Personality Traits of Church Planters in Europe

Abstract

In this article we present the results of a Big Five personality test among 59 religious entrepreneurs (church planters) in Europe, and we compare these results with (a) a general database, and (b) existing research among secular entrepreneurs. Our study concludes that church planters are significantly more extravert and significantly less neurotic than the general population. Although our research also indicates that church planters are more agreeable and more conscientious than the general population, differences on these items were not significant. As to openness to experience, there was no difference between church planters and the general population. Comparison with research among secular entrepreneurs leads to rather ambiguous results. The only shared trait that can be established with some reliability is that both church planters and secular entrepreneurs are less neurotic than other people.

Stress Levels among Anglican Clergy: The Beneficial Effects of Feeling Supported

“…Scores for introversion (I), intuition (N), feeling (F), and judging (J) were used in the analysis as INFJ tends to be one of the most frequent psychological profiles among Church of England stipendiary clergy (Francis et al, 2007;Village, 2011). The emotionality score was based on ten items presented in the same way as the FPTS items and designed to reflect the neuroticism scale within the Big Five Factor model of personality often employed in research among clergy (see Foppen, Paas, & van Saane, 2017). In each case characteristics of high or low emotionality were presented and the participant asked to choose which was 'closer to the real you'.…”

Personality Traits of Church Planters and Other Church Leaders in Europe (II)

“…Piedmont 1999), for example to assess their spirituality (Kosek 2000;Strawn, Alexander 2008;Francis 2009), vocation (Galea 2010;Sunardi 2014), leadership style (Krekeler 2010;Francis, Crea 2015), career success (Machel 2006;Miner 2007;Joseph et al 2011;Nortomaa 2016), or to explain theological differences (Burton et al 2010;Francis 2013;Village 2013). As far as we know, our 2017 study was the first to use psychological profiling to explore the entrepreneurial dimension of religious leadership (Foppen et al 2017). We concentrated on the personality types of European church planters (N=59), based on the so-called Big Five model (Goldberg 1990(Goldberg , 1993.…”

“…In a previous article we have introduced church planting in the context of entrepreneurial studies (Foppen et al 2017;cf. Volland 2015).…”

Crisis and Resilience among Church Planters in Europe

“…As a consequence, the European ecclesial landscape assumes features of an entrepreneurial approach of church and mission (cf. Volland 2015;Foppen et al 2017). This approach is often influenced by the North American religious market paradigm which holds that modern, religiously pluralistic societies where church and state are separated can be considered as markets in which disestablished religious organizations compete for clients.…”

“…Unfortunately, ages of the church planters were not recorded. However, from two simultaneous quantitative research projects among European church planters, a mean age of 41 appeared, with the largest number being in the 26-45 year range (Foppen et al 2017;Foppen et al forthcoming).…”