The lessons from these two church plants mean much to me as I now sit in another small service, two years into another new church, on the opposite coast from Church X and Church Y. No bells. No whistles. Just the ordinary means of grace—prayer, Bible study, communion, fellowship. My new church doesn’t garner the attention of Mother Jones or Slate (or even our local newspaper, The Times and Democrat). Our sermons aren’t downloaded by thousands each week. But young fathers are being mentored by older ones. The unemployed are receiving help to find jobs. The hungry are fed, the poor are helped. Bible stories are taught and application is made, disciples slowly trained up in the Scriptures. There isn’t anything grand or glorious in this church plant.

Pastor A started Church X in a basement in Seattle around the same time Pastor B started Church Y. Both paid homage to the Seattle music scene made famous by Nirvana. Both spoke gritty sermons that resonated with grunge culture. Church X and Church Y began growing beyond expectations, and both Pastor A and Pastor B were regularly invited to church planting and denominational conferences.

But just a few years into their church plants, Pastor B had a moral failure. Church Y was devastated. The faith of their core group was challenged at a foundational level. Church Y stopped being cool. It lost its edge, and the folks that remained struggled to persevere with hope. Thankfully, the denomination held it together until a new pastor, Pastor C, could be found.

Pastor A and Church X kept on their phenomenal path of exponential growth. From 20 people, to 800, to 3000, to 10,000 over a twelve year period. I attended Church X and sat under Pastor A for six years, experiencing their phenomenal growth. In my early years, when attendance was around 800 people, I learned much from sermon series through Galatians, Jonah, and Ephesians. But when the church bought a new building and growth took off to 3000 and then 5000 and then 7000, sermons changed. Though the gritty trappings remained the same, the cultural wrapping paper no longer held deep reformed, theological truths. The theology that used to be regularly present, spoken in ways that grunge and hipster attendees could hear and understand, was replaced with watered-down content. While the presentation levels went up like they were on steroids, the actual doctrinal content went down in a similar fashion to a body builder on steroids who loses other core masculine parts.

During that season, I began attending Church Y and sitting under the regular teaching of Pastor C. By this point, Church Y had lost its cultural bells and whistles. It didn’t put up cultural barriers, but gone were the candles and dark worship that called to the independent music scene of Seattle. Church Y had two reasonably full services until they planted another church in the city. We sent off friends, saddened by the smaller attendance for our services for a bit. But eventually, we made it to two services again. We sent away our assistant pastor to plant a church in New York City. Again, we were saddened by the loss of this important family in our congregation, but over time, Church Y brought in two more staff members and slowly continued to grow.

I sat under the slow and steady teaching of Pastor C, thirty minute sermons that taught through a book of the Bible week in and week out. Pastor C taught clearly with relevant applications, but he was not a firebrand. I learned though. Slowly and methodically, I learned.

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