Planting Space

In our recent survey of new churches currently in years 2-5, we found that the healthiest new churches had launch teams over 40 people.  Click here to see the stats.

Building a launch team may be the single most important thing you do in starting a new church.  Its also the one of the most difficult.  You can’t sit down and hammer it out, you can’t get organized to accomplish it.  Building a launch team is all about relationships. As a church planter, you can’t make a task list out of a relationship.  What you can do is provide yourself with opportunities for those relationships to naturally happen.  Before creating opportunities there are a few things to consider:

1.  Define what a launch team is.

A launch team has a singular goal: to help the church planter get the church started.  Once you begin launch team meeting, you must communicate the goal of the team.  The tendency will be for the team to form a tight bond during the pre-launch time and focus inward once public services begin.  You must regularly communicate the message that they are to reach out to their lost friends and neighbors and serve them rather than hang out together.

2.  Determine who you will allow to be on the launch team.

By the time you begin building this team, you should already know what your target group looks like.  Your target group helps determine who should be on the launch team.  For instance, if you are targeting young couples a launch team of retired adults will not work.  When the young couples arrive for the church and all they see is gray heads, they will assume the church is not for them.  It is advisable to have diversity on the launch team, but the majority should reflect the target group.

Will you accept non-Christians on the launch team?  I hope so. You are starting a church for lost people, so they should be a large part of the team.  They may not yet fully understand church, but your relational connection will be enough for them to help get things started.

Don’t aim to recruit Christians from other churches.  That’s not why you are starting the church.  You will likely encounter Christians who want to be on the launch team.  Be very clear up front what the vision of the church is and make sure they are on board 110%.  Unity is essential.  Find out why they want to be a part of the team.  If they have left a church, call the pastor and ask.  The last thing you need is a cantankerous Christian on your launch team.  Avoid the temptation to begin holding “services”.  Their will be many clamoring for this.  Keep them outward focused and attend other church plants in your area together.

3.  Define the commitment

Ask people to commit to serving for the first 3-6 months of the church.  You will need that commitment to have adequate volunteers the first few months.  Hopefully they will continue to serve long after that.  But remember the goal is to get the church started.  If they do not see themselves as a permanent fixture at the new church, they are more likely to stay through their committed time.

4.  Don’t get attached

You will build close relationships with the people on your launch team.  You will tell stories for years about the things you did together.  You will think that they will be a part of the church forever.  They won’t.  Most church planters see about half of the launch team leave in the first two years.  Part of that of that will be natural.  The ones that will hurt are the those that never really got it and leave to go somewhere else.

5.  Start with Prayer

You cannot start a church out of your own strengths and talents.  You should have the feeling of “I can’t do this.”  Starting a church is a God thing.  Pray for divine connections.  Ask God to help you connect with the right people at the right time.  God is already at work in your target area.  Long before you arrived, God was working in the hearts of people and preparing the ground for your launch team.  If the task of building a launch team of 40+ people sounds too big, then you are in the right place.  Go to God.

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