This post gathers useful information that would likely be hard to assemble on church planting, a powerful institution that needs to be understood better not only by Christians, but by others who share political, social and geographic space with them. It’s clear and well-written, and the analogy with venture capital is intriguing. Further exploring the links between founding churches and businesses would be of interest.
A central part of the implied narrative is that church planters are problematically narcissistic. In addition to being insulting, this claim is inadequately supported or conceptually considered. Although you give at least one example of a narcissistic church planter, the founder of Mars Hill, and find ways to spin church planter activities in a way that seems narcissitic, this comes across as antagonistic rhetoric rather than a well-considered or supported characterization of church planters. Ultimately, it undermines the credibility of the research, because it suggests that you may have been motivated in your research and writing decisions by dislike of evangelicals and a desire to write a piece damaging their image.
On a conceptual level, it might be beneficial to consider the idea of heathly narcissism, which seems like a useful frame for rationalists to absorb and one that is highly aligned with typical rationalist self-improvement goals: “healthy narcissism reflects an abundance of agentic/self-enhancing features and a relative absence of antagonistic/other-derogating elements.” Even if church planters (or startup founders) are, to some extent, motivated by narcissism, does that reflect unusual and unhealthy level of narcissism relative to leaders in other institutions? Is narcissism always a problem? Why exactly is a 24 year old unqualified to give advice on the Bible or other religious texts, or why would it demonstrate narcissism for them to try?
This post gathers useful information that would likely be hard to assemble on church planting, a powerful institution that needs to be understood better not only by Christians, but by others who share political, social and geographic space with them. It’s clear and well-written, and the analogy with venture capital is intriguing. Further exploring the links between founding churches and businesses would be of interest.
A central part of the implied narrative is that church planters are problematically narcissistic. In addition to being insulting, this claim is inadequately supported or conceptually considered. Although you give at least one example of a narcissistic church planter, the founder of Mars Hill, and find ways to spin church planter activities in a way that seems narcissitic, this comes across as antagonistic rhetoric rather than a well-considered or supported characterization of church planters. Ultimately, it undermines the credibility of the research, because it suggests that you may have been motivated in your research and writing decisions by dislike of evangelicals and a desire to write a piece damaging their image.
On a conceptual level, it might be beneficial to consider the idea of heathly narcissism, which seems like a useful frame for rationalists to absorb and one that is highly aligned with typical rationalist self-improvement goals: “healthy narcissism reflects an abundance of agentic/self-enhancing features and a relative absence of antagonistic/other-derogating elements.” Even if church planters (or startup founders) are, to some extent, motivated by narcissism, does that reflect unusual and unhealthy level of narcissism relative to leaders in other institutions? Is narcissism always a problem? Why exactly is a 24 year old unqualified to give advice on the Bible or other religious texts, or why would it demonstrate narcissism for them to try?