Due to the complex and troubled history of Ireland, denominational labels can carry negative connotations, so that any move by the PCI to become truly missional and break new ground in terms of planting is not only going to have to deal with issues of self-identity, but also issues of perception from within the majority […]

The PCI, like all denominations, was originally a plant. Irish Presbyterian church historian Finlay Holmes notes that the PCI is essentially an immigrant church, albeit one that is 370 years old. Its first Presbytery and fledgling congregations in the early 1640s were organized to minister to immigrant Scots. This continued into the early eighteenth century, […]

A number of writers (Mannoia, Murray, Stetzer, Roxburgh, van Gelder) have recognized that denominations have a role to play in church renewal and planting, but that the challenges faced are different and often more complex than those faced in independent planting movements. Yet Stuart Murray reminds his readers: “Most denominations started as church-planting movements, even […]

One key element to this discussion is the place of one’s call to pastor, lead, plant, or preach and teach in the context of one’s wider calling as a Christian. Some of the opposition to bivocational ministry may arise from the conviction, however poorly articulated, that a calling to church ministry is a higher and […]

  One recent advocate of bivocational planting has been planter, author, missional-church advocate, and blogger David Fitch. On his Reclaiming the Mission site in 2011, he published an article entitled “Stop funding church plants and start funding missionaries: a plea to denominations.” Referring to the three to four hundred thousand dollars required to plant under […]