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In yesterday's post I talked about how maintaing life balance was one of the top 3 challenges for me in my first year of planting Calvary Fellowship. Today I am going talk about the 2nd biggest challenge (though they're not necessarily ranked in order):
Managing expectations: There is actually two parts to this one.
Managaing my personal expectations: Prior to starting our church I had the rare privilege of working for two awesome churches that have both experienced great success and momentum; Calvary Chapel Fort Lauderdale (the 6th largest church in the US according to Outreach Magazine) and Calvary Fellowship (with my good friend and mentor Bob Franquiz). Serving in those environments each provided me with incredible learning opportunities and firsthand experiences that many aren't fortunate enough to get; I can not overstate how valuable serving at both of those church was for equipping me. However, it also created a problem -it set my expectations VERY high! I just KNEW God could and would work in big, powerful, and epic ways QUICKLY. So imagine my disappointment when the church started small and then got even smaller by the end of the first calendar year! It was deeply discouraging and I often thought about quitting.
Manging the expectations of others: I knew enough to cast the vision God have given me for our church constantly, but I wasn't prepared for people to constantly cast THEIR for our church too! Some early attenders had expectations for big growth they weren't seeing and they expressed frustration (which only exasperated my prior struggle), and others had expectations for certain programming or ministries. The second was by far more difficult to manage. Though I was (and still am) very intent on keeping a narrow focus and emphasizing quality of ministry over quantity of ministries, others wanted what they used to have in their former churches (men's ministry, women's ministry, sports ministry, etc.) I failed this challenge in the early stages by making implicit agreements to meet someone's expectations in the future. I didn't lie, but I wasn't forthcoming enough.We were already small so instead of just saying, "No, we never plan to do what you're saying even if we have 10,000 people attending," I would say something like, "Sounds interesting...we'll see" (parents, you know that classic technique to avoid the conflict of saying no). This created some level of fear for me (would I sacrifice the vision or simply disappoint people even further down the line?) and some level of frustration of others (they were expecting something we wouldn't deliver on in some time if ever).
Here are a few things I did to manage expectations:
- I made a conscious effort to stop comparing the vitality and vibrancy of our church plant to that of the churches I came from (we were in different stages of growth after all).
- I made a conscious decision to stop comparing ourselves to other church plants (so what if a church in the South had 2,000 people in 6 months a) it's not an apples to apples comaparison to church planting in New England and b) so what if it was?).
- I determined that I would enjoy our church at every stage of development, maturity and size just like I do with my children rather than missing the moment by wishing it was further developed (my wife helped me connect the dots on this one).
- I decided to be very honest with people about what we would do and would not do. We would lose some people, but I would not create unnecessary fear for me or frustration for others
- I became determined to clash for our vision when necessary. I was casting the vision, but I also needed to be willing to clash for it (fight for it - not being mean, but being firm) when other well-meaning people attempted to push it an a direction I knew it wasn't meant to go.
Yesterday's post: Maintaing life balance
Tomorrow's post: Making the big ask
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