Here’s an excerpt from an excellent article by Scott Thomas. As he points out, one reason that new churches have been planted so infrequently in the last decade is that the concept of a “church planter” or “apostle” has fallen on hard times. Therefore, dudes who are well-suited to plant churches can languish in square-peg-round-hole roles…and some men are unfortunately encouraged to go plant a church when their personalities and giftings are not a good match for the beating that they will inevitably take. Excerpt:

A lot of churches do not have a theologically-based vision for church planting and lack insight into what a church planter looks like. Other churches that are interested in church planting have an intuitive sense of a church planter prospect but have not articulated it and thus may not recognize a man that would make a great church planter. Every church leader should be able to spot a church planter and then send him to plant as soon as he is ready. The problem I am seeing is that we are so desperate for good men that we are not sending them into the field. We take warriors and make them into administrative clerks.