Charles Ridley conducted a study of church planters in the United States and Canada. His subjects in the study represented 13 Protestant denominations. Based upon his research and subsequent field testing, he developed a list of 13 prominent performance dimensions. For over a decade, these dimensions have been used to select church planters. Here is his list of dimensions and their definitions.
- Visionizing Capacity: Ability to project a vision into the future, persuasively sell it to other people, and bring the vision into reality.
- Intrinsically Motivated: Approaches ministry as a self-starter and commits to excellence through long and hard work.
- Creates Ownership of Ministry: Instills in the people a sense of personal responsibility for the growth and success of ministry and trains leaders to reproduce leaders.
- Reaches the Unchurched and Lost: Ability to develop rapport, break through barriers, and encourage unchurched people to examine themselves and commit to a walk with God and lead people to a saving knowledge of Jesus Christ.
- Spousal Cooperation: Creating a workable partnership that agrees on ministry priorities, each partner’s role and involvement in ministry, and the integration of ministry with family life.
- Effectively Builds Relationships: Takes the initiative in getting to know people and deepening relationships as a basis for more effective ministry.
- Committed to Church Growth: Values church growth as a method for building more and better disciples; strives to achieve numerical growth within the context of spiritual and relational growth.
- Responsiveness to the Community: Adapts the ministry to the culture and needs of the local residents.
- Utilizes Giftedness of Others: Equips and releases people to do ministry according to their spiritual gifts.
- Flexible and Adaptable: Ability to adjust to change and ambiguity, shift priorities when necessary, and handle multiple tasks at once.
- Builds Group Cohesiveness: Enables the group to work collaboratively toward a common goal and skillfully handles divisiveness and disunifying elements.
- Demonstrates Resilience: Ability to sustain oneself emotionally and physically through setbacks, losses, disappointments and failures.
- Exercises Faith: Demonstrates how one’s convictions are translated into personal and ministry decisions.
How well do you fit into the shoes of a church planter?
Tweet
Jason Robertson is a husband and a father and a pastor. He is dedicated to leading and equipping his the Church with God’s word and biblical theology for life ministry, using a combination of pastoral, church planting and evangelism experience. He holds a Master of Divinity from New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary. He is experienced in church planting, evangelism, missions, and the training of pastors and Bible teachers.
Jason has been preaching the gospel since 1985, serving the first ten years of ministry as a Southern Baptist itinerant evangelist out of Milldale Baptist Church in Zachary, LA which ordained him in 1993. He has preached in hundreds of churches in over 30 States and 4 countries. He planted churches in Siberia, Russia in the summers of 1993 and 1994. He founded Murrieta Valley Church in California, which he planted in cooperation with the SBC NAMB in 2001. He also teaches ministry students at California Baptist University.
You can hear his sermons and read his manuscripts on sermonaudio.com. Just follow the link to "sermons" at the top of this page.