One of the toughest things I found out about ministry was that it was difficult to constantly keep fresh, creative ideas at the forefront of what we were attempting to accomplish. As we moved from one topic to the next, always trying to keep momentum going, it was tough not to gravitate back toward the ideas that we know would always work and would always please the skeptical audience of students (and their parents) that we were looking to reach. After a couple years in ministry, I realized that in order to stay in front of the path of least resistance, big picture planning needed to be part of my ongoing strategic approach to ministry.
Now for those of us who have engaged in all-day (or all-weekend) planning sessions, there is nothing tougher then to create a plan to cover all of next year’s ministry goals. When you have your team and everyone is jockeying to get their ideas heard or acted upon, these meetings can sometimes be labor-intensive, brutal and tiring. But they also can be very rewarding. When approached correctly, annual planning meetings can open your eyes to the vision that the Holy Spirit has for your group and take away from you the idea that myopic single-subject planning is all you have time for.
Big-picture planning has at it’s roots, the idea that God is at work laying down a set of plans, much like a builder. If you think about it, what type of builder would plan out a house or project only to the point of one completed step? Not many. So why would we approach our respective ministries that way? One of the greatest lessons I learned in ministry was to try and plan out as much as possible in order to get an understanding of where the group was headed. Before I learned this lesson, I would get done with a series and then start planning where we were headed next; it was maddening and I believe I wasted a few years of ministry. Planning out as much in advance as possible, gives the Holy Spirit time to work on you and show you what He wants you to teach the students (or any other group for that matter) concerning that topic.
So where do you start? You start with your team. Get their input on what they feel needs to be taught. Then talk to the parents and the students, ask them what they want taught. Ask others in ministry to show you their 1-year and their 4-year and 6-year plans. Start planning out your next year, then plan out your second year, what needs to be repeated, what needs to be added? Go hard with your team and try to knock out at least 2-years.
What you will find this does is give you an excitement for what’s coming up. It will also free you up to spend more time with students. With parents, it will make you more respectable, because it will show them you are approaching the position like the professional that you are. And it will allow your team of leaders to know they are important enough to be part of something that values their input. Lastly, it will give you the ability to market your program better because you can now paint an accurate picture of what is coming up in the future: students will appreciate that, parents will appreciate that and your church leadership will appreciate that. So pull your team together and put that big picture plan together for incredible ministry results.
