Sean Benesh's Blog, page 13
August 3, 2020
Where Are You Going to Plant a Church? In Places You Want or Places of Need?
Every church planter faces a dilemma. It also becomes a moral dilemma if they actually take time to reflect on the ramifications. Where to plant a church? If I’ve given much thought as well as conducted research on any topic more than others in church planting it is this very one. In the world of economics this is called ...
July 29, 2020
Dear Church Planter, It's Time to Pack Your Bags and Go Home
I have a growing deep dissonance of watching church planters roll into a new city attempting to launch a church from scratch. They’re both plucky and naive. All hope rests on the dream of their new church “popping” … only to see them go back home 5-7 years later because it didn’t pan out. Is it even worth it? I’m now more...
July 27, 2020
Why is Portland a Graveyard for Church Planters? That and Other Absurdities We Tell in Church Planting
As the saying goes, “If I had a nickel for every time someone said Portland is a graveyard for church planters” I’d be a millionaire. It’s just simply not true. It has become one of those statements that gets repeated enough times where one believes it is actually true (and because no one knows the source). Most often chu...
July 21, 2020
What to Do If Your Church Plant Isn't Sustainable In 5 Years?
If there is a spiritual gift specifically given to church planters it’s this … naïveté. Oh, and I mean that in a good way. How many embark on the church planting journey assuming failure? You know, the kinds of things we see across the church planting landscape … mental health crises, broken marriages, financial ruin, fra...
July 16, 2020
How Do You Know When to Give Up on Your Church Plant?
I gave up on the first church I ever planted. I walked away. The follow up questions then go something like this … why? Why would I give up on something I poured my blood, sweat, and tears into? What would compel me to leave what I sacrificed all I had for?
Many church planters I know are in the same dilemma. No, most prob...
July 10, 2020
What Guarantees Church Planting Success? You Might Be Surprised
One of my favorite hobbies is to simply observe. It’s part of my personality. When I bike all over the city on a regular basis I’m always looking at housing, what types are present (mixed use, single-family detached home, etc), who’s on the streets and sidewalks, what’s the predominant ethnicity, and more. When I walk int...
July 7, 2020
What You're Missing About Bivocational Church Planting
While bivocational ministry or church planting has now become mainstream it certainly hasn’t become mainstream in the hearts of church planters. Also, there’s a disconnect. I hear repeatedly from church planters who share their frustrations with me how they’re told to strive to be bivo from their denominations or networks...
July 3, 2020
Where Did All of the Low-Hanging Fruit Go?
It was a transition that hardly anyone noticed. Like a slow gas leak we barely paid any attention. Then one day we caught a whiff. Gas. No, I’m not here to talk about natural gas leaks. But something else has been happening … sneakily and not visibly like an invisible gas leak … that has reshaped and reshuffled the landsc...
June 24, 2020
Where Did the Frontier Go?
If you’ve followed along Intrepid for any length of time you know that this notion of frontiers is pivotal and even formative for me. Maybe because I somewhat classify Intrepid as a missions organization (or missions training ministry) it means I’m constantly thinking about not only frontiers, but in particular the fronti...
June 22, 2020
Why More Church Planters Need to Fail
Failure. The word haunts us. We avoid it like that cooked salmon that has been sitting in the back of the refrigerator for over a week now. Not only that, but we melt when we think of having that label applied to us. Failure.
Why do we have an obsession over it? Why is it the very last thing that we want to ever do? At the...
