Behind The Ridge: So What Do You Do Right Before You Launch A Church?

A few months ago I began to think about what the month before our launch would look like and I asked the question, “what do you do right before you launch a church?”  The simple answer is PRAY…a lot.  But there are a few tasks driven in between as well.  So in Behind The Ridge syle, here’s a little of what I’ve been doing and will be doing in prep for launch of The Ridge Community Church.

• Devoting even more time to prayer.  It’s crunch time and it’s time to really step things up in this area.  We can’t launch this church on our own and have no intentions to do so.  We are EXPECTING God to do BIG things as we call out to Him.  Some folks and I on our team are fasting once a week (at the very least) and I’m begging God to do something HUGE for this county!
• Meeting with even more leaders.  Just like the first few months of getting the ball rolling with our church, the last one is laden with meetings of other leaders to gain wisdom and insight into planting a church.  Over the course of the next several weeks, I will talk with guys like Josh Roberts, Jeff Calloway, Ben Shoun, JR Lee, Larry Brey, and maybe THIS Guy, THIS Guy, and THIS Guy.  Anyone wanna hook a brother up?
• Visit a few local churches.  Since we are not meeting on Sundays just yet, I want to take the opportunity to go visit a few local churches.  So I’ll head out to Arrowhead, Ridgepoint, and a sponsor church of ours, High Places.
• Get away with my team.  Next weekend our staff/team will head out to Gatlinburg to hide away in a HUGE cabin for the weekend and talk, pray, plan and play.  It’s gonna be a great weekend and I can’t wait!
• Get the website up.  We are 95% done with our new site and hope to have it launched next week.  Once it’s launched, I’m turning over all operations of it to someone on our team to take care of it.  Thanks to Factor 1 Studios for doing such an awesome job on it!
• Seek out some equipment.  Listen up church leaders…..we still need some things and you just might have those things!  I’ll be posting a list of needs and if you feel led to give to those needs, we’ll sure take them!  Takes a lot of “stuff” to plant a church!
• Sign up for a few conferences.  I’ll probably only go to two conferences this year but I’m guessing they are gonna be HUGE!  I’m heading to Unleash in March and The Sticks in May.  These are both gonna be amazing and I’m looking forward to learning, growing, and connecting with other leaders.
• Spend time with my family.  Things are about to get crazy busy, so I want to make sure that I’m getting some good quality time in with my family.  I never want to sacrifice them on the altar of ministry, so this will be a great time to strengthen our relationships.

As if that’s not enough to do, there are a few other tasks at hand that we are working through dealing with structure of our organization, leadership, and planning for down the road.  The next 30 days are gonna be crazy but I wouldn’t trade it for anything else!