Cross Cultural Church Planting Assessment, Part Two

I have been thinking about what would the differences be between the competencies needed in church planting in a North American context in comparison with other parts of the world. There are at least two factors that we need to consider.
1. The type or model of church plant.
2. The cultural context of the church plant. In other words I think the needed competencies could look different in Asia compared to South America.  However, I believe there are some competencies that are important regardless the culture.

There has been much written and discussed about church planter assessment. For an excellent article on church planting assessment take a read at this article from Scott Thomas of the Acts 29 Network.  Towards the end of his article you will see 13 Characteristics  of a church planter from Charles R. Ridley.

Ridley’s 13 characteristics is  probably the most utilized list for church planter assessment over the years.

1. Visionizing Capacity: Ability to project a vision into the future, persuasively sell it to other people, and bring the vision into reality.
2. Intrinsically Motivated: Approaches ministry as a self-starter and commits to excellence through long and hard work.
3. 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.
4. 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.
5. 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.
6. Effectively Builds Relationships: Takes the initiative in getting to know people and deepening relationships as a basis for more effective ministry.
7. 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.
8. Responsiveness to the Community: Adapts the ministry to the culture and needs of the local residents.
9. Utilizes Giftedness of Others: Equips and releases people to do ministry according to their spiritual gifts.
10. Flexible and Adaptable: Ability to adjust to change and ambiguity, shift priorities when necessary, and handle multiple tasks at once.
11. Builds Group Cohesiveness: Enables the group to work collaboratively toward a common goal and skillfully handles divisiveness and disunifying elements.
12. Demonstrates Resilience: Ability to sustain oneself emotionally and physically through setbacks, losses, disappointments and failures.
13. Exercises Faith: Demonstrates how one’s convictions are translated into personal and ministry decisions.

Which of these are important in your part of the world?

Digging Deeper about Behavioral Assessments: The categories were from a research conducted by a behavioral psychologist by the name of Charles Ridley. You can find out more about him here. His resume is quite impressive.
Another resource you may want to take a look at would be  Discovery Tools . You can download this under the available resources section.  This is a pre-assessment tool from the Church Planting Village for potential church planters that some people use.

More on cross cultural assessments next week.