Trusting God’s Methods

I thought I might dodge this bullet. We are working towards our first official service as a new church — so much implied in the preceding phrase — and I’ve found myself a bit anxious the past week or so. This is standard fare in church planting, but it’s uncomfortable nonetheless.

In the middle of confronting my anxiety, I find myself returning to Paul’s convictions about ministry in 2 Corinthians 2 to 6. I also find myself thinking of what Francis Schaeffer wrote in his excellent book No Little People:

To trust in particular methods is to copy the world and to remove ourselves from the tremendous promise that we have something different — the power of the Holy Spirit rater than the power of human technique…

Is not the central problem of our generation that the world looks upon the church and sees it trying to do the Lord’s work in the flesh? Let us ask ourselves the hard questions: do we really believe God exists, and do we really believe God?

We’re working hard, and the next week will be busy. But in the middle of this we realize that launching a church is not a human enterprise, and will not be accomplished by mere human methods. Anxiety is a cue to remember where to turn in such an important endeavor as this.