Shawn Bentley
September 3, 2013
Shawn
Bentley is a graduate of Zion Bible College, and is currently getting ready to
launch Life Church of Hershey in Hershey, PA.
He has had 24 years of experience in student ministry. After a few years of ministry, he went to New
York as a youth pastor due to financial concerns. Although this church provided benefits, a
salary and parsonage, it didn’t feel right to him.
“Do family time on purpose.” –Shawn Bentley
He began substitute teaching, and
eventually was working 70 hours a week, while renovating his house on the
side. He felt that he no longer knew his
wife, and tension rose between them.
Eventually she threatened to move back with her parents, which shocked
him into resigning two weeks later, and moving to Lancaster, PA. At this point in his life, he was angry with
God and ministry. He worked as a
carpenter and wanted to take a year off of ministry. Exactly one year later (May 17), he was
offered a youth pastor position which he was at for 15 years.
Looking
back, Shawn says that communication was his biggest lesson that he took away
from that time.
Some key
lessons he learned from youth ministry were that relationships are everything,
not to be afraid to ask questions, and that there are three powers to any
community: the mayor’s office, the police department/chief, and the school
board. He has learned that maintaining
relationships is key to ministry.
Church planting
According to
Shawn, a few years ago he laughed at the idea of planting a church. After visiting Hershey a number of years ago
on a youth trip, he said to himself that he would love to pastor a church
there. Even though he’s put his resume
out to many different churches and checked out different places, there is an
overwhelming sense of God’s call when he would visit Hershey.
As part of
the church planting process, he has been contacting pastors for prayer and
financial support, as well as favor. He
said he makes 15-16 phone calls a day, confirming appointments, looking for
support, etc. He has been meeting with
lots of people (pastors, community leaders) and talking about the church. His target audience is un-churched 20 – 40
year olds. Right now they are doing online
devotionals, launching a website, getting their name in the newspaper, and
other media things.
My thoughts
From
listening to Shawn’s interview, I would definitely say he is a man of
faith. He has ample experience in
ministry and growing a group (his youth group peaked at over 200
students). He appears naturally
motivated, and his years of experience have taught him how to think critically
and equipped him on a lot of things to prepare for when it comes to church
planting. He also thought about doing
bar tours with his worship team before opening the church, which is quite
controversial but I think it could be worth doing it if his target audience is
there. This is obviously something that
depends on their church and community culture.
To the Students
His message to us as students was this: “This is a huge,
huge world. Get out of your comfort
zone.” It’ s a big world, get out there,
and don’t just do what’s comfortable.
Don’t sell yourself short; there is potential out there. Ephesians 3:20 is the verse he’s been looking
at and pointed us to.
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