When Sunday Sucks

The life of a church planter is incredible! The adventure, the blessings, the feeling of accomplishment, the closeness with God, the last-minute miracles are just beyond words.

However, not everyday is a great day in the life of a church planter. Some days just suck. They are far and few between, but they do exist. It's especially tough when the day that sucks is a Sunday. The hours spent in planning, preparation and implementation seems like a waste when the Sunday service just goes in the toilet. Today was one of those days for Compass Point and me.

We got to the YMCA this morning to set up and they've had a teen lock-in that no one told us about. Kids are in sleeping bags all over the area where we are suppose to set up. They have stuff in every room making it almost impossible to get our children's area ready. Then the lights in the atrium keep going off for no reason throughout the morning - leaving our "welcome area" in the dark. Our children's leader doesn't make it because her niece had an emergency C-section. Our Life Development Pastor is late because of food poisoning. To top it off, we have to make the announcement today that he will no longer be with us because he is going to Bible college (he wants to plant a church in the near future). The children's area is hot because one of the teens from the lock-in leaves a window open all night. The air conditioning system has been programmed to lock out any changes so we can't get the rooms any cooler (sweating kids do not make for happy parents). Almost half of our congregation is college students, so the attendance for today has bottomed-out due to spring break. During the worship time the YMCA phones keep ringing until we have to finally unplug them. While I'm trying to deliver the message the YMCA staff is cleaning up from the lock-in by loading equipment onto a cart and rolling the squeaky-wheeled thing from one side of the building to the other. A mom - who has refused to put their child in our nursery because it's too hot - is now trying to keep the kid from screaming out in the service (which he has done for about ten minutes). During my message the batteries die in my wireless so the Podcast is toast. I finish with no microphone at all. It doesn't really matter because the squeaky-wheeled cart and screaming kid have overpowered any sound system we possess. We finally get to the end of the service where we announce the resignation of the Life Development Pastor (who has finally arrived), thus totally bumming everyone out. As we are tearing down the YMCA staff has discovered the "broken" phones and called the Area Director - who has called the phone company in to fix them. When it is discovered that the Compass Point staff unplugged the phones, the Area Director informs us "not to touch their stuff again." About this time the counters have informed me that we took up the lowest offering in the recent history of Compass Point. It was at this point that I began to envy the just-resigned Life Development Pastor.

Why did I share this? Because I think too many times the PlanterBlogs.com guys only tell the upside of church planting. Again, it is the greatest experience in the world, but there are some really tough days. Days when everything goes wrong and you just want to crawl in the bed to hide. Days when you question your abilities and God's faithfulness. I believe, however, it is the days that suck that makes us more into what God wants us to be - than, say the really mountain-top-experience days.

So how do you handle it when Sunday sucks?

I'm sure there are better, more experienced church planters out there with better ideas, but this is how I handled today:

1. Pray - Yeah, I know that sounds like a Sunday School answer, but I spent quite a bit of time this afternoon praying.

2. Trust - Trust that God still spoke to people even through all the crap.

3. Don't Hurt Others - It's easy to take a day like today out on the ones you love. Don't!!! It's not their fault and they don't deserve it.

4. Analyze - See what could be done better (like new batteries in the wireless) and what you just can't help (like emergency C-sections and food poisoning).

5. Take A Break - Get away from the church for the rest of the day (if you can). No meetings, no phone calls, no visitation. Go to the movies. Go play putt-putt. Go fly a kite. Whatever, but get away from the church planter/pastor thing for a few hours to recharge the spiritual and emotional batteries.

6. Forget It - Today is done. You'll have another shot at it next week. Make the changes you need to make, but let it go from there.

I hope this helps. If anyone else out there has a few ideas on what to do when Sunday sucks, email them to me and I'll post them here.