Thoughts by Jeffrey Bush
Intended for missionaries preparing to start a church in the very near future.
- Choose tracts — two designs with clear message. You don’t have to know the physical address yet, you can leave an open spot on back to later place the address with an address sticker or with a rubber ink stamp.
- Messages — prepare 250 messages so you can use the majority of your time inviting, evangelizing, and discipling when you begin the church. Remember that your preaching is to help people, so does not have to be deep or a specific type of preaching. You can use other studies, discipleships, and sermon ideas from others. Your goal is to help people know and grow in Christ, not to compare or impress other preachers.
- Discipleship — find a discipleship you will use, or prepare your own. Remember you are working with those you’ll see saved, so make sure you use something that is not intended for people raised in church.
- Web page — you can create a website with everything now (who we are, plan of salvation, our purpose, list of activities), and have it ready to upload when the church is started.
- Church Name — think about and choose a name for the new church. You can use the area of your new church, a Bible name (Berea, Antioch), or something symbolic (Hope, Lighthouse, Faith).
- Logo Design — once you have chosen a church name, pay to have a nice logo created that you can use for your website, sign, tracts, and promotional material.
- Find a Building to rent — the main room needs to seat 40 to 50 people, have at least one bathroom, and one or two small rooms you could use for nursery and/or children’s class. Your target audience should be middle class, not too rich or too poor of an area; common, blue-collared people.
- Order of service — write down an order of service now. Think through churches you have visited and how they do service. Remember that you will be leading almost everything at the beginning with hopes of others participating later. Aim to use only one hour in your service. You want a minimum of 50% of the service to be for preaching, the other portion can be for singing, announcements, offering, explaining a Bible verse, etc. Use every portion of the service to teach; explaining the meaning of a song, memorizing a verse, explaining the offering, etc.