Annual Ministry Planning: The Key Dominoes for Ministry Momentum

Your team shows up to the conference room prepared — each one with events to plan, initiatives, and ideas they believe will make a difference in the coming ministry year. One by one, things get slotted onto the calendar. And by the end, you have a calendar. But you don’t have a ministry plan. When your church ministry calendar is made up of disconnected events, it often leads to ministries competing for attention, each leader believing their ‘thing’ needs church wide promotion in order to be a success and move ministry forward. Enter the frustration. “My ministry never gets promoted.” The problem isn’t the church staff. They’re doing exactly what they should be: leading. The problem is a lack of framework for how ministries can work together to build a church calendar that brings a shared vision to life and what success in the coming year looks like. In this Training Day, you’ll learn how to approach your annual church calendar as a series of dominoes – where each major initiative hands off momentum to the next. The same coordination most churches only achieve during a capital campaign can actually become your normal operating rhythm. You’ll walk away with:

• A framework for identifying your 3-4 major “domino moments” in a ministry year
• How to evaluate whether your current calendar creates momentum (or drains it)
• The leadership conversations you need so everyone’s building toward the same thing
• A practical process for planning a year that feels cohesive instead of chaotic

Stop letting the calendar happen to you. Start using it as the leadership tool it’s meant to be.