As we build a launch team, and ask YOU to come along with us and volunteer to help us launch Origin Church, we might all occasionally wonder what in the world are we doing here…I mean, to launch and plant a brand new church is next to impossible, right? Little funding, no people, and an uphill battle…UNLESS, we remember that HE said, “I will build my church.” It must be a call, beginning with the lead pastor and transferred on down to every person that is a part of the launch team. Rick Warren has written, yet again, an outstanding article that cannot be improved upon, so let me just outline for you the excerpts, IF, you ever wondered why or if you should be a part of a new church launch:
- “I’ve always said that the greatest thing you can do with your life is to tell people about Jesus and invite them to come to know him. I was wrong. There is one thing you can do greater than sharing Jesus Christ with somebody: It is to help start a church, because a church will outlast you and everyone else.”
- “When you plant a church, you help to permanently solve the greatest global giant plaguing the world – the giant of spiritual emptiness.”
- “This spiritual emptiness is the world’s number one problem. I believe it’s the reason why The Purpose Driven Life was the best-selling book in the world for three years in a row. People want to know the meaning of life. They want to know the answer to life’s biggest questions, like What am I here for? Why do I exist?”
- “Just imagine you were one of those who had never heard the name of Jesus. Wouldn’t you want somebody to come tell you about our Savior? The Bible says in Romans 10:14, ‘Before people can ask the Lord for help, they must believe in him; and before they can believe in him, they must hear about him; and for them to hear about the Lord, someone must tell them.'”
- “If we’re going to share the love of God with these billions of people, we must help start new churches around the world. Jesus established his church for the purpose of addressing spiritual emptiness. He said: ‘I will put together my church, a church so expansive with energy that not even the gates of hell will be able to keep it out.'” (Matthew 16:18)
- “Twenty-seven years ago, Kay and I gathered five other people and we started Saddleback Church. At the time, none of us knew anything about planting a church. Some of the group members weren’t even Christians when we started the church. But just imagine all the lives that wouldn’t be blessed if we’d said, ‘No, let’s forget it. Let somebody else do it.’ We started it, and it grew in unbelievable ways. Saddleback Church has helped start dozens of other churches here in Southern California. We start at least one a year. God has used ordinary people to start these churches – not pastors or missionaries, just ordinary people.”
