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The short answer is heck yeah. The long answer requires a little context.

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Depends who you ask.

One perspective is that church planters are guys with a one-track mind, guys who can only sing one song, guys who don’t want to do anything else in the world but plant a church. Biblically, there’s some warrant for this, since the apostle Paul comes off as so single-minded that we suspect his right and left lobes were fused.

Another perspective is that church planters can have multiple gifts and passions on the table, but in a given time and place, they feel strongly directed by God to plant a church. Biblically, there’s some warrant for this since the apostle Paul comes off as a genius in multiple dimensions–he’s a manufacturer of handcrafted outdoor gear, a focused theological writer, and, for at least several years, a desert “mystic.” (Can’t think of a better word for it.)

The New Testament reveals that Paul’s primary gifting and career was that of an itinerant apostle-church planter. But even so, I have a hard time making the apostolic calling as black and white as some people seem to think it is today. Paul appears to have had other gifts as well. And he used ‘em. Paul didn’t cease to be a rigorous, nitty-gritty theologian when he started planting churches. He didn’t quit his tent-creation business cold.

Is it possible to be an apostle and a mystic? Possible to be a jock and an artist? Possible to be a church planter and a creative? I’m going to go out on a very thick limb and say yes.

Identifying people with the gifts and calling necessary to plant is an extremely helpful result of today’s assessment processes—and I appreciate assessment for that reason. I suspect, though, that an unhealthy tendency to sort and label people too quickly can creep in. I don’t want to see the mystery of created personality devalued or the ultimate causation of God’s sovereignty discounted where church planting is concerned. 

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Early this year, a dude I continue to respect told me one of the most ridiculous things, in a personal sense, that I’ve ever heard. The gist of it was this: You’re a guy with creative leanings, so you’re not a church planter. At the time, that stopped me in my tracks and caused some soul-searching—which in the long run was good. I realized with greater urgency that if I didn’t plant a church, I’d regret it for the rest of my life. Additional prayer and counsel confirmed the fact that God’s given me the right gift mix to get after it. And more time and thought invested in Kansas City’s downtown cultures has made me very thankful that I have a strong creative streak, since a big chunk of the people living here do as well.

It’s possible that this issue is just something I’ve wrestled with, as a creative strategist who likes to think things over. So maybe I’m speaking to myself only, but if I was speaking to a potential church planter with a creative streak, and ideally a stubborn streak too, I’d say this: Don’t let anyone shoot you down unless you sense the Holy Spirit’s clear involvement.

God uses people with apostolic gifts to get new churches off the ground, but He doesn’t use a cookie cutter.

Every so often, there’s a question that crops up when I’m reading/thinking about church planting. This is especially true when church planting gets slotted under the heading of “apostolic ministry.” Here’s a quote from N.T. Wright that assesses, accurately, I believe, the priority of first century apostles:

The heart of the apostles’ reasoning in all this was the priority of the word of God and prayer. Only when a crisis emerges do we see what is really important. We noted earlier that ‘the apostles’ teaching’ was top of the list of the defining marks of the church (2:42), and that the apostles, faced with persecution, were instructed by the angel to ‘go and speak the words of this Life’ (5:20)… The early apostolic testimony stands solidly: the task of an apostle is the word of God and prayer.

Based on what we find in the New Testament–that apostolic ministers, the men God uses to begin new gospel movements, are first and foremost preachers and prayers–how do we reconcile the massive amounts of time that church planters today typically pour into fund raising, advertising campaigns, and infrastructure?

I’m not saying that any of those latter things are extraneous. Just wondering how to keep first things first and how to go about explaining this apparent dichotomy… If anyone else wants to take a shot at this, I’m all ears.