion is the pinnacle of Christianity. Planter, consider your passion.
The Danger of Passion
Passion is like fire (thus the phrase “burning passion”) in that it is useful and dangerous. Fire fuels engines, and passion fuels a church planter’s drive. Fire warms a home, and passion warms a cold heart. Fire cuts through hard surfaces, and passion cuts through resistance. But fire can also rage out of control. It scalds and burns. It leaves swaths of damage. And unguided, untempered passion does the same.
In ministry, passion makes us good defenders of the faith, or at least active ones. It fuels our proclamation of the gospel. Passion moves a church planter toward boldness and risk-taking. It is a force of super-nature. But as is the case in nature, this force can become a disaster when it rages out of control in our ministry. Misguided or unfettered passion can make us harsh and brutal as leaders. It can turn us unhelpfully single-minded and thus closed-minded. We can confuse the passions of the flesh (1 Peter 2:11) with godly passion by becoming prideful.
Passion or Affection?
Passion can fizzle. It flames hot, then dwindles, then becomes embers or ashes. And what are we to do when our passion lapses? It can leave us feeling discouraged, depleted, misguided, and even wondering if we are fit for ministry any longer.
But what if we set aside passion as our primary pursuit and focused instead on affection? Affection for Jesus, affection for His people. What might be different? Well, none of the good things passion provides would be lost, but we would be safeguarded from the potential damage it can cause. Affection and passion are not at odds–just ask anyone who is in love. But emphasizing affection over passion sets us up for greater joy, greater health, greater stability and peace, and greater longevity both in church planting and in faith.
Think about your affection for your loved ones–your wife, children, and close friends. How does it shape you? It flavors so much of your life, especially your interactions with them. When your heart is affectionate toward someone, you become warm to what they love, you have a deep well of patience for their imperfections, and you want others to love them too. The same is true in our affection for Jesus, except that Jesus is not merely someone. He is the Way, the Truth, and the Life in whom all things live and move and have their being. He is our all. He is our hope. He is our salvation. So affection for Christ doesn’t merely flavor our lives; it shapes everything in us.
Affection for Christ reorients us towards joy and happiness rather than intensity. It adjusts our posture to one of gentleness and patience toward other people because we begin to see them as Jesus saw people. When we are growing in affection for Jesus, we cannot help but honor Him in our attitudes, our actions, and our speech. And this same affection flows through our preaching and proclamation, making much of Jesus with a clear, warm gospel that is magnetic in a lost world. Our affection for Christ is transformative because, as we love him, we become more like him.
Affection Endures in All Seasons
You may be thinking, “But does affection also wane and dissipate like passion?” The answer is yes, sort of. Affection does wane, but not in the same way passion does. Affection wanes because of distance and a lack of relational investment. When we draw away from Jesus, stop relating to Him in prayer and from Scripture, and stop meditating on His accomplishments, our hearts grow colder toward Him. We actually have the means to keep our hearts close to Jesus, which will keep affection alive. Even when our hearts are not stirred up to affection, we can draw close to Jesus, and that is affection in the same way that hugging your kids when you are exhausted or telling your wife she’s beautiful even when you’ve been arguing is affection and is good. This is not so with passion. We cannot drum it up or hold on to it. It sweeps in and it burns out. We can hold on to affection.
We see this in the various expressions and contexts of affection. While passion burns hot and expresses itself with energy, affection can be shown in the low times. It can be expressed in fatigue and in sorrow. We can be affectionate when we are afraid and discouraged. And of course, affection shines in times of joy, celebration, peace, and gladness. The implications of this are maybe more obvious in our personal relationships with Jesus than in planting. But consider the difference between how you might pastor with affection when people are weary, rather than pastoring with passion. Consider how you might pastor people when you are weary and your passion is at low ebb, maybe like Jesus in Mark 6:34 when He was trying to get away to rest but encountered a large and needy crowd: “He had compassion on them, because they were like sheep without a shepherd.”
I conclude with this: pray for passion. It is a powerful force when stirred up by the Holy Spirit. It is fire in our bones and on our tongues. But it is affection for Jesus that tempers that passion into fruitful force and keeps us from becoming brutes instead of shepherds.
