As you think about church plant­ing the first thing that prob­a­bly comes to mind is peo­ple.  After all, peo­ple are the church and help­ing peo­ple con­nect with God and one another really is a big part of why we do what we do.  As we began to think through our launch here at Life­Point, we were encour­aged by some expe­ri­enced church planters to ini­tially think about lead­er­ship in two areas: Staff Team Mem­bers and Core Team Members.

Staff team mem­bers — I know it’s not always pos­si­ble but as you make plans for your church launch do every­thing you can to gather a staff team around you.  If you can find one or two peo­ple to take a lead­er­ship role over each of your key areas it will help you to be more effi­cient, more effec­tive and more encour­aged as you move for­ward in your launch.  As you think about your staff team, we have found that it’s help­ful to think about chem­istry, com­pe­tency and character.

Think staff chem­istry - Chem­istry is super impor­tant when you are form­ing your staff team.  While it’s prob­a­bly unre­al­is­tic to expect your staff team mem­bers to all be best friends, it is impor­tant that you prayer­fully choose guys and ladies who work well together, are will­ing to humbly encour­age and chal­lenge one another and who can move for­ward together with a uni­fied vision.

Think staff com­pe­ten­cies — As you begin to pray through your staff team, I would rec­om­mend that you do your best to build a team with skill sets that dif­fer and com­ple­ment one another rather than skill sets that over­lap one another. For instance, as a gen­eral rule, it’s bet­ter to have one team mem­ber who has a strong teach­ing gift and another team mem­ber who has strong admin­is­tra­tive or music skills than it is to have two team mem­bers who are strong teach­ers with­out any admin­is­tra­tive or music skills. Com­ple­men­tary skill sets will allow you to each focus on and give spe­cial­ized over­sight to 1–2 key areas which will strengthen the foun­da­tion for your launch.

Think staff char­ac­ter — This one prob­a­bly goes with­out say­ing but if a poten­tial team mem­ber has ques­tion­able char­ac­ter steer clear, even if they are highly tal­ented.  Inevitably it will cost you and it’s not worth the price that you will even­tu­ally have to pay.  At LPC, we keep our fin­ger on the pulse of our staff team’s char­ac­ter by agree­ing to these things: We value con­sis­tent sen­si­tiv­ity to God and the prac­tice of spir­i­tual dis­ci­plines through a com­mit­ment to a daily devo­tional time that includes prayer and God’s Word, a com­mit­ment to sea­sons of fast­ing and prayer, a com­mit­ment to staff com­mu­nity time, a com­mit­ment to tithing to Life­Point as a way of mod­el­ing bib­li­cal stew­ard­ship and a com­mit­ment to attend week­end wor­ship gath­er­ings with fam­ily.  While this list is not exhaus­tive, we feel like it pro­vides us with some basic expec­ta­tions and build­ing blocks that keeps our foun­da­tion strong and healthy.

Core team mem­bers — One of the things that has been most inter­est­ing to me in the church plant­ing process is to see how God has shaped and drawn peo­ple (church mem­bers) to be a part of his vision for what he wanted to do through Life­Point, espe­cially in the early days. I don’t know why but early on I tended to think more about lead­er­ship in terms of staff team mem­bers than core team mem­bers but I quickly dis­cov­ered that God had shaped and called core team mem­bers to come along side of us and make his vision a real­ity.  While their roles looked dif­fer­ent than the roles of our staff team, these were the men and women who came along side of us early on in our dif­fer­ent core value areas and helped to make those things hap­pen week in and week out.  Many of them were as tal­ented and pas­sion­ate about our core val­ues as the staff team mem­ber who was lead­ing that area and they often offered a unique skill and per­spec­tive that made things expo­nen­tially bet­ter than any of us ever imag­ined.  Here are some things that we learned were impor­tant as we led our core team mem­bers in the launch process.

Clearly com­mu­ni­cate the vision that God has given you — If God has called you to be the leader then he has given you a vision for what he wants you to do.  While you def­i­nitely have to be flex­i­ble and at times adjust your approach to bet­ter match the cul­ture and peo­ple that you are try­ing to impact, you have to be care­ful to stay on track with your vision.  It’s so easy to get dis­tracted or side­tracked because there are a lot of great min­istry mod­els out there but you can’t do them all and you surely can’t do them all well.  So it’s impor­tant that you com­mu­ni­cate and clar­ify what you believe God has called the church body that you lead to be about so that the peo­ple who join you in the jour­ney know where you are (and maybe equally as impor­tant where are not) going as you move forward.

Be sen­si­tive to input from core team mem­bers — As you try to fine tune your vision in the field I think it’s a really good idea to be sen­si­tive to input from the peo­ple that God sends your way.  This is def­i­nitely a del­i­cate bal­ance, you have to be the leader so don’t relin­quish your lead­er­ship role but lis­ten to the peo­ple who you sense are gen­uinely sen­si­tive to the things of God and the Holy Spirit and who seem will­ing to link arms with you, fol­low your lead­er­ship and pur­sue the vision that God has given you as the pas­tor.  While their roles are dif­fer­ent, the right peo­ple with the right spirit and heart will be a major sup­port sys­tem as you lead the church for­ward.  I think it’s impor­tant to clar­ify that I’m not talk­ing about the peo­ple who come with their own agenda (and those peo­ple will come) but peo­ple who seem to be in step with what God is doing in the church and local com­mu­nity that he has placed you in.

Under­stand that there may be an ebb & flow on your teams — As we have moved through dif­fer­ent life cycles and stages here at Life­Point, we have dis­cov­ered that at times, key lead­ers (both staff team and core team mem­bers) will come and go.  Some will move, some will go to other churches and some might just fall away.  It doesn’t nec­es­sar­ily mean that you are doing some­thing wrong.  It just seems that at times, God sends peo­ple to the body who have spe­cific gifts and skill sets to lead in dif­fer­ent phases.  Some will come and stick but some will come and do what they do well for a short time and then move on, so don’t get dis­cour­aged or overly con­cerned if some peo­ple leave.  Obvi­ously you want to do every­thing that you can to cre­ate envi­ron­ments where peo­ple feel pas­sion­ate about plant­ing their lives long term, so don’t be abra­sive or inten­tion­ally push peo­ple away but remem­ber that God has called peo­ple to be a part of His vision for the church that He is build­ing under your lead­er­ship so trust His tim­ing and plan if your teams change from time to time in the course of your ministry.