Building a Launch Team

For us, building a launch team has been a challenging experience.  We fall under the classification of a "parachute" church-plant, so we literally dropped into our community with 2 contacts of people who "might" be interested in knowing more about our church plant.  Starting cold turkey on building a launch team has taught us some valuable lessons.  Every day we learn more about how to dissect this challenge of growing a team.

One of the questions we have found ourselves asking over the last few months is, "When do you begin meeting as a launch team?"  Our approach from the very beginning was to get into our community, period!  The first several months we focused on meeting people in any way possible.  We signed our son up for summer sports, joined community affinity groups such as a local mom's clubs (well, at least Lynnlee did), Chris signed on as a substitute teacher in the schools, and we have had more than one "God-appointed" conversation sitting in a local cafe.  It's amazing, when you start walking with your ears open for opportunities to have a conversation with someone, God opens the doors.  We have hosted many dinners in our home with families and have occasionally met families at a local restaurant.

There have been some relationships that we have established that will continue to be just that - a connection with someone in our community.  By taking the time to get to know families in our community, we have been able to identify those who are interested in knowing more about Northpoint, and those who God has placed in our lives simply for friendship and fellowship.  

The challenge for us wasn't getting in our community and meeting people.  The challenge for us came when we had to make the decision of when to begin meeting as a launch team with those people we had identified as potential members.  We had to ask ourselves how long we realistically felt we could continue to meet individually with various potential members before they would lose interest in joining a launch team.  We didn't want to jump too soon, but we also didn't want to stall people.  

The following is what it looked like for us.  We moved to our community in July and focused on relationship building for several months.   Many of our weekends were committed to traveling to other churches to gain financial support and to build our prayer force, so weekdays were very valuable to us.  We spent time in our community working at local coffee shops and restaurants.  We invited people into our home consistently for cookouts and game nights.  We got our kids together with other kids for play dates and sports.  We identified the people who were interested in knowing more about our team and grew those relationships to a deeper level.  We began to plant the seed that we were going to start meeting as a launch team at the beginning of the year.     

At the same time, we were asking ourselves if it would be better to continue to grow our existing relationships and build new ones before venturing out with a new launch team.   For us, the right choice has been to start meeting with the people who want to be a part of our launch team, and fire them up to connect people in their area of influence to our team. was to start meeting as a launch team at the beginning of this year.  We have been meeting with our team every week for two months and are consistently growing in numbers.  Our team is fired up and ready to tell people they know how to get involved at Northpoint.  

Our focus is to build, build, build our launch team.  In his blog, Planting Churches, Doug Foltz,       shares this startling statistic - of 88 churches surveyed, those who, on opening Sunday, started with a launch team of 40 or less had a morning attendance of 142.   Those who, on opening Sunday, started with a launch team of 41 or more had a morning attendance of 340.  That tells us one thing - we must build a strong launch team!  God is opening doors for us to partner with other churches in our city as we build our launch team.  We have learned through some very valuable resources and workshops that successful launch teams are approached with a 360 degree viewpoint.  Our team can consist of many different "types" of people.  Some will be with us permanently and some will be with us for a season until our feet are firmly on the ground.  

The name of the game here is to grow your team!  Look at growing your team from many angles and establish relationships through many avenues.  This is one of the most critical stages of the church planting process, and one of the most rewarding as you meet new people in your community and excitement builds.

Enjoy the journey!