A Little Advice for Church Planters; humbly submitted by the least of all church planters

Not exhaustive and someone else has probably said it before me and better than me.

Submit yourself to a thorough evaluation of your calling and readiness to plant. If the evaluators say no, consider carefully whether you should forge ahead in spite of their wisdom. At the very least, get a second opinion.
If your wife is not on board, do not plant.
If you are presently on staff in another church, keep the senior pastor informed of your plans, do not steal sheep, do not burn bridges, and do not believe that it is your right to expect financial help from the church where you’re serving.
Get a planting coach who is familiar with the cultural context where you intend to plant.
Get a counselor.
It is not a sin and you are not less of a man to consider anti-depressants.
Be wary of planting in a context that doesn’t match you or your experiences.
People (and even churches) promise you land, money, their help, and everything else under the sun. Thank them kindly, but don’t count on it until you see it.
While you should be the point leader of the plant, I recommend planting with one other guy. Planting can be an extremely lonely business.
In the same vein, participate in your denominational planter network. If you don’t belong to a denomination, find a planting network to join.
You need to live where you’re planting.
Birth with 50 adults. I say “birth” because birth sounds like something more beautiful and painful than a “launch.” A launch is something NASA does with lots of people and money. You’ll have neither. Also, a launch will culminate in a journey that ends in a matter of days or weeks. A birth produces a baby that needs a lot of attention, learns to crawl and then walk, causes many sleepless nights, and ideally, lives and grows for a long time.
Raise a lot of money before you birth. If you’re uncomfortable with this or don’t know how, get over it and get the training you need to do it.
Act your age. Every time you plan to begin a new ministry, program, outreach or project, ask yourself, “Are we acting our age?” You can only expect so much out of an infant, a toddler, a child, a teenager, etc.
Keep your fingers on the energy pulse of your leaders and attendees. You can wear them out fast.
Say thank you all the time.
Be a good receiver. If someone wants to give you no strings attached money or pay for your meal, just accept it and say thank you and dispense with all the “No, no, I can’t accept that” baloney.
Network.
Get out of your office.
Usually not a good idea to use your house for office space. I recommend asking a local church if they would let you use space – even a Sunday school room.
Don’t whine to your attendees. Find some solid confidantes and whine to them.
Treat every visitor as a gift from God. When you’re a good steward of the gifts God gives, He gives more.
Take a Sabbath.
Expect to be overwhelmed.
Don’t keep your wife in a staff role for more than two years. If possible, avoid it altogether.
Start bi-vocationally if possible and operate that way for one year. You won’t drain away all the money you’ve raised too quickly and you’ll meet people. Some jobs are not suited for bi-vocational work. Choose carefully.
Many people are perfectly willing to chew up your time with lunches, invitations to speak, meet, hang out etc. Guard your time carefully.
Get elders around you who are 100% on board with the vision and mission and. Also choose elders who are not yes men.
Never invite an adversary into a leadership position in the hopes that you will bring him or her around to your way of thinking.
You can over-conference. Go to one or two conferences a year and leave with one or two big take-away items that you want to implement.
People come and go. That’s life.
Volunteer leaders and staff are easy to hire, hard to fire. Choose carefully.
Don’t bash other Christian leaders for any reason.
Focus on planting the church. Don’t get distracted by “great” opportunities. You’re either going to cheat your family or the plant.
Be very selective about which and how many weddings you agree to officiate. You’ll end up losing a number of your spring, summer and fall weekends with your family.
We all know the words that our culture deems to be cursing, foul language, or obscenity. Those words sometimes slip out, but avoid talking this way.
That’s all for now. More seem to occur to me every hour.