When I do a consultation with a church, I typically look seriously at the church’s calendar. Then, I encourage church leaders to use their calendar in these ways:
- Determine what practically matters most to the church. The leaders might say one thing matters most, but the calendar says something different. That often means there’s some kind of discrepancy about the church’s vision.
- See how busy you expect your church to be. If members attended even ½ of your scheduled events, would they have any time left for family? For spending time with non-believers? Sometimes just seeing the calendar wears people out.
- Evaluate the multi-generational nature of your church. Look at the scheduled activities, and you’ll likely see if your church is ministering to all ages . . . or just to older people . . . or only to younger people.
- Check to see how outwardly focused your church is. Look to see if your events are designed more to reach unchurched folks, or if they are set up more to take care of the people already there.
- Gauge whether your church plans well. In some cases, the church is doing much more than appears on the calendar—because the church has a poor process for calendaring. In other cases, much is happening, but there is no order to the events. The plan is “first come, first served,” with no regard for the church’s vision.
- See how the church is spending money. Both the calendar and the budget reflect the church’s priorities – and typically, they mirror one another.
- Determine the church’s commitment to prayer. For each event on the calendar, ask this question: who in the church is praying specifically for this event? My experience is that churches do more scheduling than they do praying.
In fact, I encourage you to use both your weekly worship guide/bulletin and the church calendar as a prayer guide. Challenge your people not only to see what’s happening this week, but also to pray about each event. You might find that God actually does some stuff you hadn’t planned.
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