10 Tips For Starting a New Ministry

One of the things I have discovered I like doing is ministry start-ups.  In the past couple of years I have started a couple of significant ministries including paid government school Chaplaincy in New Zealand, administered by the LifeWalk trust.  This sees committed and compassionate Christians serving a school community a minimum of three days a week.  They have an office in the school and are treated as part of the staff team as they offer prayer support and pastoral care to students and staff.  Another ministry I started was the Anglican Cathedral in Second Life church plant which founded nearly two years ago, now offers 5 services, a Bible Study and a very lively discussion group each week as well as numerous informal pastoral conversations.  It has very quickly become a legitimate experience of church.

So from the hard slog of experience here are my 10 tips for starting a new ministry…

1)  Test the idea.  Ask people who know what they are talking about what they think about the idea.  Then be prepared to refine the idea.  This stage is crucial and if done well can save you a lot of heartache.  Make sure you get blunt feedback.  How can you tell? Be worried if everyone smiles and says its a nice idea!

2)  Create a compelling vision.  What will this new ministry look like?  How will it be effective? Then share that vision as often as you can.  The vision of my church plant is to be church wherever you are whatever your circumstance; to offer church community amongst the growing internet community.

 3)  Be prepared to be hugely discouraged.  Every new start-up will hit resistance when what seems like insurmountable challenges come and slap you in the face.   Push through this resistance as it won’t last.  I remember I reached a point about 6 months into the process of starting the professional school chaplaincy program when I seriously questioned whether it was worth continuing.  We needed funds to take the next step and it wasn’t happening. I remember I came before God and spent ages praying, seeking God’s will.  Then inspired I jumped up, grabbed a phone and started calling wealthy Christians I knew.  By the end of the day I had raised more than $50,000 and we were able to take the next step.

4)  Get a buzz going.  Through setting up a blog, commenting on influential blogs in your interest area, building groups and pages on Facebook, chatting to journalists and experts  - get people talking about your idea.  My promotion budget for the church plant is zero and yet thanks to blog posts, TV, radio, magazine and newspaper stories it has become quite well known within the Christian community.  (Click here for an example.)

 5)  Be comfortable with people not getting your vision immediately.  Some people take a little longer to come along.  With one of my start ups I needed the support of a senior church leader and after making a presentation to him he was cold boardering on rude.  8 months later that same leader came up to me with a wry smile on his face and declared, ‘Mark, now I get it!’

 6)  Regularly answer the question, ‘Is it about me or is it about God?’  With any new ministry we have to keep a close tab on our personal agenda.  It is very easy to become too egocentric or too personally involved in a start up.  A healthy way to deal with it is to give it over to God, and to keep a servant attitude. This is something absolutely key for me, I am prone to being proud, to using my ministry success to reflect well on me; but in reality all that has been achieved would not have happened without God, but also without an amazing team.  I am just one of the crowd serving God. Good place to be.  Which leads nicely onto seven..

 7) Discover and encourage great people to get involved.  As soon as possible you need to identify and recruit others to get involved. Including yourself you need to cover the three basic roles of any ministry leadership team:  Visionary, Details Person and Pastoral carer.  The Anglican Cathedral ministry has an amazing leadership team and the small part I play is the visionary. I literally grind to a halt without a details person, and I am poor at building a community without that pastoral person.

 8)  Try to move on from the ‘what will the ministry founder think?’ attitude.  As the ministry start up grows the danger is that the leadership team and community become too dependent on you as the founder.  The way around this is to get really good at delegating and trusting others.  With both the chaplaincy and the church plant I made sure that significant steps in the development of the community were headed up by others, and I strongly affirmed their ongoing leadership.

9)  Tackle the hard stuff.  I think it is the role of the leader to tackle the really difficult stuff of start ups - finding money and resources, dealing with conflict, and so on..  Not necessarily alone, involve the team, but the founder needs to really step up when it gets tough.  In one of my start ups there was a heated theological discussion which at first I encouraged in the hope of finding common ground, but I actually ended up shutting the discussion down as I could see it was becoming pointlessly damaging.

10)  Pray without ceasing!!!  I remember in the first few months of starting services in the virtual world of Second Life that my service would begin at 10am and at 10.05am I was in the virtual Cathedral praying that just one person would show up!  And I am about to start another service so here I go again!

And finally, if you have a cool idea - go for it! 

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