Planting Partners

My wife and I got married pretty young. I was 22 and she was 21 and we had just graduated from college two weeks prior. But if there was one thing we could change it would be that we would have gotten married sooner.

Although we were young, we dated for 3 1/2 years and had a 15 month long engagement. That 15 month engagement was hell. I knew I wanted to marry her three years before I actually did so. Once you know that in your heart, it’s hard as a young testosterony man to wait. But wait… and wait… and wait… I did.

We had good reasons to protract our engagement. We were both seniors in college. My wife was student teaching and I was working fulltime and a fulltime student. My wife’s family owned a retail chain which necessitated us planning around their busy times. And we wanted to take our time in planning and preparing the “perfect wedding.” But now here we are 12 years later, and we still often talk about how we regret not getting hitched a year earlier.

There’s something to be said for waiting. There’s wisdom in not rushing into things. For planning and preparation. But the reality of marriage, child-rearing, and church planting is if you wait until you’re completely prepared, you’ll never be ready.

There is one thing that all the waiting, planning and preparation in the world can’t buy. It’s the one thing that when it strikes, you’ve got to for it whether you’re ready or not. That thing is momentum.

When I asked my wife to marry me we had momentum. We were on the top of our “game.” We were clicking on all cylinders. Life was good at the top. Then we waited… and waited… and waited. With each passing day, my race car motor heart was passed by, slowed, and pit-stopped. All the momentum and excitement that we had for the first two years of our relationship was gone by the time we had our Big Day. Of course, I’m overstating this a bit. We were still happy as bunnies to finally take the plunge. But it’s like that saying: “Hope deferred makes the heart grow sick, but a longing fulfilled is a tree of life” (Proverbs 13:12). There was a lot of hope-deferring going on in that 15 months.

My marriage wasn’t the only time I failed to seize the moment. I missed the boat with church planting as well. For some strange reason I planned out the same 15 month “engagement” for my church plant. I set a launch date for 15 months after I started gathering a core group and fundraising. You’d think I would have learned.

About 6 months into it we started to gain momentum. Our core group was growing in size and depth. There was a mounting excitement that we were going to change the world. By 8 months we were clicking on all cylinders. We were on top of our game. We had so many talented musicians I didn’t know what I was going to do with them all. But we were still 7 months shy of my scheduled launch date. So we waited… and waited… and waited.

But my core group didn’t wait. They got tired of waiting and waiting. And one-by-one they started feeling “called” to other things. By the time we did launch, our momentum was gone. Our core group was less than half the size it was at it’s peak. Our group of 10 talented musicians had dwindled to just 3. But I had planned. And I had prepared. And I was ready to go. But all the money in the world couldn’t buy back that momentum.

I have talked with all those people who left before we launched. I’m still good friends with many of them. I am convinced that the only thing I did wrong was wait too long. Momentum is priceless. You don’t always know when it’s going to strike, but when it does you have to seize the moment and ride the crest of the wave. If you wait until the wave breaks, then you just might get smashed upon the rocks. Once the tide goes out to sea, you never know when it will be back and it just might be too late to matter.

You can’t always plan or prepare for momentum, but it’s a lot easier to plan on top of the wave then it is under it. Momentum waits for no one. Not even the most-prepared.