Video Transcript: Ministry Planning

This is lecture 26 of the practical ministry skills course, and we're talking today  about ministry planning. This is chapter 15, part of chapter 15 from the book  pastoring the nuts and bolts. Our key verse is from Psalm 20:4, may He grant  your heart's desires and make all your plans succeed. We're talking about  ministry planning, and we see that even in the Bible, plans are something that  happened and that people did and they prayed about. So before we go on, I just want to throw out something as a kind of a freebie for you. I love the first five  verses of Psalm 20. And sometimes, as a minister, you have opportunity, or you  are asked to sign a card for somebody, some so and so's having a birthday.  Would you sign this card and or send some other kind of a message, a blessing, a wish. I would like to write my name, you know, some God, bless you. Thank  you for your ministry, whatever it is, and and then sign my name. And  underneath it put Psalm 20:1-5. Now I didn't write it out. I just put the reference  there. A lot faster. Doesn't take as much room, and it gets them into their Bible.  But I love what that passage says, May the Lord answer you when you are in  distress, may the name of the God of Jacob protect you, may He send you help  from the sanctuary and grant you support from Zion. May he remember all your  sacrifices and accept your burnt offerings. May He give you the desire of your  heart and make all your plans succeed. We will shout for joy when you are  victorious, and will lift up our banners in the name of our God. May the Lord  grant all your requests. Isn't that a great blessing. I just love that. And so just  one other quick thing, a side note to throw in, I have that on my computer here  that I'm reading my notes from. I don't know if you noticed I've got a computer  here that I am reading my notes from and I could have read it from that, but I  chose to pick up the Bible and read it, because I think that there is something  very important visually for your people to see you reading from the Bible. You  may have a tablet or a laptop or a smartphone, and you may have it on there,  and it may even seem more convenient to read that, but there is something  visual about seeing the minister reading from the Bible that encourages your  people to read from the Bible. So I encourage you to do that when you can, all  right, ministry planning. We are talking now about the basic planning out. What  are we going to do in the various ministries of this church for the next year, the  next 18 months? Probably the most common way to do that is also the least  effective. And first, let me say, some churches don't even do it. And there is an  old saying you may have heard, if you fail to plan, you plan to fail. If you fail to  plan, you plan to fail. If you don't have a plan, it's, it's like we said before, if you,  if you aim at nothing, you're sure to hit your target. So you need to have some  kind of a plan, if nothing less, so you don't schedule things on top of each other  and run into things probably the most common way to do it is also the least  effective, and that is you have a meeting in the same place, in the same time  slot where you usually have your meetings. You pull out a calendar, you pencil in all the same things you did last year. If you want to totally exclude creativity and 

new ideas, that's a good way to do it. So what do you do if you want to increase  creativity and increase new ideas first? If you can meet someplace different, a  change of scenery, changes the way people think. Allow plenty of time. You  allow probably twice as much time as you think that you might need maybe go  to a different place and include a meal with it in the middle of it, or something.  Allow plenty of time. Invite a guest facilitator, if you can bring in somebody from  outside of your congregation to guide you through the process for a couple of  reasons. One, it makes it a lot easier on the pastor, on the minister. It the pastor  or minister might learn something third, ideally, you and the guest facilitator that  you invite are on the same page, and they you're aiming in the same direction.  And so if your people hear this other person saying the same thing you've been  saying. They're gonna say, oh my goodness, isn't our pastor smart? Our pastor  said the same thing this other person is saying, and because see there,  because they're brought in from outside, they're automatically seen as an  expert. Jesus said A prophet is not without honor, except in his own town. Well,  you could say a pastor is not without honor, except in her own church. So  people are used to hearing this stuff from you. If they hear it from somebody  else, then it may take it more or they may take it more seriously. This point is  important appoint one official note taker, as somebody whose job it is to write  down everything you decide, lots of other people will take notes, and that's  good, but the problem is some of those notes may not wind up saying the same  thing. And somebody writes down we said we were going to do this on this date, and somebody else says, No, we remember we had a conflict on that date, and  we decided to move it to another date, and then they're arguing about it. So you  have to have one official person who can settle those arguments and come back and say, All right, we had this put all this time and effort into it. We had this long  meeting, and this is what we decided. We don't want to lose. What we decided  start with Bible study, some kind of a passage from the Bible that will center on  what you all are doing, and remind you all that it's God's Church and whatever it  is that you as the leader, know that your people need to be reminded of doesn't  need to be real long, but to get people focused and centered on what they're  doing that reminding them this is not just a business meeting. If you have  statements of your mission and vision, revisit those. Look at those again.  Remind everybody of what it is, what it says, what it means. It may be  sometimes that you'll want to ask the question, should we consider revising this? And that would probably need to be a whole separate meeting or series of  meetings. But get that as you're starting, you want to get it in your head that this  is all about God. It's not just a normal business meeting, and that what God has  called us as this ministry to do is these things in this vision statement, this  mission statement, with those two things in mind, evaluate last year. Go back  through and say, How did last year go? What were the things that we did that  worked really well? What were the things we did that, that maybe we ought to try

