My wife, Joyce, and I planted our local church 29 years ago, Jan. 29, 1984, in the Sunset Park section of Brooklyn, N.Y. We were not sent out with any money and had only a handful of people who volunteered to serve with us. The following is based on all the mistakes I have made as a church planter, and the lessons I wish someone had coached me through.

1. Be sent from your local church. Unfortunately, many send themselves and just “went” instead of being “sent.” The Bible teaches us that we should not preach unless we are “sent” (see Romans 10:15).

This month, I’ve been looking at multiple tools for looking at how people experience your church. Hopefully, these tools are helpful to you as you consider how you interact with people.

However, I think it is important to end the month of church health with the ultimate check up:

Does God show up?

When I first came to pastoral ministries, I was unfamiliar with the weekly rehash of Sunday morning. The pastor would start the conversation: “How did Sunday go?” For me, the only real question was this:

Did God show up?

It is 5:30pm. Sam comes through the door, intent on surprising his wife Sarah. He finds her stirring spaghetti with one child wrapped around her leg, and the other hollering from the bathroom.

Knowing he only has seconds before she is off to help the bathroom child, he whips out his surprise:

“Look what I brought you!” He announces, as he displays a dozen roses.

Sarah glances his direction, while picking up the Klingon on her leg. “Hmmm. Thanks. Can you take out the garbage?”

Not exactly the scenario Sam was looking for.

Gary Chapman tells us how to fix this disconnect in the Five Love Languages. Sam can learn to speak Sarah’s love language in a short amount of time, and those momentary interactions will deepen their relationship instead of leaving them both wanting.

Are you missing prime opportunities to reach and engage the elusive college demographic?

I was introduced to the facts of life the old-fashioned way: working in the breeding pens of a pig farm. I regularly got up close and personal with 500-pound hogs, helping them “maximize their efforts.”

That brutal introduction to breeding taught me more about fertilization and reproduction than a 14-year-old would ever want to know. It also left me with a lot of memories, most of which I have tried hard to forget. One familiar image, however, has stuck in my mind—the illustration of countless sperm cells desperately trying to break into an unfertilized egg to create a new generation. Believe it or not, that is precisely how I see the opportunity to engage young people with the gospel on university campuses.

These days, it’s hard to find a church with any kind of forward momentum that’s not in the business of establishing new churches or satellite congregations. Over the last two decades, the majority of those new church initiatives have targeted suburban young professionals and their growing families. Church leaders focus the balance of their efforts on inner-city neighborhoods or church planting through overseas partnerships.

Two years ago I moved to southern New Hampshire with my family. Prior to that, we had been involved deeply in a church plant for almost a decade—serving in leadership, developing marketing tools, and loving the people in that community like family.

Losing that family was hard; trying to find a new church home was even harder. For more than two years, I visited approximately 20 churches within a half hour from my new home. These churches ranged from tiny (40 people) to huge (more than 3,000). They were evangelical, mainline, charismatic, denominational and independent. I heard hard rock gospel music, traditional hymns set to organ music and everything in between.

The key lies in knowing how to develop strong leaders

Strong, healthy small-group ministries succeed because they develop strong, healthy small-group leaders. So, naturally, one of the top concerns ministry leaders have is how to develop strong group leaders. How can you be sure they’ll lead well? What will slow down the turnover rate? How do you get more people to lead?

Healthy leaders are empowered leaders. Empowered leaders are trained for success and entrusted with authority.