comment from Drew...

Drew left this comment on the Church Planting by Wind and Fire post...

Bob, I'm feeling you on this one also.

It's a myth that there is a prototypical "church planter" out there. After meeting 30-40 other church planters, I can see an array of differences in personality, leadership quality, direction, and style. Not all were risk-takers, or entrepreneurial, or any other "essential" church planter quality. I tire of the new lists that [endlessly] come out trying to describe these vital parts of a church planter.

Here's my hunch: we look at those who do things we haven't considered doing and think, "Man, they're entrepreneurial!" or "Wow, they're a risk-taker!" In reality, they just believe that they're called and are responding to that.

It's usually in hindsight that we call people adventurous or entrepreneurial. At least that's what we call the "successful" ones. The unsucessful ones? Weak. Naive. Over-zealous.

We're too obsessed with labeling the next thing that "works" and taking it apart to examine it with empirical enthusiasm. We forget the things that line up with what you wrote, Bob. Moses was a known murderer and couldn't speak well. Gideon was a wimp.

Should we consider what we're doing and strive to get better at it? Yes. But many times, you don't know the path until you're on it... you don't know if you're cut out for church-planting until you're planting a church.

Comments

[Drew Caperton]

Thanks for the props, Bob.