Church Plant--Day 1 (341 Days to launch)

We are squarely in what I would call the listening/networking phase of our church plant. It's about listening to God and listening to people. We are listening to stories of successful and not-so-successful church plants, about their call, their philosophy of ministry, annual budgets, full time staff. (Some of the planting successes we are looking at: Discovery Church, Simi Valley, California; Elevation Church, Charlotte, North Carolina; Redrock Church, Colorado Springs, Colorado; Gold Coast Church, Camarillo, California; Northbridge Community Church, Pennsylvania, Carson Valley Christian Center, Minden, Nevada.) Its about God's story and their little part in His Kingdom work. It's about listening to ministry successes and failures and learning from both. It's about networking with people we don't yet know and reconnecting with those that we do. At the end of this phase I hope to have

1. a filter to refine our ministry model
2. leads on where funding is going to come from.
3. an estimated cost of staffing for launch
4. an estimated cost of producing the environments God is calling us to create
5. a clearly defined relationship with our church planting associations
6. a list of potential individual supporters
7. a list of potential church partners
8. facility leads
9. core team leads

By January we hope to be well into Phase II:planning (Vision & business plan) and building the core team. Then, Phase III: Fundraising; Phase IV: Building a launch team and preview services.