What Does a Church Planter Do Before He Has a Church?

Most church goers probably think they have a basic idea of what a preacher does: sermon preparation, hospital visits, studying, staff meetings, elders meetings, counseling, planning, and so on. But, I know many of you must be wondering, "What exactly does a church planter do before he has a church?" There's no sermon prep when there are no sermons. No hospital visits or counseling until you have members. No staff or elders meetings.

So what does a church planter do (besides writing blogs about what he does)?

Planting churches has become something of a science. There are books and seminars and organizations and even academic programs devoted to the subject. They have the process worked out so thoroughly that there is actually web-based project management software that spells out everything that needs to be done from the decision to plant a church through the launch of the first public worship service. The various tasks and projects—all 286 of them!—are organized into various categories with important milestones marked along the way, all with due dates assigned and recommended reading. I even have a coach who just works with me on the tasks laid out in the software.

These tasks include training, such as going to "boot camp" (we went to two of them in January) and to the national church planting conference last month, visiting other church plants, and lots of reading (I wish I was a speed reader!). They include weekly phone conversations with my church planting coach, bi-weekly calls with the project management coach, and monthly meetings with a management team (representatives of the churches and ministries supporting us). The tasks include big projects like developing the church planting model we will use, networking with community leaders, designing promotional materials for fundraising and recruiting, and forming a prayer team. They also include all sorts of smaller but necessary tasks, such as filing incorporation papers with the state, getting a post office box, and buying an all-in-one printer/fax/copier.

So far, according to the project dashboard, I've completed 170 of the tasks (59.4%) and I'm only overdue on 10 (3.5%) of them (not too bad since I just lost 2 weeks to a conference and a cruise—and besides, 2 of them aren't really my fault!). That means I only have 116 tasks to go…