What Pregnancy Taught Me About Church-Planting
Humble wonderings on replanting a church.
Rev. Amilie Paynter
It has been suggested that pregnancy can be both a ‘situational crisis’ and an ‘enriching event’ for a woman. Either way, or in both cases, a woman will likely tell you she is never the same. She is forever changed and marked with the scars. Pregnancy marks the enfoldment of a fresh new life hidden inside the womb, and whether or not she is aware of it, she is about to leave behind her life as she once knew it; to be reborn as a mother. Scott Erickson writes, “This interior secret is a vulnerable relationship between two individuals.” She carries a precious dream, a tiny seed of hope, a new beginning within her but she has no idea what they are going to look like. Weirdly, it is only in my lifetime that a child can be even peeped at through the magic technology of an ultrasound. Before this, it was simply sound, feel, wisdom and hope.
Saying yes to the idea of planting a church and letting it unfurl, form, and take shape feels eerily similar to saying yes to deciding to carry a child to term, except pregnancy maxes out at forty-two weeks and not so much for a church planting time frame. Much of the profound growth of hidden hope is going on (quite literally) behind the scenes and no one gets to see it, although the shape of things (her body) stretches and change. The time, the waiting, and the liminal space are both transitional and ambiguous. This is a sacred collaboration, a stretching (it leaves marks) between you, your vision and God.
In my experience, pregnancy is long, delightful, hard, hopeful, and painful. The outside evidence can look like stretch marks, all day sickness, large belly, heightened senses and more. It can feel frustrating. In the first trimester, the energy it takes to grow a baby from cells is that of climbing Everest. If you don’t have an excess of all the good nutrients, your efficacious body will grab from your stores, depleting you. When in labour, in particular transition, the pain can be so confronting and is often more than is reasonable. Physically you sometimes feel like you might split wide open with pure human weakness. It is fragile, vulnerable, it is hope embedded in my uterine wall. This is a part of me.
In my experience, the outside evidence of a church plant is possibly the same but different; it is long, delightful, hard, hopeful, and painful. During pregnancy, the umbilical cord through the placenta, provides oxygen and nutrients to the foetus while removing waste. It seems our relationship with God is an invisible cord giving us breath and is the One who sustains us). We realise humbly that because we did not and could not possibly have had all the best resources and rhythms and routines, we find ourselves depleted in some ways, tired in others, hopeful still. Heightened senses and an ability to notice potential challenges to protect what tiny growth might be happening, and the deep knowledge that there is so much we have no control over. Constant reminders we only have choice in how we respond. I crack open with learning, this is a part of me.
Unknown. Stuck in limbo. State of flux. Lack of stability. We position ourselves in the direction of humility because we don’t know what we don’t know, and toward curiosity because we long to know. Ultimately we have to surrender. There is no possible way to know when this dream will be born, how long labour will be and what damage will incur. I have birthed four children, there is a wide scope. Jesus said, “This is my Body broken for you” (1 Cor 11.24) I think of humans walking around who know this on a personal level and some of them are Mothers. Our bodies broken to bring in life. And while less palatable and usually left out of nice articles; birth is really messy. Sometimes it is embarrassing and usually not at all what you imagined or wrote up on your Birth Plan.
For a pregnant woman, there is a need to pay careful attention, to take notice, and sometimes to go Gentler and Slower; for the concern, care and flourishing of mother and child. The same has been our experience in planting a church. Paul Sparks writes in ‘The New Parish’, about Misplaced Hope: placing confidence in our strategy over Gods ideas and Misplaced Love: clinging to our vision over loving people in the present. There is such necessity to being intentional, being acutely aware of our mutual interdependence with those around us, the land we place our bare feet on, paying attention to the world, noticing the work God is already doing in our very own backyard. As our love keeps stretching, so do our roots, and then as our roots keep going deeper so does our love.
Growing and birthing a human baby or planting a real life church is going gently, taking careful steps forward and backward and sideways, sometimes dancing, sometimes knees buckled, all the while believing that Grace will meet us right in the thick of our most deepest and hidden vulnerabilities. We walk on together with Jesus. Stretch marks and scars as signs of life and love.
Rev. Amilie Paynter
Rev. Amilie Paynter is married to Rev. Luke Paynter and they have four children. They live in Ohakune where life looks like prayerfully seeking what God has for them to join with, full time Theology study via distance and being fully committed to wild adventures.