Why You Need a Launch Team for Planting a Church

By Christine Bove

Pastors Emiel and Emma are a couple who’ve had on their hearts to plant a church for a couple of years now. Intimidated on what is involved in starting a church plant, the couple had put off starting it for sometime. 

Finally propelled by the calling of God on their lives, they began to pull things together for making the church plant possible. 

They began their church plant’s legal process, but were still unsure of how to build a healthy church.

After beginning to feel intense pressure, they realized a launch team is essential to building a thriving healthy church.

One day, one of their friends offered to help them with the church planting process. 

This friend’s offering sparked something for Pastors Emiel and Emma—We need more people! We need help!

Why Build a Launch Team

There are many people with stories very similar to Pastors Emiel and Emma. They try to take on everything to make sure things for the church plant get started, but wind up getting burned out before the church has even started!

One way of preventing this burnout is to develop a stellar launch team for your church plant. 

To start, church is meant to be done in community. Ecclesiastes 4:9 states:

“Two are better than one, because they have a good return for their labor.”

Not only is it a good idea to not burn yourself out before your church starts, but you have extra hands, extra minds, and extra ideas for making things come to reality and to make things better. 

It’s also a part of God’s plan. No one wants to plant a church alone, nor does God want you to be alone in planting a church. 

You will always have God in your corner, but He also places people in our lives to draw us closer to Him and to accomplish His plan and purpose. So it’s His idea to do things in community!

How to Build a Launch Team

Pick Your People

With picking your people of who you want to join your team, these individuals are more than just “warm bodies.” These are going to be your teammates with building the beginnings of your church, your people who will jump in and make it happen with you. 

Here are some characteristics of what to look for in your potential teammates:

• Aligned Values
• Willing to Fill Any Role
• Taking Ownership

It would also be good to pray for other characteristics that God may want your team to have. If not, the three listed are a good starting place for what to look for in people.

Activity: Make a list of everyone you know. Then prayerfully consider each person of who to ask to be on your team. 

Prayer

Prayer is the core of your newly built team. Prayer is the core of your ministry. 

Prayer is the core, period. 

Prayer is the perfect way to stay aligned with God on what He is wanting for your church plant. He wants to be intimately involved, helping and guiding every step of the way. He especially wants to be involved with your team members too. 

And who knows, maybe He is also placing a call on their lives to plant the church with you. Everyone becomes unified when in prayer with God. 

Vision

Proverbs 29:18 says, “Without vision the people will perish.”

While “vision” here is talking about God’s revelation and His Truth, we can still apply this to overall vision— direction for where to go and how to get there. 

One of the most important things to have in motion and prepared is your vision for your church. 

• What’s the purpose? 
• What’s motive and mission? 
• What’s unique about your church? 
• What’s your ministry’s heart? 
• How are you going to accomplish that vision?

It’s crucial to have purpose and vision so that people can understand and to come alongside you and your ministry and be fully bought into making this vision a reality. 

Expectations

Outside of vision, the other side of the coin is to have clear expectations of people who are wanting to help the vision become reality.

People can be really excited about an idea, but it will only go so far without clear expectations outlining what needs to happen.

As the leader, you need to:

• Provide Structure
• Roles without Titles
• Set Measurable Goals
• Give and Receive Feedback

Propelling Your Team Forward

So just as Pastors Emiel and Emma prayed through and gathered a group of people together to be their core launch team, so should you pray through and gather people together for your church plant. 

This will be your core people for when you launch your plant; the ones who will be with you, getting their hands dirty to make sure the dream becomes reality. So don’t forget to communicate with them, invest in them, and let them take responsibilities. 

Interact with your team that you are pulling together and let them be a part of your visions, strategies, and goals. Let them take ownership and invest in the ministry. 

This only covers the beginning of what it takes to build a launch team. There are so many other factors to involve such as:

• Developing your strategy to present to people to want to become a part of your vision
• Developing your pitch
• Developing a timeline for meetings and launch dates
• And more

We at StartCHURCH want to come alongside and invest in you and your team. Learn more on how to build a stellar launch team through our free e-book, visit www.growyourchurchplant.com, or click the link here.

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