As we near the halfway point in this calendar year, let’s take some time to look at where you’re at and make sure you’re on track to get where you want to be.
You likely set goals several months ago for things you want to see happen in the life of your church this year.
If you didn’t, now is a great time to set some! There’s still plenty of time left in the year to be intentional about growing your ministry and seeing God move in your community.
Creating goals can be an effective motivator for conscious efforts aimed at building the Kingdom. But one of the worst things you can do with those objectives is wait until time is up to find out if you reached the mile markers you set.
Imagine running a race with a blindfold on. You’re hoping you’ll make it to the finish line, but you might not even be going in the right direction without seeing how much farther you have to go.
No matter what goals you set for your ministry, don’t make the mistake of waiting until December to see if your church actually accomplished what you set out to do.
Take the coming weeks as you enter the slower summer season to ask these questions, evaluating your progress, and then make any necessary adjustments to see positive growth this year.
1) What did you set out to accomplish this year, and have those goals changed?
Now that we’re almost halfway through the year, look back at the goals you set before January 1st.
Refamiliarize yourself with the targets you established and then critically examine them, deciding if each one is something your church still wants to or can do.
You may have already achieved some of your goals and can set new ones. As needs arose within your church and community, you may have added new goals in the last few months that you hadn’t considered at the beginning of the year. And some objectives may have become irrelevant or may have changed organically without conscious decisions.
For example, one of your objectives for the year was to provide a certain amount of support for your local food bank. If that food bank received a donation from someone else that filled their shelves, your goal is no longer necessary unless you change the destination for any food-related donations.
With this example, you’d be wasting time and resources collecting items that aren’t needed, meaning you’d need to change your goal or make a new one.
There is nothing wrong with choosing not to continue working toward a specific goal, modifying something partway through, or developing additional targets to meet your ministry’s needs.
But you do need to keep checking in regardless of what goals you set so you don’t miss the mark unintentionally. It’s really hard to reach a finish line if you don’t know where it is or where you are in relation to it!
2) How much progress have you made for each initiative?
Knowing what your ministry hopes to achieve this year is great. Knowing how close you are to accomplishing each goal is even better!
You can’t continue or adjust your trajectory if you don’t know how far you’ve come.
If you’d like to see a certain number of new families join your church before December 31st, you won’t know if your outreach efforts are working if you have no idea how many have joined so far.
Look at each initiative and determine where you currently stand in your quest to accomplish each one.
And if you don’t already have a system like Realm in place to track your progress, the slow summer months are the perfect time to get something set up before the busyness picks up again in the fall.
3) Is each goal properly prioritized in your ministry efforts?
If you haven’t organized your ministry goals by importance, take a careful look at them now.
Prioritize the initiatives that are most important to your church and do the most to help you fulfill your mission and vision.
Rank your goals based on those that are vital to the success of your church, down to the things that would be nice to accomplish if you can.
You likely have a goal around spiritual growth and discipleship. Your goal for how many people attend your back to school bash is a great target, but you should absolutely put more time, effort, and resources into seeing spiritual growth over increasing attendance at an event.
If you aren’t prioritizing the goals centered around building God’s Kingdom, your other objectives will be irrelevant in the long run because you’ve missed out on what God intends your church to do.
4) What do you need to do to complete each objective?
Once you know what your goals are, where you stand on each one, and have all of your objectives prioritized appropriately, it’s time to figure out what you need to do to accomplish them.
Are your current efforts sufficient to push your church toward growth? Do you need to change or add any tasks or recruit any extra help from your church staff or volunteers?
Determine your next steps and then spread the word. Keep your members up to date on your ministry’s objectives, whether and how they’ve changed so far this year, and what the congregation should do to reach the finish line.
Reaching the Finish Line
Goals are cyclical. Once you reach one, you create another.
But when it comes to initiatives in ministry, you must always put the goal of running the race and reaching the ultimate goal of eternity in Heaven above every earthly endeavor.
No matter what goals you set, where you are right now in your effort to accomplish those tasks, or what you need to do next, make sure your church has the right heart behind it all.
As long as you’re doing all things for His glory, the growth you desire for your ministry will come in His time as He draws those in your community to Himself.
“Seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things will be added to you,” (Matthew 6:33 ESV).
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