The question might also be phrased as “did the church ever plan a crusade?” In hindsight we now label various crusades - the First, Second, etc. - and sometimes describe other military expeditions as crusades too, but sometimes not. King Sigurd’s expedition around 1110 might be called the “Norwegian Crusade”, but for example, Count Philip of Flanders brought military forces to the east several times in the 12th century, and those are never called a “crusade”. What is a crusade anyway? No one in the Middle Ages had a definition or even a name for a crusade - the word was invented by later historians.

It’s also not entirely evident that what we call the First Crusade in 1095 was intended to be anything different than previous “multinational” expeditions against Muslims in Spain, Sicily, and elsewhere in the Mediterranean. For example, several future crusaders took part in an expedition against Tudela in Spain in 1087. So the concept of people from different places getting together and fighting Muslims with Papal support/approval wasn’t new. Going to Jerusalem also wasn’t new - pilgrimages never stopped, there was an enormous pilgrimage from Germany in 1064-65, and some crusaders had already visited Jerusalem as pilgrims. The novelty of 1095 was that a multinational expedition was being sent east to help out the Byzantine Empire, and somehow (it’s not really clear how), everyone got it into their heads that they could keep going and conquer Jerusalem - a military pilgrimage.

This is a bit of a pedantic academic argument though, and medieval people clearly thought they were doing something new even if they called it “the journey” or “the armed pilgrimage” or “the eastern affair” or similar names. So, how did they plan for this armed pilgrimage?

Recruitment

For the First Crusade, Pope Urban II organized a church council at Clermont in France and explained it to all the monks and priests and bishops who participated, who then spread the message back home in their own dioceses. Urban also travelled around France talking about it himself, and sent letters as well. Other people spread the news as well (such as preachers like Peter the Hermit). Urban personally recruited some of the major leaders, like Adhemar of Le Puy and Count Raymond IV of Toulouse. Some other pretty powerful people joined up too - Duke Robert II of Normandy, Duke Godfrey of Lorraine, Prince Bohemond of Taranto, among others. They weren’t really targeted specifically, but if they had the means and opportunity, they could join in.

Later crusaders were recruited this way too - letters were exchanged or discussions held in person between rulers (Richard I and Philip II for the Third Crusade), or the Pope would ask someone to lead a crusade directly (Louis IX, Frederick II). New crusades were sometimes called in response to some specific event - the fall of Edessa in 1144 led to the Second Crusade, the fall of Jerusalem in 1187 led to the Third, Louis IX’s first crusade (sometimes numbered the Seventh) was in response to Jerusalem being lost again in 1244. The popes sometimes addressed specific kings, typically the kings of France and England, and the King of Germany/Holy Roman Emperor.

If a major secular ruler committed to going on crusade they would raise their own armies. There’s a pretty hilarious scene in one of the recent Robin Hood movies where Robin gets a draft letter in the mail (“for the Third Crusade”). Amazingly enough that’s not how a crusader army was raised, haha. King Richard, for example, might expect his most notable vassals to come on crusade with him, and they would bring their own vassals who also had their own men, and so on, until he had a big army. Going on crusade would probably raise your prestige so people sometimes chose to go if they thought it was good for their reputation, even if it wasn’t otherwise very beneficial. But they weren’t really obliged to come along. For example, Jean of Joinville, who chronicled Louis IX’s first crusade in 1248, refused to go on Louis’ second expedition in 1270.

Recruitment was often done through family connections. For the First Crusade, Godfrey’s brothers Baldwin and Eustace accompanied him, as did another relative also named Baldwin (Godfrey and both Baldwins eventually all became kings of Jerusalem). Bohemond’s army included his cousin Tancred. Louis IX’s brothers accompanied him in the thirteenth century. Sometimes going on crusade became a family tradition - you might join any new expedition simply because your father or grandfather had done so in the past. Even relatively insignificant local castellans joined up with their families - for example the brothers Alexander and Assein of Archiac, a small castle in western France. We don’t know anything else about them except that they went on the Fifth Crusade together.

For crusades that weren’t led by a a king or other major aristocratic ruler, recruitment must have also occurred through letters and word of mouth, even if it’s less obvious int he historical record. For example the crusader fleet that captured Lisbon during the Second Crusade wasn’t directly related to the main wave of the crusade led by Louis VII of France and Conrad II of Germany. It was organized by local knights and merchants from England, Normandy, and the Netherlands - but they managed to coordinate their fleets and set a departure date, just like kings did.

Funding

Funding was always an enormous problem. Going on crusade was very expensive, so should individuals be expected to pay their own way, or could their leaders pay them? And where did the leaders get that money from?

For the First Crusade everyone was kind of on their own. If you were rich enough to go and support yourself/your army, then there was no problem, but some crusaders had to sell off a lot of their lands or possessions to temporarily raise money. They could sell property to churches or monasteries, with the provision that it would be returned to them if they survived and came back home. Property was often also mortgaged to family members (temporarily or permanently). In extreme circumstances a ruler could even sell an entire territory - Godfrey of Bouillon was the Duke of Lower Lorraine, but sold his land to the local bishops of Liège and Verdun in order to raise money.

Funding became probably the most sophisticated aspect of going on crusade. When a crusade was led by a king, they could use the resources of their own treasuries. In England, which had a relatively strong and centralized monarchy, the government could collect taxes and earmark them specifically for crusading activities. In 1188, after Saladin reconquered Jerusalem the previous year, the English government levied a “Saladin tithe”, a tax on a tenth of all property throughout the kingdom, and that money was used to fund the Third Crusade - to pay soldiers, to equip knights and horses and ships, to pay for food and other supplies, etc. England already had a well-developed Exchequer, and we can sometimes see which specific supplied Richard bought and how much the treasury paid for them, for example “cheeses from Essex, beans from Kent and Cambridgeshire, and over 14,000 cured pigs' carcasses from Lincolnshire, Essex, and Hampshire." (England and the Crusades, pg. 82-83) Richard also bought “at least 60,000 horseshoes”, which cost £50.

On his way home from the crusade, Richard was arrested and imprisoned by the Holy Roman Emperor, and another, even bigger tax was levied to pay for his release.

France didn’t have the same strong monarchy and centralized government, so raising money was a bit more difficult there, and depended on local fundraising instead of top-down taxes from Paris (although the royal government tried to raise money that way too). Throughout western Europe of course there was one major landowner with a centralized authority and lots of available cash - the Roman church. The church could also levy its own taxes and collect money to be used for crusades. Local churches and monasteries often lent money and supplies to crusaders (or simply bought up secular territory outright, as with Godfrey’s land in Lorraine).

Money could also be extorted from the Jews, who were involved in banking activities that Christians often weren’t allowed to participate in. They had access to money and capital but also had very few legal rights in Christian society, so sometimes Jewish communities were irresistible to crusaders who needed money fast. Crusade expeditions almost always included attacks on the Jews in Europe, partly because crusaders felt that they were just as much an enemy of Christianity as Muslims were, but also because they knew they could easily extort or steal money from Jewish communities who wouldn’t be able to do anything about it.