Multiplication Lessons in Mid-Flight

Multiplication Lessons in Mid-Flight

Darrin Patrick on the big leadership weakness in his early years of The Journey

Darrin Patrick

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When Darrin and Amie Patrick planted The Journey in the basement of their house in St. Louis, Missouri, they began the church to reach and engage “people like us.” The new eBook, The Journey: Toward a Healthy Multiplying Church, traces the story of The Journey from a small core-group meeting to a movement of the gospel across six Journey churches and eight church plants around the United States. In the book, Patrick shares five lessons he and The Journey have learned over the past decade about becoming a movement where every member sees themselves as a missionary for their city. Below, he fleshes out the first lesoon:
Not that I’ve done it, but I would guess that one of the hardest things to do is build a plane while you’re flying it. That’s really what we’ve done at The Journey, and in many ways are still doing. Every multiplying church has to face it at one time or another. Still more difficult is to not just be building while in motion, but inspecting it in mid-flight. But, by God’s grace we have learned some things since planting The Journey more than a decade ago.
Lesson #1: The emotional health of the leaders is vital for staying on mission.
When Amie and I uprooted our lives to start The Journey, we were prepared in almost every conceivable way. We were prepared in our marriage. We had just had our first kid. We knew each other well, having been together over a decade—seven years of marriage after five years of dating. We were excited about moving closer to our families. We were on the same page theologically and missiologically. We had great mentors.
I was also prepared spiritually. Since I had become a Christian, I had a consistent devotional time, having kept journals for years.  I was prepared evangelistically. I had a heart for non-Christians. I was excited about the possibility that everywhere I went there was someone to meet who either needed to meet Jesus for the first time or could be a part of our core group. I was a voracious reader. In those days, I read at least 100 pages a day. I was acquainted with the leading thinker on contextualization. I was even prepared relationally with an advisory board of pastors.
But as I look back, I was not prepared emotionally—not at all. Below, I share several challenges I was not prepared to navigate:
Betrayal
Within a year of relocating, both of the couples that came with us to St. Louis left the faith and broke off their marriages. I spent hours with these men pleading for them to fight for their marriages. The worship leader and I had probably spent 20 hours a week together for nine months. If it hadn’t been for Amie, by God’s encouragement, I would have quit. And even after we planted, I had to deal with leaders lying to me and then starting new ministries or slandering me to other pastors and network leaders.
The Weight of Counseling
When I was an associate pastor back in Kansas City, we had a larger church with more resources. I didn’t have to be on the frontlines. But once you’re in there, the amount of brokenness you have to deal with can be unfathomable. I remember making a hospital visit for a girl in the church who had become pregnant with her boyfriend. She handed me her stillborn baby wanting me to pray. And then there’s the wreckage you see in so many marriages. Brokenness was constant.
Boundaries between home and church
We were gathering people to worship in our basement, right next to the efficiency apartment we had created for one of these couples, and right below our bedroom. It made for some weird dynamics. Everything felt like it was melded together. There was no separation. People would randomly stop by the house because it was the church.
The Weight of Risk
When everything is on the line, the pressure can be overwhelming. People have invested in you, both relationally and financially. Your family has sacrificed everything in following you. When you’re in that spot, you feel exposed. Unresolved issues with my dad kept resurfacing. It exposed my achievement idolatry and my fear of failure.
Now, how did that affect the mission?

When you lead, you plug your life into an amplifier.

Everybody is listening. People are trying to make photocopies of your style and passing those copies around. Your leadership shapes the perspective, the pace and the priorities for your people.
I was leading out of fear and pride. I gave into self-sufficiency and self-protection: If it’s going to be, it’s up to me. I had inherited this mindset from my dad, and it was resurfacing after betrayal. I didn’t just take this perspective with our people. Despite all my theological training, I functionally acted as if Jesus had promised to build His church, but it was really on us to get it done.
We do need an urgency for the mission, but when your motivations are askew, you’ll start operating in this frantic, hurried pace. The unmet need to achieve and perform compromises your ability to be reflective about the process. You fall prey to the tyranny of the moment. You just try to get everything “done.” There is a reality that you have to work hard, but as a result of my leadership, we didn’t necessarily work smart for a long time.
There is a phrase that doesn’t come from me, but we eventually started using around The Journey: We don’t want to use people to get ministry done. We want to use ministry to get people done. When you’re in frantic, survival mode, it’s tempting to just give people stuff to do. And even if you give them some tools, the real question is whether or not you’re concerned about their development as leaders. While they’re serving, are you asking the question, What could they become?
Read the other four lessons Patrick shares in his new eBook, The Journey: Toward a Healthy Multiplying Church.