Value the Planning Time You Get in Pre-Launch. You Won’t Get It Back.

One thing I always tell church planters is that the pre-launch time while busy, is not nearly as busy as it will be after you start the church.  In doing an evaluation time with a planter who started this past Fall, I asked, “What do you know now that you wished you knew during pre-launch.”  He answered that he wished he had taken better advantage of the time he had during pre-launch to plan systems and build teams.  He mentioned that, he knew the systems would be valuable, but didn’t realize how valuable until after he started the church and needed them in place.

Once you start the church you have the weekly grind of preparing for worship services that consumes a good portion of your time.  Many established pastors would love to have a week off with no distractions to dream about the vision of the church and to work on tweaking internal systems.  The fact is that time is rare, especially for church planters who often don’t have the staff and resources available to established churches.

My advice is simple.  Work hard during the pre-launch period.  Get all of your systems in place early and begin running them with your launch team prior to starting the church.  Iron the bugs out early and make sure that your systems are scalable for growth.  Have your coach and other pastors that you trust poke holes in your systems and help you make them better.  You won’t ever have a block of time for planning as big as the one you have during pre-launch.  Don’t take it for granted.  Remember, that while it’s busy during pre-launch, it will be even busier once you start the church.