In last week’s blog I looked at why we plant in certain places, and there was good conversation around this topic, and some future conversations in the diary! This week I want us to consider something that I believe to be vital for planting, and indeed for missional engagement in any ministry: curiosity. Rather than killing the cat, I believe that apostolic curiosity is what makes a church planter.
As we think about the preparation stage of a church plant, and the identification of a place or places that we feel led towards, curiosity is one of those skills that make for a fruitful information gathering. Curiosity is defined as a strong desire to know or understand something, and it is one of those elements that is present when we are kids and yet seemed to be discouraged as we grow older. The desire to fiddle to see how things work, or why they are the way they are. Of course, there is reason for discouragement as clocks don’t tend to go back the way they are, with many spare screws lying about the place! Yet, in many people that I’ve met going through ministry training or theological education, curiosity is something that isn’t really assessed, identified, trained or developed. Indeed, there seems to be a desire for structure rather than creative curiosity. Of course this is quite a generalisation, but how many risk taking, curious individuals are we seeing developed as leaders in our contexts? Sure, they can be a bit all over the place, but they can tend to observe things in a way that we might now!
A couple of years ago I had the opportunity to visit a place as a church plant assessor for Acts 29. On arrival, myself and another church planter walked around the community, and after about 30-45 minutes I began to laugh. I had noticed that we were both reading community notices, looking in buildings, aware of where people were gathering, and what the sense of the place was. In short, our curiosity was helping us map out how we would plant a church if we were in that situation. We were both doing it automatically, like a second nature. Preparation is all about developing a prayerful curiosity for the place that we are considering planting. Prayerful because we believe God led us there, and has left breadcrumbs to follow and threads to pull. It is in the curiosity we express that we are discovering the beauty in the place, and the shoots of Holy Spirit involvement in the work that we feel called to. When you discover these there is a rush in the knowledge that God has been at work and has called you into what He is doing.
Curiosity appears to me to be a difficult thing to train, but opportunities can be given to exercise it a bit. Previously I gave the name of a town near us to a couple interested in serving in Ireland and told them to do a bit of online research about the town to see what they could discover. Then when they visited I asked them to take some time to walk around the town, see if their research added up to their experience. In some ways this worked, but only after a bit of prompting, but when it did all sorts of things were observed. If we are to truly engage missionally, this ‘apostolic imagination’ is something that I feel is vital to church planting, particularly in pioneering contexts. We can craft great sermons, develop extensive discipleship models, invest in our worship team and kids’ ministry, but if we lack that apostolic curiosity then we may plant a service, but never connect to the community or see the Gospel take root as a church.
Now, my turn for questions!
How vital do you feel curiosity is to preparation for planting?
How have you observed it in your life or the lives of others?
How have you considered training it in your context?
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