What would a 100 year plan for parenting, church planting, and pastoring look like? I have been thinking a lot about that question lately, and I want to think about it a lot more. It seems like those activities are planned and executed in the context of a much shorter timeframe. Parents might anticipate their work stretching over 18-22 years, but having had five under the age of 10, I suspect many parents are just trying to survive one day at a time. Church planting is usually strategized based on a 4-10 year window of opportunity, and many church plants fail and are closed before the upper limit is reached. Pastoring seems in most places to be done on a week by week, year by year basis, with relatively little thought for multi-year trajectory and the shaping of a culture.
One of my favorite scenes in literature appears in Lewis Carroll’s satirical novel Alice in Wonderland. Alice is traveling along the road when she encounters the Cheshire Cat, having first seen him a short time before in the Duchess’s house.
“Cheshire Puss,” she began, rather timidly, as she did not at all know whether it would like the name…. “Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?”
“That depends a good deal on where you want to get to,” said the Cat.
“I don’t much care where--” said Alice.
“Then it doesn’t matter which way you go,” said the Cat.
“--so long as I get somewhere,” Alice added as an explanation.
“Oh, you’re sure to do that,” said the Cat, “if you only walk long enough.”
If you walk long enough, you’re sure to get somewhere, but how do you know if it will be somewhere you would like to be? We might say with the best of Reformed intentions, “Of course, the Lord is sovereign over all things; therefore, I simply trust he will lead me wherever he wants me to go!” True, but if this is our way of rationalizing a lack of forethought and intention, then we might as well start driving our cars with our eyes shut tight. After all, we can trust he will lead us where he wants us to go, even if we do find out his secret decree from the foundation of the world was that we would be killed by running off the road while trying to drive with our eyes shut. The Scriptures affirm God’s sovereignty over all things, but they also affirm our responsibility for planning and action. Failure to think ahead is not spiritual; it is stupid. Solomon counsels:
Prepare your outside work,
Make it fit for yourself in the field;
And afterward build your house. (Prov. 24:27)
Why would a person prepare the outside of his estate before he builds a bedroom? Because he knows he will have to eat. First do what is necessary to put food on the table, then build the table to put the food on. Americans are accustomed to visiting the local grocery store to obtain food for supper the same night, but the farmer plants his field and cares for his flocks and herds in order to obtain food for the next winter. Later in the same chapter Solomon observes:
I went by the field of the slothful,
And by the vineyard of the man devoid of understanding;
And there it was, all overgrown with thorns;
Its surface was covered with nettles;
Its stone wall was broken down.
When I saw it, I considered it well;
I looked on it and received instruction;
A little sleep, a little slumber,
A little folding of the hands to rest;
So your poverty will come like a prowler,
And your want like an armed man. (Prov. 24:30-34)
Do our families, our mission works, our local churches look like the neglected farm of a lazy man? I’m sure the lazy farmer was busy. Lazy men are always busy, just ask one. They are busy here and there, doing this and that, in a frenzy of activity: purposeless motion, undirected effort, spinning their wheels. Where are you trying to go? He doesn’t know. He’s just trying to keep up with his to-do list for today.
You have to know where you want to go before you can know how to get there. You need to have a vision for where you want to be in ten years in order to know what you ought to do today. And your activity today needs to be meaningfully connected to that long-term plan, not just tangentially associated. When mentoring young men, I usually encourage them to begin with a 10-year timeframe. Where do you want to be in ten years? Not just what do you want to do in terms of career or accomplishments, but what kind of man are you trying to become? Now what do you need to do today in order to move in that direction?
Looking ahead ten years and working backward to today is a good start, but Scripture gives us a much larger view of God’s covenant plan and purpose. “He has remembered his covenant forever, the word which he commanded for a thousand generations” (Psa. 105:8). If we take a biblical generation to be roughly forty years, then God is working on a forty thousand year project. The point is not strictly mathematical, but before you dismiss the math, be impressed with what it is communicating, even if symbolically. Abraham lived less than 4,000 years ago. We are 1/10 of the way into a long-term program in which all of the families of the earth will be blessed.
Ten years may be a good starting point for personal development, but it is far too short a span to plan something as important as a family, a church plant, or an established congregation. I began praying for whoever my children would someday marry when they were babies. I’ve been praying for my future grandchildren since my own kids were very young. And now I am praying for my great-grandchildren whom I may not live to see but with whom I hope to spend eternity in the presence of Christ and the glory of the new creation. Even this is too small a scale.
The problem is not that our dreams are too large; it is that they are too small. Parents want their children to do well academically in order to get into college. Why aren’t we instead focused on training them to be godly parents and grandparents who will raise future generations of saints? I realize these goals are not mutually exclusive, but if we are trying to do too many things, we won’t succeed in most of them or do any of them well. You cannot aspire to live well in the City of Man and keep your sights fixed on the City of God. You can, however, plan, plow, plant, and pray for the City of Man to become the City of God, which it will, eventually. If we aim to build a single generation family or mission work or local church, then we should not be surprised if that is how long it lasts. But God did not call us to build castles from wood, hay, and straw. He commanded us to build a kingdom out of living stones, and that edifice is founded upon an eternal, immovable Rock.
We do not build the kingdom; God does. But he works through means, and that includes you and me. Parenting, church planting, pastoring, preaching: all are tactics in the larger work of kingdom building which Christ died and rose to accomplish. We need to understand our role and responsibility in terms of long-term kingdom development, not just day to day activity. We are not merely providing education; we are shaping character. We are not rearing a family; we are building a city. We are not making rules for a single household; we are shaping a culture. May God help us. I do not hope for my great-grandchildren to remember me or for the members of ROPC in 2120 to even know my name. I do hope and pray, by God’s grace, for my labors today to lay the foundation and further the cause that will bless, strengthen, and bring joy to those saints. --JME
