How I Approach Planning a Ministry Calendar

 

Around October of my first year in youth ministry, I was given an annual budget request form and told to have it ready for the next business meeting. The only guidance I remember receiving was to plan out the events I wanted to do for the next year and estimate how much those events would cost, the sum of all of those costs becomes your budget. Don't get me wrong, this is good advice and a solid way of planning out a budget, but it was at least two degrees of complexity above my skill level at the time. This advice assumed that (1) I knew how to estimate the cost of events, and (2) that I knew how to plan out a full year's worth of events at once. Cost estimation is such a rapidly moving target that it can't be covered in the scope of this writing, so I'll focus on planning a full year's worth of events. I still wouldn't consider myself an expert on either of those things, but one is greater than zero.

The first problem I had to overcome in planning out an annual calendar is that I had to change from thinking like a snake to thinking like a cow. When snakes eat their food, they swallow it whole and it breaks down over the length of their body. Cows, by contrast, chew their food to break it down into smaller parts. Cows also have this odd quirk known as "chewing the cud" where they regurgitate some of their partly digested food to chew it again, breaking the food down even more. Planning like a snake is trying to swallow the year whole and plan out all 365 days at once. Planning like a cow breaks the year down into manageable lengths of time and then breaks those lengths down even further.

The unit of time that I like to base my calendar around is a four month semester, splitting the year into 3 parts. The first semester spans from January to April, I label it "Spring," the second spans from May to August, I label it "Summer," the third spans from September to December, I label it "Fall." I based this calendar around the three best times to make a change for children and youth, August as the end of summer and the beginning of the school year, January as the beginning of a new year and the time for resolutions, and May the end of school and beginning of summer. If used properly each of these transitions can be used to springboard your ministry initiatives.

Assuming you have 1 regular meeting each week, such as a Sunday or Wednesday night Bible study, and 4 weeks each month, it works out to about 16 regular meetings to plan for or 48 for the year. The extra 4 weeks lost to rounding can be accounted for by holidays, vacations, or special events, such as Christmas parties, summer camp, VBS, or service projects. I'm not alone in thinking that a 48 week calendar is a sweet spot, H.B. Charles Jr. based his preaching calendar model on 48 weeks in his book On Preaching, the other 4 weeks in his model would be filled by guest speakers. Beginning with three 16 week semesters in mind, you can work backwards to set up a flexible preaching/teaching plan giving you enough structure to cover a meaningful amount while still allowing for divine redirection. The details of planning a preaching calendar might be a topic better saved for another day.

The three semester calendar gives your ministry three distinct seasons that can be reinforced by specialized large scale events. Your events in spring should be different from your events in summer, your summer events should be different than your events in the fall, and so on. Making the seasons distinct can afford you the opportunity to give each season a different purpose. Starting with Fall, this season begins with an influx of a bright-eyed new generation of students that have grown out of the children's ministry into the youth, this new generation is ripe for life changing experiences. Also, in my corner of the world, American Football is a titanic force in the Fall, just a few miles away from my apartment is an 87,000 seat sports mecca known as Jordan-Hare, I can either rage against that machine or use it as a vehicle to meet new students. If students are involved in sports simply attending their events and meeting their friends is a great tool for outreach. Medium sized events like 5th quarter after Friday night games can be a good on board ramp for your ministry too. All of these events can lead up to a large Friendsgiving or Christmas party that can really cement new students into the family of your youth group. Using Fall as a season of outreach can lead to using Spring as a season of discipleship. Using events like Disciple Now weekends or winter retreats gives you the opportunity as the leader to take the relationships that you built in the Fall much deeper into discipleship. There may also be opportunity to lead your students to put their faith in action through service projects in this season. All of this time spent bringing your group together as a family and growing in discipleship during the school year open your group up for lots of fun in the summer. Summer break gives you the opportunity to do events that would be impossible at any other time of the year, such as camps, mission trips, and (my favorite event) VBS. The amount of time that you have to fellowship with your students in the Summer empowers them to want to bring in others in the Fall.

It's always tempting when planning to dive straight into mapping out the year, but doing that neglects the most important part of any ministry plan — prayer. I saved prayer for last not because you should only close out planning sessions with prayer, but so that prayer is fresh on your mind as you finish reading. If you wait until the end of planning to pray for God to bless your plans, then there is a substantial risk that all of your planning was in vain and will need to be redone. Like Solomon writes in Psalm 127, "Unless the Lord builds the house, those who build it labor in vain." Instead of waiting until you think the work is done, pray throughout that God would lead your plans. As you plan, pray specifically for the events that you want to lead. Pray over students and children in your group as you plan. Pray for creativity when planning new things. Most of all pray not that God would bless your plans, rather pray that your plans fall in line with His will.

Like I said at the beginning, I don't claim to be an expert planner. This is just the way I go about thinking and planning a ministry calendar. What about you? Do you have a different planning method? Do you think my method needs some help? Did I give you a new idea to try? If so, let me know in the comments below, I'd love to hear from you!