Church Planting: Lessons from the Comments

Elizabeth Van Nostrand · 15 Apr 2026

Elizabeth Van Nostrand did not write this page.

Every claim below was made in this piece, quoted word for word and numbered in the order the piece makes them, so you can read it there rather than take our word for it. The sentence above each quote is our reading of the claim, not their wording. Each quote was checked against a stored copy of the page at build time; where the two differ, the quote is the fact.

Our reading
Venture capital culture and evangelical church-planting culture don't just resemble each other, they actively borrow from and influence each other.

Their wordsThe link between venture capital and evangelical Christianity was closer than I thought. They're not just analogous; they deliberately cross-pollinate.
Our reading
Evangelizing religious movements are shaped by a creative-destruction dynamic that discards congregations that fail to grow.

Their wordsCreative destruction is even more built into evangelism than I thought.

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The other pieces are the ones whose claims are worded most like this one's. That measures language, not agreement: they may argue the opposite.