Next month, Eric Holter is planting Redeeming Grace Church in Durham, North Carolina. Yesterday he outlined next steps and prayer requests for the new church. Today, Eric explains how his entrepreneurial background prepared him to plant a church.

(Photo: Eric and Rebecca Holter)

How did you become interested in pastoring with Sovereign Grace Ministries?

I was part of a house church movement in Rhode Island for about 17 years, beginning when I was in college. I served as an elder in that group for about ten of those years, and was involved in planting a few churches. In this movement none of the elders or leaders were supported financially. So ever since college I’ve been very active in ministry, in leadership, in church planting, in a grassroots, tent-making way. At the same time I was running a website development business that I started in 1995.

There were a lot of upsides to the house churches, but after 17 years, the elders started to think about some changes we wanted to make. Around 2004, someone mentioned Sovereign Grace Ministries to me, and I was really impressed. It was almost shocking—the changes we wanted to make in the ministry I was part of were closely aligned to what Sovereign Grace had already been doing for years. It was so encouraging to find a church that had all the same values for local church and for community.

Eventually the ministry I was part of closed. My family and I started visiting Crossway Church, led by Bauer Evans. It was wonderful to see in action what I’d read about—to see that it was real! It sounds good on paper, but to see it in practice was amazing. Several months later, in 2005, my family and I moved to North Carolina, and bought a house within range of Sovereign Grace Church in Apex (we actually ended up about 40 minutes away) so that we could attend there. I continued running my business from North Carolina.

How did you move from business owner to church planter?

The next few years were interesting. I did not feel called to full-time pastoral ministry. And I had to think through the issue of supporting elders financially. I now think it’s fitting to support elders, especially if they’re teaching and preaching. But that was a big change for me. It took me a while to process that one.

During the same season, God did a lot of work in my heart with respect to my business. Before that time I had a skewed theology of calling, and I viewed my work merely as that which was required to support my family and ministry. But during that season, I learned to embrace God’s calling for me as a businessman.

So for the next three or four years, I was really enjoying it—and the business was doing better. God had made me content to be a businessman. I recognized that it was a calling from God and I was eager to fulfill it. By the end of 2007 my business was doing well enough that I began the process of selling it to one of my key employees and started consulting.

Then I went to Together for the Gospel in 2008. During the conference, at a meeting of Sovereign Grace pastors, Dave Harvey presented the refined vision that Sovereign Grace Ministries was developing for church planting. And as he was describing this, my heart was just pounding. I sensed God saying, “This is why I’ve led you here; this is how I’ve prepared you.” As Dave described the church-planting pastor, I felt like my entrepreneurial bent made me very suited to that. This sounded like something I could give my whole heart to.

After the conference I prayed, and I talked to my wife about it. She was all for it—in spite of the fact that we had just started to fulfill one of her lifelong dreams to start a small farm. I talked to my pastors at Sovereign Grace Church, and we prayed some more. In 2009 I did an internship at the church for six months, then I attended the Pastors College in preparation for planting a church.

Now we’re getting started. Redeeming Grace Church has our first public meetings on April 3.

You owned a successful business before you became a church planter. What would you say to guys who are thinking about leaving a career to plant a church, but aren’t sure they can make the jump?

I would say to take that possibility very seriously. I do think there is continuity between the gifts that make someone successful in business and the calling to plant a church. It’s not the only qualification, obviously. But if you’re a businessman who’s good at everything that goes into being an entrepreneur, and you have a passion for the Word of God—if you find yourself alternating between business books and theology books—consider that. Maybe God is using your calling in business to prepare you for church planting.

It’s not always the case. But I do think it wouldn’t be surprising if those God called to plant churches had some business experience beforehand. I think risk taking and decision making are great training for the ministry of church planting. All of us, in the sovereignty of God, are free to take all sorts of risks for the kingdom of God.

Are there aspects of the entrepreneurial mindset that do not transfer well into church planting?

There definitely are. And some of them caused me to hesitate in pursuing pastoral ministry and church planting.

One of them is independence. People who are entrepreneurial tend to be independently minded, and if they’re successful, they end up with means that allow them to pursue whatever they want. And that value does not serve a church well. As a pastor you need to be willing to lay down your independence and take on what God has laid upon you. So that takes some adapting. You have to count that cost. A willingness to embrace others in this process is crucial.

I think you also have to be careful of ambition. There is godly aspiration, and there is selfish ambition. Dave Harvey’s book (Rescuing Ambition) is great at purifying this. And the book of Ecclesiastes is wonderful at helping to purify godless ambition into godly aspiration. If you’re entrepreneurial, you’re ambitious. And God can use that ambition as a very good thing. But you really have to temper that.

I can’t remember who said this, but I love this quote: “Never overestimate what you can do in one year, and never underestimate what you can accomplish in 20 years.” So I need to embrace that as a church planter. I am eager to plant this church, to establish it, to develop leaders, for the church to grow, and then to plant another church—I’m already thinking about that. But I need to remember that this will not happen in a year. It won’t happen in two or three years. Maybe it will happen in five years, if it moves fast. But 10 years, 15, 20—that’s where my ambition is.

I very much want to see more churches planted out from this church and through Sovereign Grace Ministries. But I have to take that entrepreneurial vision and remember: you can’t rush this. There’s no venture capital firm to back your business growth so you can heat it up. I love how C.J. Mahaney says, “We’re small, but we’re slow.” I really value Sovereign Grace’s values that govern our pace in church planting.

And so all of these things protect and qualify ambition. You have to be willing to adapt to a new pace. You have to let your ideas push you, but not beyond what’s appropriate.

What do you find helpful about partnering with Sovereign Grace Ministries?

I really think that this sense of pace in church planting, and the values that govern that pace, are very important. And gospel centeredness, and the humility that flows from that, is essential. A fear of pride could potentially keep me from church planting. But with the doctrine I’ve been taught, I know that I will stumble, and I know there will be men around me who will be faithful to point it out. And there will be constant reminders of the gospel, which will protect me. That is one of the major blessings of planting with Sovereign Grace Ministries.

Note: For more about pace in church planting, see this series by Dave Harvey: part 1, part 2, part 3, part 4.

Redeeming Grace Church begins on April 3 at Rogers-Herr Middle School. For more about the church, see part 1 of our interview, or visit www.redeeminggracenc.org.

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