Plan A
Get clear on what you are trying to accomplish.
Key questions to ask involve what God is saying, both prophetically and scripturally.
Look at the community you will be working in. What is it like?
Look at what resources you have to work with.
Come up with a plan for how you will accomplish your objective.
This is Plan A.
Plan B
Hopefully Plan A will work.
Usually it doesn’t.
Come up with a few alternative strategies.
As you hit roadblocks or obstacles, or as your initial plans prove less fruitful than you expected, you will need to pivot and try something new.
If need be, what different approaches could you use to reach your objective?
This is Plan B.
You shouldn’t wait until Plan A fails to think of it.
Plan Z
This is the plan that many church planters don’t like to think about.
What is the worst case scenario?
What happens if it all falls flat?
We do want to be entrepreneurial and adventurous in church planting.
We want to take some risks.
But we don’t want to leave a trail of broken families and core teams in our wake.
And we don’t want the communities we are working with to end up feeling abandoned.
Figure out what happens if your church plant doesn’t work.
Where will your family find spiritual nourishment?
How will your core team be cared for?
In what ways can you still be effective in ministry?
How will the Kingdom of God move forward?
You need to figure out good answers to these questions before you start.
This is plan Z.
When you have a good plan Z, it liberates you to take the risks needed to make plan A work.