Social Clubs or Social Movements? Can Church Plants Help Us Understand Other Non-profit Organizational Foundings?

• In Event: 488 - Section on Sociology of Religion Paper Session. Institutional Intersections: Religious Effects in Other Institutional Realms

Abstract

There is always a tension between churches’ inward-orientations and their outward-orientations. Founding pastors resist the idea that they are creating mutual-benefit organizations; these aren’t social clubs for religious people. Instead, they see themselves as “social movement entrepreneurs,” who consider their churches to be platforms where they can change people’s lives and then convince those people to join them in changing the lives of others. Some pastors see prospective members as customers who must be convinced to buy “salvation” and be born again. Others see them as clients who, likely already born-again, need to be taught how to better their economic and family situations. One group seeks to save souls, while the other seeks to save lives. In both cases, they seek to recruit what social movements scholars call “beneficiaries” or “adherents.” Converting adherents into constituents—people who provide resources to the movement—becomes the next challenge for social movements; churches are no different. This paper details how pastors resource the mission of their churches by getting the people who are saved to donate money and volunteer their time for services they are the primary beneficiary of. The pastors are not satisfied with simply saving individuals. They want to save communities. In order to do this, they need to change the balance of consumption and investment that causes many of their churches to become mutual-benefit organizations. The main contribution in this paper is founders’ discussions of the challenge inherent in trying to convert beneficiary constituents into conscience constituents.

Author

• Richard N. Pitt, Vanderbilt University