Add It To My Resume - I am a Church Planter

(my grandbaby...)

Why is it we tend to focus on what we have not (yet) done, as opposed to what we have done?

I remember when I first realized that I am a gardener. For the longest time I actually thought that since I didn't tend to large expanses of lush gardens, that I was not a gardener.

This sort of bedeviled thinking has crept into my thoughts on ministry. My husband and I have planted one church, so far - the one he currently pastors. We and a few (a very few...a reeeeeeeally, really few) stalwart souls planted it from the ground, up. One church. More than most people ever plant in a lifetime. It has grown to be a thing of beauty.

To think that I am not yet a church planter because I've planted "only" one church is like saying I am not yet a mother because I have had "only" one child. Ridiculous. The fact that I have had four children does not make me more of a mother than the woman who has had only one child.

Now I'm not talking about stretching the truth. I won't be calling myself a photographer just because I've snapped a few pictures, or an artist because I've painted a landscape. (Well, I've almost painted a landscape. I have yet to finish my first painting. Shoot - I am compulsively honest.) But most of us aren't into stretching the truth. A lot of women I know tend to sell themselves too short, rather than the other way around. (There are a few who oversell themselves, but I usually can smell that a mile away, and I avoid those few.)

My daughter is no less a mother, just because her child is yet unborn. Now that is a concept! That concept speaks to all things yet unborn in our lives - things that God sees, but we don't. Much like the way He called Abraham the Father of Many Nations. Much like the way He called Gideon a Mighty Man of Valor.

Because your God has better plans for you than you know, you yourself are more than you realize.

Who are you?