LAUNCH
Once you have some small faith groups in place and have created some disciples to help with the ministry, you need to start thinking about a launch team for planting your church. Here are the people you will need: (Keep in mind that some people, such as Board Members can serve in other capacities such as Secretary of the Board and Small Faith Group Administrator.)
1. Partner – You need a spouse or life partner or close friend who will be your confidante. This is the person that will provide the greatest support for you. S/he is the one you will bounce ideas off and the one who will tell you the truth when you’re going in the wrong direction.
2. Board of Trustees – Four other people who are willing to commit their time, energy and financial resources to the planting of the church. The Board should consist of an odd number for voting purposes. This will give you a Board consisting of you as President, a Vice-President, a Treasurer, and a Secretary plus one other person. If you only have three people, the Vice-President can serve as Secretary, fulfilling both functions. Thus you will have a President, Vice President and Secretary, and a Treasurer.
3. Lay Leadership – You will need four people to lead the following ministries:
a. Peer Support Group – Remember that the Pastor or Church Planter must not get bogged down doing pastoral work at this point. If you allow this to happen you will never plant your church. Some people are high maintenance. One of the first groups you need to establish is a group to provide peer support to those who need it. Remember that you are offering peer support and not counseling. Peer support is something lay leaders can do. Leave counseling to the professionals for obvious reasons, one them being issues of liability.
b. Greeters – You will need to develop a hosting and greeting ministry that will be in charge of making people comfortable and welcome, as well as gathering the contact information for every visitor.
c. Children’s Ministry – This is an important ministry which needs to be established before you even begin. Parents will not bring their children to your church if there is no “Sunday school” for them. Without children your church will perish. There is no future in a congregation that does not have children, and parents will make their decisions to attend a church based upon the welfare of little Johnny or Mary.
d. Small Faith Groups – If you’ve been operating in the right order, you should have some small faith groups already established. The leaders of these groups represent a ministry team.
Remember that you do not set up a church council until your church is well established. This takes from 3-5 years of operating with a set congregation that attends faithfully. It takes that long to implement the vision of the church in such a way that it is strong, known by all the members, and holding firm. To set up a council prematurely will pose all kinds of problems, the chief of which is the struggle for control that can develop between the Pastor and the congregation. The Pastor or Church Planter is the one who received the vision from God initially. S/he was called by God to plant the church and pastor it. They need to keep strict control long enough to see the church firmly established. While you will have lay leadership and disciples, be careful of giving out titles and charging people with too much responsibility and power too early in the game. Three to five years is your best bet.
Once you have a launch team in place, the work of growing your small faith groups into a church can begin. This is done by having people-gathering events which you hold periodically.
“Without a vision, people will perish. However, without people, the vision will perish.” Ken Priddy
PREVIEW PHASE 1: PEOPLE GATHERING EVENTS (6-9 MOS.)
Remember: Church planting is a contact sport!
It is about gathering people from your mission field in order to create a faith community.
There are old methods for people gathering, and there are new methods.
The old methods are sometimes called the “sunami” method. The Sunami method would be something like making one huge mail-out. Come and get it evangelism is also an outdated people-gathering method. You need to get out of your comfort zone and go out into the mission field to find prospective church attendees.
The new model for gathering people is to have people-gathering events. This is called the multiple waves approach of inviting people. Up to now you have been doing a lot of canvassing of the mission field and networking. Now is the time to turn to the next phase. That is the phase of “inviting” people. At this stage you begin to plan and hold multiple “people gathering” events.
There are two major types of people gathering events:
1. Morale Building Events, such as a healing service, a retreat day for those who are grieving, or a one day workshop on reducing stress in your life.
2. Taste and See Events, such as a Valentines Day dance, a blessing of the animals, a golf outing.
These people gathering events are events you will hold once a month for about 6-9 months. The events will be held on a day and time other than those on which you plan to hold your regular weekly worship service. The location may be the same as you will use for your church, or may be different. The events will afford the people you have been gathering, and any new ones along the way, an opportunity to see you and the launch team for the church in action. It will set the tone and give them a feel for what your church will be like. It affords them an opportunity to interact with people in your developing community in a way that is non-intimidating. For the people you have been gathering out in the mission field, this will afford you an opportunity to transition them into a new relationship with you…one that involves their being part of your church.
The people gathering events should vary between large and small events. The dinner dance is a large event. The golf outing is a small event. The smaller the event, the greater the return because you will have a chance to interact personally with the attendees.
When planning the people gathering events, plan carefully. Be sure you and the launch team understand the purpose of the event. Will it be morale building or taste and see? You should have some of both. Finally, is it doable? Don’t plan something so elaborate and taxing that it will fail. Be sure you have the right building, the right kind of help, sufficient funds, etc., to carry it off.
