Church Planting Is for Wimps: How God Uses Messed-up People to Plant Ordinary Churches That Do Extraordinary Things (9Marks)

by Mike McKinley

Listen, if you preach a great series of topical sermons on marriage or finances or sex, your church plant might grow. If you are a savvy marketer and put up provocative billboards around town, your church might grow quickly. And people will think that you are great. You can wear trendy shirts, get blond tips in your hair, and wear a microphone that hooks around your ear. But if you preach God’s Word faithfully, few people will be tempted to think that you are great. If you stand up on Sunday morning and explain that when Jesus forgave the sins of the paralytic in Mark 2, he was claiming to be God and that the only way for sins to be forgiven was for God-in-the-flesh to take the punishment for our sins on himself on the cross, people will have one of two reactions: they will praise God, or they will think you are a complete idiot. That’s the point. God has designed it to work this way. You preach and people get saved to God’s glory, or their so-called “wisdom” is confounded and you look like a moron, also to God’s glory.