20 Quotes to Encourage Church Planters & Pastors

I love quotes!

I especially like quotes from people who have a track record. They inspire me to press forward even when the going gets tough!

Here are 20 quotes that I hope you find encouraging as you live out the calling and adventure we call ministry life:

1. Desperation is a funny thing. It either humbles you, which in turn makes you hungry enough to go find the answers to your questions. Or it demoralizes you and makes you depressed. – Brian Jones
2. It takes a wise and sensitive person to realize what God does not want them to do. – Ed Stetzer
3. Church planting teaches two things more than any other: that God is faithful and that we must learn how to depend on that faithful God. – Christine Hoover

4. Our greatest fear should not be of failure … but of succeeding at things in life that don’t really matter. – Francis Chan

5. As wise stewards of the mystery of Christ, we must subscribe to a definition of biblical church planting as evangelism that results in new churches.- J. D. Payne
6. If God only used perfect people, nothing would get done. God will use anybody if you’re available. – Rick Warren
7. You can’t let praise or criticism get to you. It’s a weakness to get caught up in either one. -John Wooden
8. Being a pastor is like death by a thousand paper cuts… You’re scrutinized and criticized from top to bottom, stem to stern. You work for an invisible, perfect Boss, and you’re supposed to lead a ragtaggaggle of volunteers towards God’s coming future. It’s like herding cats, but harder. – Forbes Magazine – Ranking The 9 Toughest Leadership Roles“

9. Try not to become a person of success, but rather try to become a person of value.” – Albert Einstein

10. The church plant often takes on the personality and passions of the church planter and his wife. This is why it’s important to cling to Christ with biblical vision. Christine Hoover
11. Don’t be afraid to give up the good to go for the great. -John D. Rockefeller
12. Plant the kind of church that you would want to be a part of even if you weren’t the lead pastor. But don’t be discouraged when you’re still not that church three years in! – Anson McMahon
13. We are to be light in the darkness, yet some of us have spent so much time being light among other light that we often forget the fact. – Jeff Hoglen
14. You are not God’s gift to the pulpit. The gospel is! – Anson McMahon
15. “If we judge ourselves only by our aspirations and everyone else only by their conduct, we shall soon reach a very false conclusion.” – Calvin Coolidge

16. Doing acts of mercy gets me out of myself. It gets my focus off of me and onto other people. – Rick Warren

17. “One of the great problems in the church scene is that once there is a measure of success after kickoff—usually among the poor, the irregular, those in need of mercy—church folk forget their roots and begin to only focus on ‘discipleship,’ which in many cases is just a synonym for ‘personal growth.’  From then on, they only give lip service to caring for the people who built the atmosphere that launched them—the very starting point that brought them life to begin with.  In the name of personal growth, the system becomes fixated on inward selfishness, and what got them where they are today evaporates.” – Steve Sjogren (From his book entitled Heaven’s Lessons)
18. If God is speaking to your heart, don’t let your mind get in the way of what God wants you to do. – Mark Batterson
19. Don’t let your church be a cul-de-sac on the Great Commission highway. – Ed Stetzer

20. “Expect great things from God; attempt great things for God.” – William Carey
    

My Churchplanting.com partner Steve Sjogren and I wrote a book designed for communicators that is filled with over 500 of our favorite quotes. For a limited time, you can get it for FREE at churchplanting.com.