The Difference Between a Critical Eye and a Critical Spirit

Jon Kelly planted Chicago West Bible Church on the West Side ten years ago this year, alongside Kent Steiner, a brother more than a decade older and already an empty nester. He writes at NewChurches.com about five places a planter has to preach grace to himself: his family, his soul, his critics, his weakness, and his willingness to keep going.

A critical eye is able to identify problems. A critical spirit only identifies problems.

— Jon Kelly, via NewChurches.com

Kelly's context is urban Chicago and ours is a town of 1,300, and the isolation runs harder here. A planter with no peer inside an hour's drive hears the abrasive minority as a much larger share of every voice that reaches him in a given week, and he has almost nobody around who can tell him which kind of eye is on him. Most of what lands in an Iowa planter's inbox is launch strategy. A ten-year retrospective from a man still standing is worth more than another one.