On Wednesday, July 31st about 30 people gathered at the Michigan Conference Center for the Planning Your Ministry Year workshop. In the morning we learned about putting the right systems in place for healthy ministries and less leader burn-out. In the afternoon we had time for calendaring and sharing best practices and ideas for each season throughout the year.  

A few of the “take-aways” for people who attended:

• “Lots of people are in the same planning difficulties boat… sharing helps ease anxiety about doing it “right” because there is no right way, only what works for your church situation.”
• “The need for volunteer job descriptions and 12 month calendar published now.”
• “It is very important to get the entire year ready by August at the latest. I was overwhelmed for this task before the training, but after the training I realized it is not that difficult to do.”
• “My next step is to have a 3 year plan.”
• “Making sure that “why” is conveyed to all.”

We used the books Sustainable Children’s Ministry (Annette Safstrom and Mark DeVries) and Sustainable Youth Ministry (Mark DeVries) as our guides. I highly recommend reading at least one of these books. We also found helpful resources from Ministry Architects.

The feedback has been overwhelmingly encouraging and we will be planning another calendaring event for summer 2020!

If you want to know more about Planning for Your Ministry Year please contact Rev. Kathy Pittenger at [email protected]

Last Updated on August 2, 2019