The strategy is centered around creating a comprehensive plan for a successful church year by analyzing past performances and setting future objectives. The first step involves evaluating the previous year’s activities through gathering feedback, analyzing attendance, reviewing financial statements, and assessing the impact of ministry activities. By identifying strengths, weaknesses, and learning from past challenges, insights can be documented for future improvements.
The next stage in the strategy is setting clear goals and objectives. This involves defining spiritual and practical goals using the SMART criteria and prioritizing them based on impact. Specific teams or individuals are assigned responsibilities, a timeline is created, and resources are budgeted to support these goals, ensuring alignment with the church’s mission.
Finally, developing a comprehensive program and event schedule is crucial. This entails creating a calendar of recurring services and special events, coordinating with church departments, and planning outreach initiatives. The emphasis is on resource allocation, engagement, promotion, and contingency planning, while feedback mechanisms ensure continual improvement.
The strategies
⛳️ Strategy 1: Evaluate the past year's performance
- Gather feedback from church members through surveys or meetings
- Analyse attendance trends and identify patterns
- Review financial statements and budget allocation
- Assess the effectiveness of existing church programmes
- Identify strengths and weaknesses in ministry activities
- Evaluate community outreach efforts and impact
- Consider the feedback received and formulate key learning points
- Document challenges faced and how they were addressed
- Review volunteer involvement and satisfaction
- Consolidate all insights into a comprehensive report
⛳️ Strategy 2: Set clear goals and objectives for the coming year
- Identify key spiritual and practical objectives for the church
- Set specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, timed (SMART) goals
- Prioritise objectives based on impact and feasibility
- Define key performance indicators (KPIs) for each goal
- Assign responsibility for each goal to specific teams or individuals
- Create a timeline for achieving each objective
- Budget funds and resources to support each goal
- Plan for regular progress reviews and adjustments
- Communicate goals and objectives to the congregation
- Ensure alignment of goals with the church's mission and vision
⛳️ Strategy 3: Develop a comprehensive programme and event schedule
- Create a calendar of recurring services and events
- Incorporate special events such as holidays and anniversaries
- Plan community outreach initiatives and volunteer opportunities
- Coordinate with church departments to schedule activities
- Allocate resources and budget for events and programmes
- Engage with church members in planning and organising events
- Promote events within the church and community
- Prepare contingency plans for potential disruptions
- Implement feedback mechanisms post-events
- Regularly update the event schedule and communicate changes
Bringing accountability to your strategy
It's one thing to have a plan, it's another to stick to it. We hope that the examples above will help you get started with your own strategy, but we also know that it's easy to get lost in the day-to-day effort.
That's why we built Tability: to help you track your progress, keep your team aligned, and make sure you're always moving in the right direction.
Give it a try and see how it can help you bring accountability to your strategy.
