“Pack Up Your Office and Go”

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.