www.lesswrong.com/posts/NMoNLfX3ihXSZJwqK/church-planting-when-venture-capital-f...

The Pew source linked here is being misread.

Pew's 2015 Religious Landscape chapter says that among current evangelical Protestants, 61% were raised within the evangelical tradition, 14% were raised mainline Protestant, and 13% were raised Catholic. That means at least 88% of current evangelicals were raised Christian, not 60%.

What the Pew data supports is roughly this narrower claim:

• about 39% of current evangelicals were not raised evangelical,

not this broader claim:

• 40% were not raised Christian.

So the article collapses "not raised evangelical" into "not raised Christian," which is incorrect.

This sentence conflates "works do not earn salvation" with "behavior cannot be evidence of genuine faith." Classic Protestant doctrine does not make that jump.

Authoritative Protestant confessions explicitly say the opposite:

• The Church of England's Articles of Religion say good works are "the fruits of Faith" and that by them "a lively Faith may be as evidently known as a tree discerned by the fruit."
• The Westminster Confession says good works are "the fruits and evidences of a true and lively faith."
• The Augsburg Confession says faith is "bound to bring forth good fruits."

So while Protestants deny that works merit justification, they do commonly teach that a person's conduct can be used as an evidence or check on whether faith is genuine.

The article presents church planters as accountable only to whoever finances them, but major church-planting networks describe a broader oversight structure.

For example:

• Send Network says planter assessment is done with the planter, the Sending Church, and NAMB, and it evaluates not just capacity but also personal character and marriage health.
• Send Network's own pathway materials say Sending Churches are "primarily responsible for holding the planter accountable morally, theologically and administratively."
• Acts 29 says the church's eldership team signs a covenant, renewed yearly, and commits to theological integrity, participation, and informing a Regional Director of changes in theological convictions.

That does not mean every plant everywhere has robust oversight. But it does mean the blanket claim that a planter is "answering to no one but his funders" is false.

This overstates how young church planters typically are.

Recent North American church-planting research points in the opposite direction:

• Lifeway Research, summarizing a new ECFA study, says "the median age of a church planter at launch is 42", up from 36 in 2007.
• ECFA's executive summary likewise lists "Pastor's age at launch: 42."

A median of 42 means church planters are not typically "very young," and certainly not "often under 25." There may be some very young planters, but the published survey data does not support presenting them as the norm.