Mark Driscoll | Founder and Board Member, Acts 29 | Founder and Preaching Pastor, Mars Hill Church | Seattle, WA

Summary Notes below, Outline available here.

To purchase Darrin Patrick's book "Church Planter", click here

Many pastors have horrendous marriages: the man is not leading well and the woman is not flourishing. If you haven’t pastored your wife and children well, why should you be given a church and congregation?

We cannot add a church plant to an already frail, broken marriage. You might be called, but that doesn’t mean you’re qualified as outlined in 1 Timothy 3:1-7. A man’s priorities, in order of importance, are to love and serve Jesus, to be a good husband and father, and lastly to pursue ministry. If you put ministry into any of the higher slots, you’re an idolater and worshipping something other than God. Ask your wife where your priorities fall, because she knows better than anyone.

Loving your wife and children is far more important than planting a church. This means not putting the financial burden on the woman, putting your kids in daycare or surrendering your responsibility to raise them. At a time when abortion and children without dads are at an all-time high, we need pastors to be part of the solution, not part of the problem. If your marriage is jacked and your kids are not cared for and loved, you will just create a church with more of the same.

The husband is the head of his wife, just as Christ is the head of the church. This doesn’t mean that men are over women; rather a man should lovingly, sacrificially love and lead his wife. Furthermore, just as Christ makes himself responsible for the sins of his church, men are responsible for the wellbeing of their wives and children, even if their sins are not his fault. 

We’ve extended adolescence in our culture and unfortunately this is also true in the church: men have no plan or sense of responsibility and urgency. Many of the softest men (those that need to feel needed) end up going into ministry. These men are not church planters. We don’t need more church planters, we need more godly men. If we have more godly men, some of them will become church planters.