Scheduling on Purpose

One of the things I always reminded myself of every year as I sat down with leadership to plan the next year’s ministry calendar was that the church needs to be relentless about making sure its calendar reflects its stated values and purpose. What did I learn from that? If the calendar does not reflect the church’s stated values then there is probably one of two things going on.

1.  The church doesn’t really value its stated values.
2. The church’s calendar is being hijacked by a few agenda-pushing power brokers.

We need to make sure that what we do matches what we say we believe. Furthermore, we need to make sure that we are giving people enough time to do the things that we say are important.

I will never forget the frustration I felt during my first year as a youth and education pastor when it came time to recruit and train new children’s workers. I was given a task by the board and my senior pastor: Find and train teachers and workers for the children’s programs.

What I soon discovered was that the need was great but the workers were few. I also learned that many folks who taught Sunday school also helped out in the nursery, taught children’s church, and participated in Awana on Wednesday night.

These faithful servants were exhausted. But as I found out, no one was waiting in the wings to take their places of ministry. So even though they needed it, they didn’t get a break. It wasn’t like the church had an abundance of people who weren’t serving anywhere. As a matter of fact, most people were doing something. The problem was that there were more things to do than there were hands to do them well.

When you sit down with whomever you sit down with to plan your yearly calendar, make sure that you focus on people. Yearly planning is a great time to ask some hard questions about your ministry efforts. As you plan, make sure that you remember the ultimate goal of the church is not to keep people so busy that you burn them out.