Be sure that you introduce yourself as Pastor and the launch team at the start of the event. Circulate around and introduce yourself individually to as many people as possible and greet those you already know. At the end of the event, have a “hand-off”. This is an event that will meet three times or more, such as a faith and film series, to which you will invite people. Have sign up sheets ready and distribute them so that people will sign up. Collect them before people leave. They say that if you can get people to come back three times, they’ll usually stay, so be sure your hand-off meets at least three times. Don’t make it so long that it is a serious commitment.
Here are some events you might consider:
1. Christmas Toys Party for the needy.
2. St. Patrick’s Day Party
3. Thanksgiving Service
4. St. Valentine’s Day Dance
5. Halloween Costume Party
6. Women’s Fashion Show and Luncheon
7. Parent-Child event
8. Men’s Party – Beer and snacks and a lecture on Indian Artifacts.
9. Speaker on Alternative Catholicism
10. Speaker on Changing Role of Women in the Church
During these events, be sure that you and your launch team are on your best behavior. When looking for a church, people have one question in their head: “Are these people “normal”’? This is not the time to try anything outside the norm.
Between events continue networking in the mission field and inviting people to the next event. Stay connected with your small faith groups and visit to personally invite people to the next event.
Potential Liabilities of Preview Events:
1. Many on the launch team will want to just start the church right away. However, premature start-up can be disastrous. You need to wait until you are known in the community and have networked with a large number of people before you open the church doors.
2. Since you are still developing your lay leadership, there are bound to be snags. However, it is better to find out someone’s faults or failures during the preview phase than after you open your church.
3. The success of your preview events will give you an indication of the church planting potential of the area and of your leadership team. Sometimes you don’t get past this phase and find that you have to step back and analyze the situation to see what the problem is.
Milestones to be reached during the preview phase:
1. Host many of these events over 6-9 months.
2. Create a “word of mouth” presence in your community.
3. Keep adding new people at each preview event and capturing their contact info.
4. Try out the reliability of your lay leadership and launch team.
5. Put follow-up systems in place for staying in touch with people.
PHASE II EXHIBITION SEASON (4-8 WEEKS)
Once you are confident that you have gathered enough people via your Preview Phase events to start a parish, you go into four to eight weeks of what is called the Exhibition Season. Now you will have public celebrations, which in your case would be a mass or other worship service, with the same day, time, and location that you plan to use for your regular worship services. However, these will not be every week. During this time you might invite people to a special mass, such as a mass for healing, a blessing of pets, a mass of thanksgiving for the progress your group has made in getting to know the community, etc. Get your small faith group members to invite their friends and invite all the people in your contacts book. Be sure to let them know the date in which the new church will open for business and begin having regular worship services.
The Exhibition Season will give you a very good idea of how many people would come to your worship service on the day, time, and in the location you have selected. If you find that this is not a good time, you can make changes before you open the “church” for business. You might have to try a few different days and times before you find the best one for the community.
PHASE III THE LAUNCH WINDOW – GOING PUBLIC
During this time you will let the public know that the new church is established and open for business. You will have a three to four week period in which you will be introducing the new parish to the public. Do not call it a “grand opening”, but just have a simple mass, with cake and coffee afterwards to celebrate the Introductory Phase of the parish development. The cake will be to celebrate the opening of the church, which will be on a set date in the future, 3 or 4 weeks hence. Do celebrate at every Sunday of the Launch Window phase. During this period, you don’t want to do anything special because people will come to expect it as part of your regular worship. You want them to get a taste of what it will be like to attend your church on a “normal” day.
Here are some things to keep in mind for this phase. At the beginning of the Launch Window, you should have the following in place (This phase gives you a chance to test them):
- All special ministry directors
- Welcoming Committee Members, Name Tag person, etc.
- Cell groups (small faith groups).
- Follow-up strategies, such as a guest book to pass around.
- System Administration, such as bookkeeping.
- Child care/nursery
- Sunday School
The Launch Window Phase will give you a chance to work out the kinks in any of these programs as well as to preview your staff/helpers to see how they function with the public.
PHASE IV OPEN FOR BUSINESS
This should be easy for you if you have followed the previous steps successfully.
A word about setting a date for this phase.
You must make geographic and calendar considerations. For instance, if you live in a part of the country that is cold and snowy, don’t start church in the winter. If it’s a hot climate, don’t start in summer.
The time period from Thanksgiving through to New Year’s is not good because people are very busy and tend to travel as well.
Easter is a poor choice because it is followed by summer when people go away on vacation.
The very best time to open for business is the first Sunday after Labor Day. In North America, this is the real start of a New Year due to the tradition of a September through May or June school calendar. This is therefore a time when people make resolutions to “begin again” in their lives and often this involves a resolution to attend church.
