The Launch

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Use these five steps to launch a successful ministry.

by Don Cousins | posted 4/04/2007

Topics:	Goals, Launching, Leadership, Planning, Purpose, Strategy, Values, Vision
Filters:	Director, Leader, Pastor, Start, Youth Pastor
Purpose:	Ministry
References:	Matthew 16:18-19
Date Added:	April 04, 2007

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As a whole, ministers are rarely accused of not working hard. But I want to make sure I'm also working smart.

When I look at the marketplace, which I often do as a strategist, I see leaders who are forced to work smart because there's a bottom line telling them if their strategies are working. But in the ministry, the bottom line remains more intangible. It's difficult to evaluate how well we're doing, so we tend to work hard and pray hard and trust God that the "bottom line" will turn out to his liking.

I try to work hard, pray diligently, and trust God. But I don't want to spin my wheels using unproductive strategies. So I've learned to be specific about what it is we're trying to accomplish.

The following five steps, we've found, are central to successfully launching a ministry.

1. Build on leadership, not need

Ask most leaders, "On what basis do you start a ministry?" and the reply is, "We see a need, and we try to meet it."

According to our experience, that's a good answer, but not the best. We've found need is an insufficient foundation. We start with leadership. Any endeavor that works seems to require a leader.

Traditionally, as pastors we feel we have three options when confronted with a need. Let's say there's rumbling about the lack of a junior high program. What can we do?

First, the pastor can run a program personally. In most cases, that adds an eleventh hat to a person struggling under the weight of ten. And maybe the pastor has few qualifications or little interest in junior high ministry.

Second, some pastors can ask a staff member to take on the ministry. But often the CE director ends up doing children's ministry, junior high, high school, college, and singles, and none of them well. Why? Because it's not humanly possible to do a great job in five different ministries.

A third option is to turn to some well-intentioned parents. That creates problems of capability and continuity. Are the parents trained? Well-intentioned parents often just don't know how to direct a program that builds the kids' Christian maturity, and I've found a poor youth program is often worse than none. Also, when their kids graduate, it's amazing how suddenly parents' motivation is gone!

Since none of these traditional options looked promising, we searched for a different approach. In one sense, everything does start with a need, because we wouldn't look for leadership if there weren't a need. But we've made the difficult decision of putting any need on hold until we find qualified leaders who can make that ministry their specialty.

At Willow Creek we went four years without a junior high ministry—no youth meetings, no Sunday school, nothing. Parents came to us asking what we were doing for junior high kids, and we had to gulp and say, "Right now we can't meet your needs, although we're working on it."

We took a lot of heat from parents when there was nothing for their kids, but to do something first-rate takes specialized leaders.

2. Settle on one purpose

Once we've found the key leader, we assemble a think tank—five or six individuals who begin to brainstorm about the ministry. The group typically consists of the person who will lead the ministry, two or three other people who have a passion and a corresponding giftedness for that ministry, and one or two staff members or strategic-thinking elders. We aim for a mix of people, though each should be adept at thinking analytically about purpose and philosophy.

This think tank may gather once for a day or regularly for several months. As we planned Willow Creek's missions ministry, eight or nine of us met several hours a month for a year, and between meetings participants pursued intensive research.

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