Church PlantersPub Date : 2021-11-18DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780197509418.003.0005
Richard N. Pitt
{"title":"“Missions and Momentum”","authors":"Richard N. Pitt","doi":"10.1093/oso/9780197509418.003.0005","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780197509418.003.0005","url":null,"abstract":"This chapter engages founders—aspiring, new, and seasoned—in a simple question: “In a city full of churches, why did we need yours? What’s your product?” Their varied answers to this question fall into three broad frameworks that characterize their assertions about their public benefit and their orientations toward their consumers. Those orientations—client-centeredness, comrade-centeredness, and convert-centeredness—serve as ideal cases for what they claim drives (or in older congregations drove) their belief that they could meet latent demands in their communities. The penultimate section of this chapter describes the difficulty founders have maintaining the vision and values they started their church with, a difficulty exacerbated by the religious ecologies their churches are embedded in and the changing priorities of their spiritually and materially maturing memberships. Like their secular nonprofit peers, churches are vulnerable to mission drift, vision hijacks, and vision stalls.","PeriodicalId":321489,"journal":{"name":"Church Planters","volume":"18 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-11-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"132969258","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Church PlantersPub Date : 2021-11-18DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780197509418.003.0002
Richard N. Pitt
{"title":"Church Planting","authors":"Richard N. Pitt","doi":"10.1093/oso/9780197509418.003.0002","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780197509418.003.0002","url":null,"abstract":"Chapter 2 is intended to be a primer for laypeople on a number of basic dynamics of church planting. As this book is less about church planting than it is about church planters themselves, this chapter provides a brief introduction to the contemporary history of church planting as a phenomenon. Drawing primarily on secondary sources, the chapter will give context to the issues raised in the rest of the book. Some of the basics of church planting—why denominations do it, forms church planting takes, the various customer bases for new congregations, and how new church plant locations and names are chosen—are described as well.","PeriodicalId":321489,"journal":{"name":"Church Planters","volume":"10 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-11-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"125768206","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Church PlantersPub Date : 2021-11-18DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780197509418.003.0003
Richard N. Pitt
{"title":"“God, If You Want Me To”","authors":"Richard N. Pitt","doi":"10.1093/oso/9780197509418.003.0003","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780197509418.003.0003","url":null,"abstract":"This chapter begins answering the main question of the book: why people decide to start a church. The experience of a calling, where God explicitly pushes or pulls someone to make this choice, is seen as a fundamental element. The calling experiences of founding pastors differ in terms of the method, specificity, and scope. While some clergy describe distinct revelatory moments when they believe God called them into ministry and then charged them with planting a new church, many seem to suggest that God called them gradually through prayer, exhortation by family and fellow clergy, and both positive and negative experiences in intrepreneurial ministry. We discover that God’s role in the decision to plant a church was not always clear. Nevertheless, whatever the method of the call, founders are nearly unanimous in their attribution of it: it was God’s plan all along.","PeriodicalId":321489,"journal":{"name":"Church Planters","volume":"161 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-11-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"126687592","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Church PlantersPub Date : 2021-11-18DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780197509418.003.0007
Richard N. Pitt
{"title":"“Butts, Budgets, and Behaviors”","authors":"Richard N. Pitt","doi":"10.1093/oso/9780197509418.003.0007","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780197509418.003.0007","url":null,"abstract":"This chapter examines how pastors match their own evaluation of themselves as “successful entrepreneurs” against external evaluations of them as “failures” based on conventional measures of success: large congregations, large bank accounts, and large sanctuaries. This chapter shows that an essential component of founding pastors’ beliefs that their churches are successful, even if they only have 30 members or are mortgaging their home to pay the church’s bills, is the ambiguous and difficult-to-quantify measure of “changed lives.” They argued the evidence of their success was the way parishioners’ souls have been revived, their lives have been rebuilt, and the communities around them have been revitalized. Sociologist Carl Bankston sees “religious environments as economies in which religious groups are firms competing for customers who make rational choices among available products.” With this in mind, this chapter also examines how pastors think about competition and their position in a competitive religious economy.","PeriodicalId":321489,"journal":{"name":"Church Planters","volume":"66 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-11-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"133029081","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Church PlantersPub Date : 2021-11-18DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780197509418.003.0006
Richard N. Pitt
{"title":"“Time, Talents, and Treasure”","authors":"Richard N. Pitt","doi":"10.1093/oso/9780197509418.003.0006","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780197509418.003.0006","url":null,"abstract":"As sociologists Howard Aldrich and Martin Ruef explain, “Most nascent entrepreneurs begin with almost nothing but their intentions. Few have access to capital and most cannot afford employees.” In church planting circles, it is often joked that “all a new church needs is a guitar and a microphone.” In many ways, they are right. Overhead costs of a new church are quite low. Much of the labor involved—praying, preaching, and “pastoring”—can be carried out by the founder him- or herself. That said, long-term and sustainable religion entrepreneurship, like other forms of entrepreneurship, requires resources. The biggest challenge for new and continuing enterprises is determining how to get people to support the organization through contributions of “time, talent, and treasure.” In this chapter, we explore the ways church founders generate and utilize two important assets—human and financial resources—necessary to build and maintain new congregations.","PeriodicalId":321489,"journal":{"name":"Church Planters","volume":"20 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-11-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"121074578","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Church PlantersPub Date : 2021-11-18DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780197509418.003.0008
Richard N. Pitt
{"title":"De-Sacralizing Religion Entrepreneurship","authors":"Richard N. Pitt","doi":"10.1093/oso/9780197509418.003.0008","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780197509418.003.0008","url":null,"abstract":"This chapter bookends the Introduction by returning to the three questions that motivated the book’s research: (1) Are church founders “entrepreneurs”? (2) What motivates religion entrepreneurship in a crowded and competitive field trying to appeal to an increasingly anti-institutional-religion customer base? (3) What factors reduce these entrepreneurs’ uncertainty and fear of failure? The chapter summarizes the findings of the book: (1) yes, church founders are entrepreneurs; (2) a mixture of self-efficacy heuristics, unexpected circumstances, and a belief in God’s direction motivates them; and (3) their ability to recognize an enduring set of needs/opportunities, their ability to marshal the necessary human and financial resources, and their ability to determine—in purely subjective ways—what success is reduce fear of failure.","PeriodicalId":321489,"journal":{"name":"Church Planters","volume":"51 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-11-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"116114593","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Church PlantersPub Date : 2021-11-18DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780197509418.003.0004
Richard N. Pitt
{"title":"“Pack Up Your Office and Go”","authors":"Richard N. Pitt","doi":"10.1093/oso/9780197509418.003.0004","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780197509418.003.0004","url":null,"abstract":"This chapter describes four catalysts for planting new congregations that seem driven more by terrestrial chance and happenstance than celestial directives. The first of these, difficulties on the job market, not only is a catalyst for the decision to start a new congregation but is claimed as the God-influenced rationale for doing so. The second social catalyst, congregational conflicts and division, is a common dynamic of established congregations that has a common but unexamined outcome: the birth of a new church. In the third social catalyst for church planting, being “pushed out of the nest,” leaders of parent congregations encourage their associate ministers to plant a new church. The final phenomenon, the evolution of a parachurch ministry, is the most serendipitous catalyst for finding oneself in a founding pastorate. These entrepreneurs set out to create parachurch organizations, usually for Bible studies, with no interest at all in starting a formal church.","PeriodicalId":321489,"journal":{"name":"Church Planters","volume":"44 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-11-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"126287255","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
京公网安备 11010802042870号
求助内容：
应助结果提醒方式：