8 Qualities of Successful Church Planters

By Christine Bove

You said “yes” to planting a church? You are in for an amazing adventure!

Planting a church is one of the most challenging and rewarding opportunities within the Kingdom. While there are many blessings within the process, there are also many challenges.

Conquering these challenges early in the church planting process will make or break your church planting success.

We want you to have full success with your church planting process. We want to see you and your team take territory for the Kingdom and to help change lives for Jesus.

Do you have what it takes to be a successful church planter? Here are a few key takeaways for making your church planting process is a successful one.

What makes a church planter successful?

You have a clear vision

One of the important first steps to making your church planting process successful is to have a clear vision of the calling God has placed on you. 

What is the vision of the church you are wanting to plant?

This vision includes God’s design for it, the name, the logo, the location, the mission, and the purpose of the church plant. Coming up with branding is also a great idea, as it helps clearly communicate the purpose of your church. 

You can read more about church branding in a previous blog post here.

You have a launch team

To quote John Maxwell, “He who thinks he leads but has no followers, is only taking a walk.” Having people who will follow you on the journey of planting your church is very important! 

Church planting is not a solo project. The process of going from a church dreamer to a church planter starts with the addition of people. These people you recruit to join your launch team will help launch your church. 

Having a launch team will maximize and multiply your efforts in the church planting process. Not only are they the first carriers of the church’s DNA, but they are also your first volunteers and visionaries.

We cannot stress the importance of having a launch team for your church plant. We dedicated an entire podcast episode to this very topic! 

We are in our second season of “Beyond the Call.” Click here to listen to our podcast episode on creating a launch team. 

You are intentional with prayer

A seemingly obvious one, but one that will completely make or break a ministry entirely. 

While “faith without works is dead,” faith is the pre-requisite for having a successful church planting process. Not only does God want to be completely involved with the planting of His church, but He also wants to lead and guide you and your team toward His heart and His vision. 

It’s easy to hear a word from God and want to run with it, getting so caught up in the doing that we forget who technically started the church dream. Intentionality with prayer and walking with God will abate burn out and keep you aligned with His will.

Be intentional with prayer in your own personal walk with God. This will keep you refreshed and able to have gumption through the church planting process. Remember, you are first a child of God, then a leader of His church. Your spiritual health comes first.

Be intentional with prayer with your team. Your team will get tired. Your team will need energy and encouragement when things get tough. Praying with your team will undergird them for their success in being a part of the launch. It will also keep them aligned with God and grow their relationship with Him as well! You can also give them responsibility for praying for the ministry alongside you. 

How does a church planter organize their time?

You create a schedule. As a church planter, sometimes your work boundaries blend with your life. This creates ambiguity within your days and weeks. To maximize your time as a church planter, create a daily and weekly structure with clear work boundaries.

You structure work hours. Speaking of boundaries, whether you have an actual office to go to or not, designate yourself work hours. This will help with work-life balance and hold you accountable. Creating this structure will also curb too much leisure time and too much work time. Having clarity with your schedule will keep you and your team in a healthy place. 

You are intentional with people. Whether it’s your own team or others who are asking for help, a successful church planter will be intentional with people. Planting a church is not just being task-driven. There are boundaries for how much time to spend with various people, and who should be getting the most amount of time. And there are boundaries for working and getting things done. As a church planter, it’s important to invest intentional time with your core people. 

You strategize. Life happens, but success is a result of hard work and strategy. Strategy can cover a multitude of things. Strategy covers church planting phases, to scheduling out services, to planning sermons, to planning finances, and growing to the next level. A lot of pastors will use the SMART goal formula to effectively plan out what they need going forward. 

• Make your goals specific. The more details, the better. This provides clarity to what your goal actually is.
• Make your goal measurable. How are you going to measure the success of reaching this goal? Is it by date? Amount? Make sure your goal can be measured in some way to tell if it was successful or not.
• Make your goal achievable. A good goal characteristic is to make it actually achievable. Reaching 100 people to come to your second service is achievable. Having 500-1,000 is more than likely not.
• Make your goal relatable. This may seem like common sense, but it’s important for defining clarity. Make sure your goal is related to the work that is actually needing to be done. Serving the community by feeding the homeless is a great goal, but if that’s not the focus of your church plant and you need to be structuring consistent Sunday services, then it’s not a relatable goal.
• Make your goal time-bound. Set a deadline for your goal. This gives accountability and clearly defined expectations. This also helps measure whether or not your goal was successful!

Design your goals to fit within these characteristics. Doing so will clearly define them and help your goals be actionable.

You use tools to manage your days. While there are so many tools and applications out there to help plan your day and boost productivity, here are 5 tools we recommend to get you started:

1. Calendar software
2. Evernote
3. Email software
4. Planning center
5. Hootsuite

Again, there are many more tools out there! Do you have a favorite application you use? Comment in the comments below your favorite church management or life management tools.

You have what it takes

Even with all the challenges, God is in control and is right by your side in the whole process, making a way for His agenda. In the end, this is His vision, His church, His mission for impacting the community. You get to partner with God and steward His dream. 

We believe that God is going to do great things in and through your church planting process. 

As we have mentioned before, we want this process to be a very successful one for you. We want to come alongside you and encourage you along your journey. 

We created the Launch to Lead video course series specifically for church planting. This video course is designed to give you practical steps to planting a thriving and successful church.

Call us today at 877-494-4655 to purchase this video course and help take your church planting process to the next level.

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