{"id":66909,"date":"2023-11-07T14:11:42","date_gmt":"2023-11-07T20:11:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/biblicalcounselor.com\/?p=66909"},"modified":"2023-11-07T14:26:21","modified_gmt":"2023-11-07T20:26:21","slug":"church-planters-dont-wait-to-put-your-documents-in-place","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/biblicalcounselor.com\/?p=66909","title":{"rendered":"Church Planters, Don\u2019t Wait to Put Your Documents in Place!"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span data-contrast=\"none\">We waited three years to put our church documents in order, and we suffered for it.<span data-ccp-props=\"{&quot;201341983&quot;:0,&quot;335559739&quot;:225,&quot;335559740&quot;:259}\">\u00a0<\/p>\n<p><span data-contrast=\"none\">We had a statement of faith\u2014we needed one for funding\u2014but we didn\u2019t know how to use it. No one ever encouraged us to adopt (and take seriously) a constitution or church covenant. Even if they did, I wouldn\u2019t have listened.<span data-ccp-props=\"{&quot;201341983&quot;:0,&quot;335559739&quot;:225,&quot;335559740&quot;:259}\">\u00a0<\/p>\n<p><span data-contrast=\"none\">Church documents seemed outdated and rigid. I wanted to reach the people who the \u201cother churches\u201d weren\u2019t reaching. I wanted the people who didn\u2019t like the church, the people who were looking for something different.<span data-ccp-props=\"{&quot;201341983&quot;:0,&quot;335559739&quot;:225,&quot;335559740&quot;:259}\">\u00a0<\/p>\n<p><span data-contrast=\"none\">Three years in, we put documents in place\u2014and it was painful.<span data-ccp-props=\"{&quot;201341983&quot;:0,&quot;335559739&quot;:225,&quot;335559740&quot;:259}\">\u00a0<\/p>\n<p><span data-contrast=\"none\">By that time, we\u2019d attracted a group of people, many of whom disdained the local church. We knew that we were against legalistic and rigid churches, but we did not know what kind of church we wanted to become. Everything seemed up for discussion and debate, including the inerrancy of Scripture and substitutionary atonement. With no concept or ability to exercise church discipline, sin went unchecked. Challenges didn\u2019t work because everyone appealed to personal taste and would offer to \u201cagree to disagree.\u201d<span data-ccp-props=\"{&quot;201341983&quot;:0,&quot;335559739&quot;:225,&quot;335559740&quot;:259}\">\u00a0<\/p>\n<p><span data-contrast=\"none\">After three years of this,<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>We waited three years to put our church documents in order, and we suffered for it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":662,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[793],"tags":[4806],"class_list":["post-66909","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-9marks","tag-church-planting-revitalization","et-doesnt-have-format-content","et_post_format-et-post-format-standard"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/biblicalcounselor.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66909","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/biblicalcounselor.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/biblicalcounselor.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/biblicalcounselor.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/662"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/biblicalcounselor.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=66909"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/biblicalcounselor.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66909\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":66911,"href":"https:\/\/biblicalcounselor.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66909\/revisions\/66911"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/biblicalcounselor.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=66909"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/biblicalcounselor.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=66909"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/biblicalcounselor.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=66909"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}