again, but with a few changes. What were the things that we tried that just didn't  work, and we might as well let it go, or thing that is, it's finally come to the end of its useful life, and we ought to devote our ministry resources to other things. So  

evaluate the last year. Don't let that turn into a blaming thing or fights or  arguments between one person that says, I thought it didn't go so hot, and the  other person, perhaps the one that organized it, that says, Oh, it was wonderful.  So buddy, have an evaluation, then ask yourselves a general open discussion.  Where do the needs and resources of your church intersect the needs and the  resources of your community? There may be that there are things that your  church really needs that are available in the in the community, that you could  avail yourselves of, some kind of training, or whatever it might be. It's very likely  that there are resources in your church that your community has need of and by  resources, your primary resource is, your people, and maybe you have  somebody in your church who has skills or abilities that can bless a particular  need of a part of the community. So it may be that the community needs a food  pantry, and you have a space in your building where you could store food and  you could provide volunteers to help hand it out. Sometimes, if the other people  in the community have this centralized place at your church where they can  come and donate food, and then at a certain time, the people who need food  can come and get it. That may be a kind of an intersection. So look at the needs  and resources of your church and how they intersect with the needs and  resources of your community. And write these things you may if you can write  them on a blackboard or on a big piece of newsprint, up on a place where  people can see them and have them in mind as they go on. The next step is to  dream. And this is where your visioning people are going to be, probably at a  meeting like this, you're going to have, have to have some of your planning,  organizing, hands on, detail, people, as well as your vision meeting people, this  is one of the kinds of meetings they're probably gonna have to get together. And  just you might explain, you know, we know that there's parts of some of you are  going to find parts of this more interesting than others, but we all need to work  together on this, the dreaming part. There is a technique known as  brainstorming, which is where you invite people to just bring out ideas. You raise a question. You know, what is? What do you think that God might be calling our  church to do this year that we have not done before? Or maybe even don't say  that we have not done before, but raise the question and then brainstorming and give them the rules of brainstorming ahead of time. The rules are these, no idea  is too silly or too crazy or too seemingly unworkable to be listed. You list down  everybody's idea. Rule number one. Number two, no criticizing anybody else's  idea. If somebody says, I think we ought to our church ought to sponsor a trip to  the moon next year, you write it down and nobody is allowed to criticize that  during the brainstorming session. Okay, we're trying because sometimes those  crazy ideas actually work, and you don't want to be in a place where anybody 

