For the last several years we have been in
the halcyon age of church planting. Everyone wants to be a church planter and it seems that for a long time every Sunday there was a new street level sandwich
board advertising a new church with a trendy name. The names are not descriptive of something
substantive; in fact, out here in
the Northwest we even have, The Coffee
Church(!). Moderately able
worship leaders are in high demand and often move from one trendy new church to
another. During our church plant
we even had musicians solicit us for a place on the team. For them there was no philosophical or
theological inquiry; simply a tight worship set was the draw.
Today we finished up a 5-day vacation with
family in Idaho. On our way home
and just outside of Walla-Walla we got off the beaten path and drove to the
Whitman Mission. Every time I
visit here it has a significant effect upon me. If you don’t know the story of the Whitman Mission let me give
you a little history. In 1836
several Presbyterian missionaries made their way along the Oregon Trail and
settled near Walla-Walla. Of
those who made the trip were Dr. Marcus Whitman and his wife, Narcissa. They married on February 18, 1836 and
the day after their wedding they left for the Oregon country. They were convinced that they were
called to bring the gospel to the Indians and to help them by educating
them. The Whitmans committed their
lives to loving and serving the natives in the area. Their life was not an easy one. Their first winter was spent in a very small hut, and the
second winter their home was flooded out and they had to move to higher
ground. Their only child Alice
Clarissa was born in 1837. At age
27 months she drowned in the river just outside of their home. Their lives were characterized by
privation, hardship, and backbreaking toil. In 1844 seven children arrived at the mission that had lost
their parents in the journey across the Oregon Trail from Missouri. Marcus and Narcissa adopted them as
their own. Known for their
hospitality, their home was place where those headed west often stopped, but
they never lost sight of their first priority to bring the gospel to the native
Indian tribes in the area. On
April 2, 1847 Dr. Whitman ended a letter this way, he said, ‘…we live at all
times in a most precarious state….’ And
then on November 29th,
1847, 11 years after they had begun their mission, Marcus, Narcissa and 11
others were killed and another 47 were taken hostage. In a terrible misunderstanding and tragic circumstance the
Whitman mission came to an end, and for almost forty years Presbyterian missions came to a halt in the Pacific
Northwest.
Here are a few lessons from the Whitman
Mission church planting efforts that likely will not be taught in college
missiology classes:
1) Sometimes
signing up for ministry is akin to signing a death warrant. Often there is no forward progress of the gospel without
significant suffering and this should not surprise us. After all, the blood of the martyrs is
the seed of the church.
2) Sometimes
the people God sends you to serve will not let you out alive.
It is an interesting tension biblically, but if you look at the life of
Jesus there was a great deal of difficulty imposed upon His ministry by those
closest to Him. For another
eye-opener do a little research on Jonathan Edward’s last days at Northampton.
The servant is truly not greater than the master.
3) The
most thankless job in church planting is that of the church planting pastor’s
wife. Untold grief, tears, and hardship are
sown by the church planter’s wife as she serves alongside of her husband, and God records every one.
4) Bi-vocational
church planting is profoundly difficult. It requires a
rare skill-set and often comes at an incredible cost to family and well-being. Marcus Whitman was both a doctor and a
missionary, and even wore several other hats as he toiled at the mission for 11
years.
5) There
are casualties in church planting.
Sometimes this means reputation, sometimes relationships, sometimes our very
lives, but anything worth something will require everything. We are fools to think of church
planting lightly, particularly knowing the gravity of what’s at stake.
6) Sometimes
it is impossible to count the cost beforehand.
There are some tasks that God calls us to that we would run far away
from if we knew what they would cost us.
God gives grace in the moment and not beforehand.
7) Church
planting success cannot be measured in the here and now, but can only be
accurately considered in light of eternity. Sometimes success looks like failure and sometimes failure looks like success. In the eyes of
some the Whitman Mission was a colossal failure, and as a church planter it was
a strong temptation to look at numerical growth as the yardstick for true
success. This is a fool’s
errand. Wood, hay, and stubble, as
opposed to true gospel fruit, will be made known at the day of the Lord.
Walking around the Whitman Mission today I
was reminded of Jesus’ words in John 12:24:
‘Truly,
truly, I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it
remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit.’
I’m thankful for men and women like Marcus
and Narcissa. They paved the way
for missionaries and church planters that would follow. It may not be pretty as we consider the
incredible cost, but they’ve showed us the inestimable value of bringing the good
news.
-DJM
6/10/13
