Virtue ethics and church planting: A critical assessment and reevaluation of church planting utilizing Alasdair MacIntyre’s After Virtue

Abstract

This article proposes a critical reevaluation of church planting utilizing the philosophical area of virtue ethics. The article begins first with a critique of modern church planting based primarily upon Alasdair MacIntyre’s assessment of the social sciences in After Virtue. MacIntyre’s critique of the social sciences as having the potential to be both manipulative and overconfident bears striking parallels to the current moral issues surrounding church planting. Such a critique paves the way for a rehabilitation of the practice of church planting. The second part of this article begins a process of rebuilding an understanding of church planting from the ground up. Utilizing a Thomistic understanding of virtue, I will demonstrate how the individual missional actions that compromise church planting are in accordance with our natural and supernatural ends, and thus promote human flourishing. Following this, I will begin to build a definition of church planting coherent with Alasdair MacIntyre’s notion of a practice (activities with goods internal to them). Such a definition necessitates the need for the practice of church planting to be authorized by Scripture, church, and tradition. Last, I will show how the practice of church planting must be embedded within the broader narrative of the church and the individual Christian life.