Kingdom Harbor

On the occasion of our 6th anniversary, I want to share some favorite memories from a book I’m working on documenting the MainStreet journey. Enjoy! 

Church planting is not for the faint of heart. It is frontline missionary work with a high casualty rate. More church plants fail and than succeed.

Many wide-eyed dreamers set out with a God-sized vision and a faith that promises to “move mountains” only to be crushed underneath various boulders along the mountainous path of planting. Some of the common boulders that crush well-meaning church planters and their projects include:

• • Lack of funding to launch the new church
  • Lack of committed people to get off the ground
  • Church planter (and spouse) doesn’t have the necessary gifts, skills and temperament to succeed
  • Emotional strain on the church planter’s family (spouse, kids, finances) becomes too much
  • Church planter burns out from exhaustion
  • Moral failure occurs as exhaustion weakens planter’s resolve and he/she seeks to fill their tank up in inappropriate ways (affair, alcohol, etc.)
  • Spiritual warfare can get intense on the front lines of church planting, as Satan wants to take out the leader and undermine this new Kingdom mission advancement

We were blessed to have the wise leadership and resourcing of the Covenant Church behind this effort from the beginning. Keri and I were sent to Nashville for a very thorough vetting and spiritual discernment process to determine if we had the gifts, temperament, experience and calling to plant a church at this time in our lives.

After we were given the green light to move forward, the Covenant and Northwest Conference provided us coaching, training, and eventually financial support to give MainStreet the best chance at succeeding. Mike Brown, church planting director for the NWC, was our go to guy and constant support through the entire process.

However, we lacked one of the most significant pieces to the church planting puzzle: a “parent church” to provide the financial resources needed and to send out a team of people to make up our Launch Team. Mike Brown and the NWC took a gamble on Keri and I as perhaps the last “pioneering” church planting effort they would back.

A church planter typically needs the support of either a “parent” church or two or three “partnering” churches before the NWC will sign a Covenant Agreement with the planter and provide official support and financial backing. In the summer of 2010 when we started this journey, we had neither.

We were called a “pioneering” effort, which means it was largely just Keri and I out on the mission field in Mound trying to gather a Launch Team and raise funds without any church base of support. It was very a lonely and daunting task to say the least. We were basically told, “Go raise $50,000 in start-up funds, and gather a Launch Team of 30+ committed adults, then we can talk about signing a Covenant Agreement and coming officially behind your efforts.”

Challenge accepted. I suspect the reason they were willing to even start the process with us was due to my unique connections to Mound where I was born and raised. Looking back, I was probably over confident in my ability to gather a team of people to help launch a church in my hometown. I had all my parents’ friends and neighbors, all my networks from my former Revolution youth ministry in Mound, my connections to families whose kids I coached in basketball, and all my connections to Christians attending various local churches near Mound. “Who could turn down such an exciting adventure to be part of birthing a new church in this city?” Most, it would turn out.

So, in the summer of 2010 I began tapping all my networks for people wanting to join the Launch Team. I also began asking all the churches I had relationships with to partner with us financially to birth this new church. Every door was politely slammed in my face — Minnesota nice-style. Looking back, I’m amazed at how bold I was in sitting down with pastors of churches I hardly knew and casting the vision and asking for financial support.

I asked about a dozen churches for support. No dice. However, Faith Covenant collected an offering for us, Freshwater gave generously of their stuff i.e., equipment, and Mound Free helped donate chairs when we opened our new building two years later.)

Then I met Pastor Eric Sparrman from Excelsior Covenant Church (ECC) for lunch at Scotty B’s that August. Eric had recently been called to lead Excelsior Covenant, and had planted a church himself prior to this call. Once a planter, always a planter. He knew my calling and needs, and his heart went out to this young pastor with a burden to launch a new church in a just across the lake from Excelsior.

That fall I was invited to come to preach and cast the vision for MainStreet in their Sunday services. They were not about to officially adopt MainStreet and “parent” our church plant, but I was given what we planters call a “fishing license” at Excelsior. That is, I was given the opportunity to share our vision and needs, and invite any individuals who felt interested or called to come and help us — by joining us permanently, or more realistically offering temporary help getting launched and then returning to the “mother ship.”

