Do you dream of starting your own church? Maybe it’s something that’s been on your heart for a while or even something that’s been spoken over you.
It can feel like a daunting task ahead, especially if you’re brand new to it. But at a time in the world where there is so much uncertainty, you can have confidence that the church can bring a voice of hope.
If you’re wondering how to start a church, we’re going to take a look at 7 helpful steps you can take to give yourself the best chance of growing a healthy community of believers. Let’s dive into these tips for starting a church!
Contents
1. Personal Preparation
Starting a church is a huge undertaking. Depending on the type of church you’re looking to start, you might want to look into studying if you haven’t already. Beyond that, there are a few things that it’s important to do in order to prepare yourself for the road ahead.
Find a Mentor
One of the biggest lies you can tell yourself is that you can do this alone. You may have great ideas, loads of motivation, and the knowledge to execute your plans, but without someone to stay accountable to, you’re setting yourself up for a tough time.
Set Boundaries
It will be easy to commit all your time and efforts into running and pastoring a church, so it’s important right at the start to make sure you manage your time well. If you’re married, remember your marriage is more important than your ministry.
Have a Strong Devotional Life
You don’t want to be rocked this way and that by the world, and the best way to stay steadfast in your faith is to devote yourself to prayer and the study of God’s word.
Make Sure You’re Allowed to Carry Out Official Ceremonies
Whether you want to marry people or conduct funerals, you’ll need to be ordained. Ordainment is a term that means you’re elevated to the level of clergy and are consecrated and called to ministry. It’s a spiritual elevation, but in many states you’re required by law to be ordained in order to perform certain rites and ceremonies.
2. Start Small and Authentic
If you have dreams of being the next Steven Furtick with a huge church of thousands of people, it’s time to take your head out of the clouds. A strong, successful church will start with a nucleus of devoted people who care for each other, and for the Kingdom.
3. Name Your Church
One of the most exciting parts of setting up a new church is coming up with a name. Are you part of a certain denomination? Or are you completely free to call yourself whatever you like?
Try not to fall into any traps coming up with church names. Pandering to what you think will be popular or “cool” might leave you looking outdated and desperate in a few years! Make your church name something that reflects you, your community, and your heart.
4. Set a Strong Vision and Goals
A small gathering of people who meet together to study the word, encourage each other, and worship. This is a church. It doesn’t need to have a building, aspire, an organ, or a pulpit. It doesn’t need a band, a stage, or a microphone.
But what it does need is a vision and goals. But not just any goals. Set goals that need God’s intervention to achieve them.
A church vision may be to see a city reached with the gospel. It could just be a neighborhood or even a certain group of people. Make sure you have goals along the way to achieving your vision, whatever that is.
A church without a vision lacks direction, and will probably end up being spread too thinly across various ministries.
5. Disciple People Well From the Beginning
As a church grows, teaching and growing people becomes more of a challenge to do by yourself, or even as a small group of leaders. You want people to be on their own journey toward being able to minister to and lead others.
As people grow in their faith, their knowledge of Christ, and the Bible, they’ll start to be able to share the load as new people come into the church family.
So, have a strong discipleship program in place from the start. It’s worth mentioning, though, that your main aim of discipleship shouldn’t be to ultimately decrease your workload but to love people and desire to see them grow in their faith. You don’t want people feeling like they are being used!
6. Reach Out to the Community
So, you’ve started your church! You’re meeting regularly, and maybe a few friends have stepped away from their churches in faith to support you in your new ministry. What next?
Jesus said, “go and make disciples”. There will be a point where you need to head outside the doors of the church (even if it’s in your house) and be the church in your community. This means loving and serving the people around you. Volunteer at local shelters, pay for a stranger’s shopping… the opportunities are endless!
Again, it’s worth mentioning that “getting people into church” shouldn’t be your end goal here. Love people because it’s what Jesus would do!
Once you do start getting people in, you might want to find ways to manage and coordinate things from memberships to meetings. Or even if you’re wondering how to retain church members—consider investing in some Church Software to make this a less daunting task.
7. Pray
This is the last point on the list, but it’s the most important one. A church that isn’t built on a foundation of prayer will quickly lose its way, its identity, and its vision.
Pray regularly, both individually and corporately. We believe in a present and active God, so engage with him. He is willing and able to guide you on this journey.
Now You Know How to Start a Church
If you’ve been wondering how to start a church, the steps in this article will hopefully take some of the uncertainty away as you venture out into what can be a complicated, scary, and exciting journey!
If you enjoyed this article, check out the People Interest section of the blog for more interesting articles.
