Six years ago my wife and I jumped out of a plane without a parachute. After six years of marriage and two children, we decided that God was leading us to start Northwood Church in Houston, Texas. We were 24 years old, had held one ministry position, and really had no experience or training that would indicate this would be a successful endeavor.

Our launch plan consisted of three simple steps:
1.    Hear from the Lord
2.    Approach the leadership within our fellowship on Tuesday
3.    Start the church the following Sunday

As you can see there was some pretty in-depth planning that took place. Literally we were given permission to plant the church on Tuesday, and we held our first service that Sunday. You can imagine how it went. We started with six people, no training, no vision, no mission, no core values, and most of all no clue. It was my belief that if you had passion, you could overcome anything else you where lacking.

Boy, was I wrong. The passion was great, but the process almost killed me and nearly destroyed my family. The first few years were pure torture. I didn’t know who I was, so, in turn, I couldn’t lead the church to what it was supposed to be. I didn’t have the leadership skills needed for such a task, so I ended up bruising the people that I was supposed to be building.

Thankfully I met someone who helped transform my view on leadership. One year after the launch we only had about 30 people who regularly attended our church. A man, who I later learned was John Everhart, visited our church a few times and began attending on a regular basis. He started giving to our church and made a pretty significant investment. One day he took me out to lunch at a very fancy restaurant in Houston. Once we were seated he began asking me a long list of questions about the restaurant. “Why do you think they use blue glasses on the tables? Why do you think the wine cellar is visible to the customers? Why do you think they use the decorations and uniforms that they use?” I had no idea.

After we had finished eating, John called the owner of the restaurant over to our table. “Why is it that you use blue glasses?” John asked him. “We use blue glasses for lunch because blue is the color of business and a lot of lunch meetings take place here. At night we use purple glasses because it’s a romantic color and symbolizes royalty. People come here on dates or to celebrate anniversaries and want to feel like royalty.” John continued to ask the owner the same list of questions he had just asked me. The difference was that the restaurant owner had an answer for each of John’s questions.

The owner left our table and as he walked away, John turned to me and said, “Everything this restaurant does is intentional. Nothing about your church is intentional. You’re just going through the motions. You figured out what you’re supposed to do, but haven’t intentionally defined why you do it.” He had a point.

Over the next year, John and I made it a point to meet twice a week. During those meetings John coached me and trained me on leadership principles. Once we started to walk through leadership training on how to stay focused and how to continue to evaluate progress, that’s when the church took off.

It used to be that when people went out to plant another church, it was as if they were pushed out of an airplane without a parachute. They had no instructions, no one to train them, and no one to act as a coach who would see them through the process. Thankfully, today there are things that planters can do to prepare for the process.

In 2000, Charles Ridley did a study of numerous successful church planters. Based on this study he came up with thirteen qualities that were illustrated in each individual. What we have done is taken those thirteen qualities and connected it with a habitude to correctly illustrate the leadership principle.

Order Habitudes today for your entire team and prepare yourself to carry out the vision and calling that God has placed on your life with intentionality.