I don’t remember much details about our first trip over to Excelsior Covenant that fateful Sunday. I do remember it was perhaps the most nervous I had ever been in my life. Surveys regularly show the number one fear for most people is public speaking, even beating out death itself. (Yes, statistically people would rather die than get up in front of a church and speak!)

Now, can you imagine adding to that already crushing fear a public speaking a few other ingredients, namely making the  main point of that public address asking a room full of strangers to write out big checks for hundreds of dollars to invest in a dream about something that might someday become a reality? (Ha! The fact that I found the courage to do such things is clear evidence that this shy, Scandinavian recovering Lutheran was under the influence of a higher power and supernatural Spirit!)

My secret weapon in such moments is always inviting Keri up front with me to share her heart a bit. She has a genetic trait that causes her to immediately break down in tears of overwhelming emotion that grips the hearts of everyone in the room, and pretty soon they are writing checks and begging to help. Just kidding—mostly. Regardless, we were warmly received that first time at Excelsior as I shared my burden for my hometown.

It’s the second time I came over to preach that is most memorable to me. Before I tell that story, let me say that Excelsior Covenant chose MainStreet to be the recipient of their annual Harvest Dinner Fundraiser the next two years, and those offerings were very substantial and helped us reach our $50,000 goal quickly so we could sign the Covenant Agreement that January of 2011. (That’s when I could stop delivering newspapers overnights and begin getting a regular paycheck for our church planting efforts. That was a wonderful Christmas blessing to Keri and I who had just found out we were pregnant with our first.)

Now, that following March I was invited back to ECC to again cast vision and invite ECCers to again considering joining our Launch Team. Our Lake Minnetonka geography now collided with the mission of Jesus in the Gospels, and gave me a ripe biblical text with which to rally our friends across the lake. My text that morning was Mark 4. My main message that morning went something like this:

In Mark 4 Jesus has just spent a nice morning by the lakeside preaching heart-stirring sermons about the Kingdom of God to the people lying comfortably on blankets in the warm sand of the beach. The people love a good sermon, and Jesus can preach with the best of them. 

But then he calls them off their butts and into action. Disciples are not made by sitting in church and listening to sermons each Sunday. Rather, as the story continues in Mark 4 he tells them to get into the boat with him, saying “Let’s go over to the other side of the lake” (Mark 4:35). That is where the mission is, that is where “the harvest is plentiful, but the workers are few.” The other side Jesus as referring to was the Gentile territory where Jesus had yet to bring his message. They’ve spent enough time listening to sermons on the beach, its time to get into the mission boat with Jesus and go over to the other side of the lake with the good news!

MainStreet is looking for people in this room who are ready to put their faith into practice, step beyond their comfort zones, leave the safety and security of these church pews, and go over to the other side of Lake Minnetonka to help us with our mission in Mound. 

The call was direct. The need was plainly articulated. The image was strong and convicting. And for the first time in my short “preaching career” I saw God take my words and move some hearts. Several people that morning responded and would become part of the team of Mission Friends who helped us launch into worship that coming fall.

Mike Fox was among the people who heard his name called that morning. His leadership role and contribution to MainStreet these past years has been incalculable. But it all began with a young, terrified preacher inviting disciples to leave the beach and get into the MainStreet boat with Jesus for an exciting mission adventure!

That summer I made a video from the boat on the lake  again inviting ECCers to come across the lake to see what God is doing in Mound. I compared Mound to Nazareth in the opening chapters of John’s Gospel. “Nazareth? What good can possible come from Nazareth?” the snobby skeptic says to another. “We all know that Excelsior and Wayzata are the happening towns on Lake Minnetonka,” one might say. “But Mound? What good is there in Mound?” (A once heard someone call Mound “the armpit of Lake Minnestonka.) My video ended by simply echoing the words of Jesus in the Gospel, “Come and see!” Over the next few months we had 40+ ECC folks “come and see” what God was cooking up on the mission field across the lake and get involved in launching our monthly preview services and then weekly services that January.

MainStreet started as a bold pioneering effort. Only a small handful of my contacts in Mound ever showed up to help out. Instead, Pastor Eric and our faithful Mission Friends from Excelsior Covenant answered the call time and time again, coming over to offer help and supporting us financially over the years. Thank you Excelsior Covenant mission friends!