Church planter leadership practices enhancing personal and family wellness and ministry longevity: A qualitative study.

摘要

The purpose of the current qualitative multiple bounded case study was to determine church planter personal and leadership practices that enabled pastors to plant an evangelical church, see that church grow to over 750 people, and remain in the same church for over 20 years while maintaining personal and family wellness. Family wellness was defined in part by maintaining their original marriage that demonstrates satisfaction and seeing all of their adult children embrace and practice the evangelical faith that they devoted their lives to propagate. Personal wellness was defined as maintaining effective spiritual, emotional, relational, mental, and physical habits and practices that enabled pastors to realize the aforementioned criteria. Four cases were identified that met the criteria in the southern and Midwestern United States. In each case, the pastor, pastor's wife, one or two adult children, a staff person, and a lay-leader were interviewed. The interviews were recorded, transcribed, and coded via NVivo 10. The data was analyzed to determine common themes and findings. Twenty-one findings emerged from the data resulting in sixteen recommendations. Some of the leadership findings across the various areas included pastors employing Bible and prayer time early in the day, reading extensively, exercising consistently, practicing rigorous and prioritized time management, practicing strong marital boundaries, living authentically, having fun, prioritizing children's lives and events, not becoming overly frustrated at teen-age rebellion, a yearly study break, expecting conflict, developing boards, and structuring with executive teams rather than one executive pastor. The researcher attempted to fill the gap in knowledge by discovering key findings that could contribute to the uncommon convergence of all of these criteria.