“God, If You Want Me To”

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.