Healthy plants make more healthy plants. Healthy platypus and giraffes make more healthy platypus and giraffes. Healthy humans make more humans. Healthy disciples make more disciples. Healthy leaders make more leaders. And healthy churches make more churches! No healthy entity is an end unto itself; God created good things, and designed them to multiply. That’s God’s heart for multiplication, from Genesis 1 and still today!

This was the question that Jim Essian, a friend and fellow pastor in my city, asked 15 folks around a table in 2017. This was the third question he asked, with building gusto, after receiving rousing and unified responses from his first two questions: “Who believes Fort Worth needs the gospel?” “YES!” “Who believes that church planting is a way that can happen?” “YES!” Then came the climactic moment: “Who’s ready to plant churches together?” …crickets. No response. The air was sucked out of the room. No one was ready to work together.

What is your calling, and how can you celebrate your capacity in it? What is your season, and how can you rightly direct your efforts in it? What are your limits, and how can you embrace them as a gift from God? And, how can you answer these other questions well, both for yourself as well as for others around you?

As we approach Easter weekend, we want to pause and remember that the life, death, resurrection, and reign of Jesus is truly “good news” – on Easter, yes, and also in everyday life, all year long. But amidst competing worldviews, everyday busyness, and a context that prioritizes values over beliefs, it’s easy to relegate that “good news” to Sundays (or perhaps for some, this one Sunday annually), and live as if other forms of “good news” are better, more impacting, and more applicable to Monday - Saturday life, the rest of the year. 

What do you do as a leader, when things feel like they’re falling apart?
What’s your default response when you feel stretched too thin?
What happens when you can’t “fix” the thousands of things that people want you to fix?

Historically in seasons like these, my default response was to double down, to pile things on my plate, and to take a stronger hold on the things I could control, during the (many more) things I couldn’t.

But that posture only works for so long. Or more truthfully, it only even feels like it works… as I discovered the hard way.

Christians throw out the word “gospel” and the phrase “good news” a lot: “The gospel is good news; Jesus is good news.” But to keep these words from being empty, we play a game sometimes in our church gatherings to see if we know how various aspects of Jesus are actually, specifically “good news.” For example, a question I like to ask people regularly is “What was it about Jesus that made the gospel sound like good news to you?”