The Church Planting Checklist: Every Area You'll Need to Cover

Every church planter asks some version of the same question: what do I actually need to get done to accomplish this vision? The answer of course depends on your model, your community and your calling. After twenty years of coaching more than 200 church planters from all sorts of contexts and models, I can tell you that there's a lot of overlap. There are several things almost every plant works through, and the order you take them in matters.

This guide walks through those areas, why they come in the order they do, and the mistakes I see most often, including the one planters are surprised by: working on the checklist too much.

Where this list came from

I was on the planting team of LifePointe Christian Church in Charlotte, North Carolina, in 2004. Since then I've coached planters through several networks and denominations, and whenever I coach a planter I have one eye on their task list.

The checklist grew over the years. Every time I watched a planter hit a problem we could have seen coming, it got a little sharper. Today it's 171 tasks across 21 areas. The most valuable part isn't the tasks themselves. It's what each task depends on, the understanding a good coach carries around in their head about what has to happen next.

The 21 areas, in three parts

The areas fall into three parts, and which parts you need depends on how you're planting.

Part one: what every plant needs, whatever its model. This includes micro churches and house churches.

1. Soul Care
2. Prayer
3. Team Building
4. Learning Your Community
5. Establishing an Evangelistic Culture
6. Vision
7. Discipleship
8. Leadership
9. Funding the Vision
10. Establishing a Healthy Management Team

Part two: the legal and financial setup. Almost every plant needs this part.

11. Legal Formation
12. Financial Systems
13. Church Office Systems

Part three: for plants that will start with a public worship gathering.

14. Branding and Marketing
15. Staffing
16. Children and Youth
17. Worship Service
18. Facility
19. Equipment
20. Ministry Teams
21. Assimilation

Why the order matters

The most common out-of-order mistake I see is naming the church too early. I've watched planters pick a name before they've gotten to know their community. Some do it before they even live there.

"Determine a Name for the Church" is a branding task, and its prerequisite is learning your community. I've coached planters who had to rename their church after they got to know their neighbors and discovered the name was confusing, or offensive in a way they couldn't have known before getting to know the people. A new name means a new logo, a new website, new signs and a lot of explaining, all of it avoidable.

Start with prayer and soul care

There is a lot to get done, and planters tend to prioritize the practical things that feel like progress. Theologically, every planter I've coached believes in prayer, in following the voice of God, and that it's God who brings the increase in people and in funds. In practice, many of them run ahead without the prayer. Putting prayer near the top of the list makes it the foundation for everything that follows.

Soul care is up front for a similar reason, plus a few more:

• This is spiritual work. The rhythm is also different from anything you've done before. What sustained you spiritually in your last season needs a fresh look, which is why one of the first tasks is "Develop a Personal Strategy for Soul Care."
• Spiritual attack is real. I often say the one universal of church planting is spiritual attack. I've seen it too many times to count. Most planters believe it can happen, but few have experienced it the way they will when they plant.
• It's a marathon, not a sprint. Planters can burn themselves out in pre-launch just trying to get the church started. The pace only gets more intense after launch, so finding healthy boundaries and rhythms now is necessary for the long haul.

Build the team early

Team building is third on the list, ahead of almost all of the practical work, because it is your most important work. Planting a church is about making disciples and equipping leaders. Everything else on the list exists to support that. Start with people early, and keep people at the center the whole way through.

The paperwork nobody trained you for

Legal formation, financial systems and church office systems are the parts nobody covers in seminary or church planting training. They're a lot of details and a lot of paperwork. Without them in place, you can't get paid and you can't deposit an offering.

The steps build on each other, and some take weeks. "Obtain a Federal Employer Identification Number" is a good example. It's one link in a chain that starts with incorporating and runs through opening a bank account, setting up giving and running payroll. Miss a link, or start it late, and everything behind it waits.

Keeping track of the details is what keeps you from mistakes that cost you money or time. Rules vary by state, so treat this as general information and talk to an attorney or CPA about your own situation.

What starts too late: the facility

If your plant will gather publicly, the facility search is the area I most often see started too late. Renting or leasing a space takes a long time: exploring the options, negotiating and getting to a contract.

That contract is critical. Until you "Obtain a Facility Contract in Writing," you're carrying a lot of risk. The marketing you've done may point people to the wrong place, and the equipment you're buying for that space could be wasted if the deal falls through. Get it in writing!

Equipment has its own long tail too. It has to be identified, purchased, shipped and assembled, and then your team has to learn to use it. That's why "Conduct a Dry Run Training/Assembly Event with the New Equipment" sits near the end of a chain that starts with the facility. When the facility is late, everything downstream of it gets squeezed into the weeks right before launch, which is exactly when you have the least room.

The most common mistake: working the checklist too much

This one surprises people. The most common way I see planters misuse a checklist is working on it too much.

Planting is hard. In pre-launch you don't have a weekly worship service to prepare for, and for many planters that's what ministry has always felt like. So it can feel like nothing is being accomplished, especially when fundraising or launch team building stalls for a while. In those moments the checklist is tempting. Checking off a task gives you the feeling that you're getting something done.

But planting a church is about making disciples and developing leaders, not about checklists. A good checklist should give you more time with people, not less. It handles the details so you can stop carrying them in your head, and it tells you what can wait.

When to start, and what to do if you're already months in

Start the checklist early. If your network or denomination does a church planting assessment, start right after it. If not, start the moment you're called to the work. For what to focus on at each stage after that, see the church plant launch timeline.

If you're already months in and feel behind, you've likely done more than you think. Go through the list and start marking off what's done. Most planters find they aren't as far behind as they feared, and they're glad to catch the handful of things they missed before those things cost them anything. From there, the checklist keeps you from missing anything else.

Turn the checklist into a roadmap

LaunchPath is the checklist I use with the planters I coach, built as a living roadmap instead of a document. You set your launch date. Every task is paced backward from it, tasks open up as their prerequisites are finished, and your team and coach can work it with you.

You can start free. The free version shows the whole structure: all 171 tasks with their dependencies, paced to your real launch date, and the Soul Care tasks are fully open. When you're ready to work the full playbook, one license unlocks your plant.