Church planting is not intended to be a means of collecting people who are already Christians and rearranging them. It’s a means of reaching out to people who need and want to know more about Jesus and bringing them in. Therefore, it only makes sense that one of the...
Of the hundreds of church planters I’ve coached over the years, the vast majority have been married. The impact of church planting on a marriage and family is significant. It can put stress on the relationship, and kids can feel in a fishbowl as if everyone is...
The term Dr. Charles Ridley uses for this essential church planter competency is “contextualizing.” A planter who is responsive to the community, “discerns the culture of the local context and implements redemptive ministries that meet the needs of people.”...
An essential quality for church planters is that he or she has a visionizing capacity. This doesn’t just mean having dreams. There are lots of dreamers. But a church planter has the dream and gets others to buy in and live it out. It means taking the dream and...
In this blog entry, let’s zero in on one church planter competency: resilience. The official definition from the Church Planter Assessment is: Resilience—stays the course in the face of major setbacks, disappointments, and opposition. Dr. Charles Ridley,...
I used to think you could coach and train almost anyone into anything. But after many years of being as a practitioner of both, I now see that you need to have some starting-point qualities from which to work. Without these qualities, the church planter is eventually...
I was recently teaching a church planter assessment course in Phoenix, and it reminded me of how timeless the role of church planter really is. How the Church Planter Behavioral Assessment Profile Began Dr. Charles Ridley spearheaded a qualitative research project in...
Note: This blog entry is excerpted and adapted from my upcoming book, tentatively titled The Church Planting Journey. We’ll be posting excerpts about once a month here and we’d love to hear feedback from you. We hope you are getting as excited about it as...
When I’ve helped pastors develop leaders, I ask, “What do you want your leaders to be able to do?” “Well… lead.” I get the same responses when I ask search committees and elder boards, “What do you want your pastor to be able to do?” “Well… pastor.” We need to drill...