This year in preparation for NewSpring Leadership Conference, I received a couple of different emails from church planters …
No. 1—The first one basically said they were so excited about coming to NLC … that when they first saw the conference, they didn’t think they could afford it; however, after putting their heads together, they decided to sell an old van they had and through the sale of that van had the money to come to the conference.
No. 2—The second one said they were a new church plant that didn’t have a lot of resources and wondered if we would give them tickets.
We can argue about this all day … but if I were a betting man, I would put my money on church No. 1 succeeding and church No. 2 achieving, at best, mediocrity.
Church No. 1 has what I refer to as “The Victory” mentality—they are willing to do what it takes to advance things forward.
Church No. 2 has what I refer to as “The Victim” mentality—they feel “trapped” by their circumstances and are expecting a handout.
Am I being hard on church No. 2? Nope! Because church leaders who cannot get past the entitlement mentality and seem to want to make excuses as to all of the reasons they cannot do what God has said to do never achieve their full potential.
Honestly, it takes me back to when we started NewSpring Church …
We didn’t have money in the bank (you do not have to have a certain amount of money to begin a church!).
We didn’t have an org chart.
We didn’t have a sound system or lights.
We didn’t have a conference budget.
What we had was vision … and knew that “if it’s God’s will, then it’s God’s bill!”
When it came time to bring in a consultant we felt the Lord wanted us to bring in, we didn’t lecture him about how poor we were (and we were)—we paid him!
When it came time for us to go to a conference, we didn’t call the church and ask them for a handout—we registered early (so we could get the discount) and paid the price to go!
Let me be very clear: A church that has “the victim” mentality simply is in trouble, because if that is how the leaders think, then how in the world will their people ever be able to step up and achieve an Ephesians 3:20 life?
Church planters, you are either a Victor or a Victim. Which one are you?