gets afraid to bring out an idea for fear that it might get criticized, because it  might be a really good idea that nobody else thought of. So with the  brainstorming, you you list them all, and then you begin to go through and say,  Okay, these are all a whole bunch of ideas. Let's see which ones seem like the  most possible here. Now let's see if we can come up with the top five or six or  eight ideas that we might actually consider doing. And so then all your trip to the  moon, and everything gets automatically thrown out at that point. Then you  begin to go through and you say, Well, how can, how can these things work  together? How can we get some synergy here? How can maybe this idea of the  worship committee doing this could fit in with this idea of evangelism? So maybe if we could have a big outdoor worship service, then we could also invite all the  neighbors, and it could be worship and evangelism together, that synergy. And  then the youth group person says, Well, gee, maybe the youth could, could. Sell  cupcakes or bottles of water to raise money for their mission trip that they want  to go on or whatever it might be. How can these things work together? How can  all the different ones support and encourage each other? Where can you find  synergy? So then you're at the point where, okay, we have these things that we  want to do. We want to get them on the calendar. And so we have, I said, maybe five or six or eight. Those may be the new things you may be wanting to start.  You may also have your 12 or 15 other things that you just always do every year that your church is known for, and you want to get those on the calendar too.  And as you're putting things on the calendar, you not only want to avoid  scheduling conflicts with each other because you don't want to say, well, the  youth group wants to do this on the same Sunday that the women's ministry is  going to do this, and we can't, they can't both happen at the same time for  whatever reason. So you want to avoid those conflicts, but you also want to  avoid scheduling conflicts with local events, especially if you are putting on  something that you want to invite the community to your church for something,  make sure you don't schedule it at the same time that other churches are  inviting people or that some big sports event or some other kind of thing that's  going to attract everybody, the county fair, whatever it might be. So avoid those  scheduling conflicts, if you can. Okay, you've got them scheduled now. You need to agree on who's responsible. Who is going to be in charge of making this  particular thing happen, and who is going to make it, who's responsible for  actually doing it? And I need to you'll see why in a moment, but I need to explain something called liturgical dancing in I think, as far as I know, it's mainly an  American church thing, mainly American mainline church thing, but it's, it's not  dancing in church, because you're dancing for the joy of the Lord, and the music is so great. Liturgical dancing is much more like ballet, and it's organized and it's very orchestrated and choreographed, and often costumes and so on and done, maybe to classical music, to illustrate some kind of a as an offering of that  particular art form to the Lord. And so if the worship committee decides we really

think that we ought to have liturgical dancing this year and we want to create  that program, be careful that you don't get this kind of a situation where it winds  up the pastor with the tutu on the saying liturgical dancing was the worship  committee's idea, making it very clear that he doesn't like it. He's not involved.  He wants to be distanced, and they roped him into it. So just a little humor there, but make sure that you know who's responsible and that the people who are  you're going to ask to do it are willing to do it. When the meeting is over, the  person who was the official note taker should summarize it all. Send a summary  of it to all the participants, and then the appropriate person should repair  prepare a report to the congregation that doesn't need probably should not be  the same as the detailed summary that goes to the people who were at the  meeting, but the whole congregation needs to know. Okay, we did have a  meeting, and it was a good meeting, and it was valuable, and we came up with  some neat ideas, and you're going to like them. You'll be hearing about them  through the year, and so report to the congregation so they know what's going  on. I encourage you to set your budget after you've done this because if you  have the possibility, and we'll talk about setting budgets later on in the lecture  series, if you have all the things laid out that you want to do, and then you can  come up with an estimate of how. Much they're going to cost. That's extremely  helpful in putting together your budget. Otherwise, if you put your budget  together first, then you're constrained in your ministry planning by saying, Well,  somebody's bound to say, that would be a good idea, but we can't afford it. We  don't have the money. Whereas if you come up with the vision and the idea in  the ministry plan first, and then you try to put the budget together, even if it  doesn't look like you have the money, maybe you can present the vision and  somebody will catch it and say, Well, you know, I'll pay for that over and above  my normal contribution to the budget, because that's just such a neat idea. So  set your budget later and every now and then, this is annual, but you also want  to, every now and then, set some long term goals. And we talked a little bit  about that in strategic planning. Where do we want to be, not only at the end of  this year, but where, where do we want to be at the end of five years? Where do we want to be at the end of three years? At the end of 10 years? And spend  some time thinking about those that merges more into the long term strategic  planning, but there's a lot of overlap and so so make sure that you don't have  totally different people on those teams, on those committees. We are done with  that. Actually, I'm not out of time, but I finished the material, and so I'm going to  stop and save my voice a little bit for the next one. Anyway, see you next time