How To Not Waste January (Part 1)
January can feel like a throw-away month. The first week is a post-holidays malaise. If you didn’t get strategic planning scheduled early, it can feel like a few weeks of just drifting. Despite all the “New Year, New You” energy our culture puts out, hibernating is often more appealing.
But you’re leading a church, and you still have a live event every week. You might be leading your church through a season of fasting and prayer, or getting small groups up and running again. It’s not exactly a slow month.
If leveraged well, January can result in a fruitful rest of the year. But if you let it slip by… you’ll be stuck playing catchup month after month.
So we put our heads together: What practices, initiatives, and conversations do we WISH every church leader would be setting time aside for in January?
In the first episode of our new series, “How To Not Waste January,” Sean and I talk about the importance of taking time to reflect and practical ways to do so.
We need to do things well enough that we can bring the focus where we want the focus. [episode 430] #unstuckchurch Share on X Why is the most digitized generation actually want paper and something they can hold. That's an interesting thing to pay attention to as well.[episode 430] #unstuckchurch Share on X When I say be an eyewitness, I mean just stay present. Don't miss what God's doing right now.[episode 430] #unstuckchurch Share on X They're seeking sincerity, authenticity, transparency, and the thing about those traits, you can't fake them.[episode 430] #unstuckchurch Share on X
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Transcript
Sean:
Well, welcome to The Unstuck Church podcast here. This is our first episode of the year 2026. Amy, it’s unbelievable.
Amy:
Welcome 2026. That is crazy. Wow.
Sean:
I’m Sean, your host, and as always joined by my teammate Amy Anderson. And Amy, we’re kicking off a brand new series today called How Not to Waste January. This is the first of three episodes that we’re gonna do where we’re gonna walk through some really practical steps that can make this January, this first month of the brand new year, one of the most productive months of the year for church leaders. So, Amy, why did we want to tackle this specific topic right now?
Amy:
You know, part of me actually was a little hesitant, Sean, because I don’t know about you, but through the entire month of December, all of these like, get ready for the new year. Do this, don’t do that in a midst. Like all of the Christmas emails I was getting, everything just felt like I am not a leader if I am not like, on top of this thing. So it almost became like noise to me. But, having said that, I do think that January can just be this strange month for churches, right? You’ve got this post-holiday malaise in the first week. People are tired, but like I said, there’s all this around you going new year, new you, new leadership, all that stuff going around.
So if you, for our listeners, if you didn’t get strategic planning on the calendar early, I think it can feel like maybe January is just a month you’re gonna drift through. But here’s the thing. It is true. If you leverage January well, it can set you up for a very fruitful rest of the year. And if you let it slip by, you’ll just kind of be playing catch up month-to-month. So amidst all the noise, we put our heads together and just ask like what practices, initiatives, and conversations do we wish every church leader would be setting aside time for in January? And we came back to these three things: create time to reflect, create time to refocus and define the time to move forward. So today we’re starting with that first one, just time to reflect.
Sean:
Yeah. I think that’s good. And Amy, I don’t know about you, but as I got to December of 2025, I just felt like where on Earth did this year ago?
Amy:
I know.
Sean:
It went by so fast.
Amy:
I know.
Sean:
And I feel like January does the same thing. We get into a brand new year and I think, you know, even though there probably is some, we’re getting used to or maybe getting tired of all of the new you self-help sort of things.
Amy:
Absolutely.
Sean:
We get to January and January can fly by and we can be at the end of the first month with nothing done. Right? We’re just almost trying to recoup, recover from December.
Amy:
Now in Minnesota, January never flies by ’cause we’re always like 10 below or whatever, but we can whittle it away for sure.
Sean:
Yeah. The way that winter has started, it might be a very slow winter actually. Yeah. Before we dive in, let’s take just a minute and thank our podcast sponsor for this week: PlainJoe. You know, if your church maybe feels like a bit of the throwback to the wood paneled world of the eighties, or it feels like when you go into your building, you take a big step back in time. PlainJoe really has a phenomenal team of fun, loving, passionate people who are designers, architects, and specialists by trade that help transform dated spaces. And imagine a worship environment that communicates each church’s unique story and really appeals to people of all ages. So if that’s something that would be helpful for you, you can learn more about what PlainJoe does at plainjoe.net. That’s plainjoe.net.
So Amy, when we talk about reflection and assessment, what are some of the tensions that church leaders face when it comes to actually taking time to do this?
Amy:
Yeah, great question. I think there’s actually several tensions. First, sometimes reflection isn’t always positive, right? Looking back isn’t always positive and leaders might avoid it because they don’t want bad news, you know?
Sean:
Right.
Amy:
But you never go to a doctor who just says, you look fine. You know, when you’re not fine. Truth is what gives us permission to move in a different direction. So painful doesn’t mean bad. The second reason I think is that many leaders that, at least that I’ve been around, kind of trust their gut. They know what went well and they know what didn’t. But here’s the key for me. What about the rest of the team? Right? I remember when I was in leadership and we’d make a decision, and finally someone stopped me and said, Amy, when you guys make decisions on the executive team, you need to pause and think who needs to know this now? And when I think about this reflection on the year, I do think lead pastors, executive pastors can do it pretty quick, but the rest of your team is not on the same page with you.
Sean:
So true.
Amy:
And part of your role is to bring people along. And lastly, I would just say like you were just alluding to Sean, did last year get away from you? I literally can remember sitting in my chair the end of 2025, and I cannot believe that was a year ago. Our year was full of growth and momentum. Maybe yours was, too, our listeners, and seemed to go by so quickly that you really didn’t take time to reflect, focus and move forward with intentionality.
Sean:
Yeah. That one really resonates with me, Amy.
Amy:
It was quite a year. Well, the weekly pace of church is already relentless. We have to remember that one too. I don’t think there’s any other organization or business that works at the pace of the church. I really believe that. And to that, when you’re growing quickly, which is again, a lot of the churches I know I personally worked with last year, it just doesn’t feel like there’s time to slow down and assess. But here’s the irony? If you just kind of spin on that hamster wheel for another year without reflection, that could actually be what stops the growth.
And some leaders say like, we’re changing so quickly, what’s the point? What conclusions can we even draw? But that’s exactly why you need to assess, to make sense of the change and ensure that you’re moving in the right direction. Growing churches, you know, they often feel like, slowing down to assess might hurt momentum. Like we just gotta keep running, working our plans. But without assessment, I think you actually risk losing. Well, you risk a little bit of burnout, and you lose sight of what actually is working.
Here’s what I mean by that, Sean. I was working with a large church in Texas last year, and they had been growing at a clip for a while, 15 to 20% a year for a long run. And when I had my pre-call with them, they hadn’t taken one of the assessments yet. The Unstuck Church assessment, and they said, we don’t need it. We know we’re in maintenance, we know we’re in the maintenance phase of the life cycle. And what really what they had done is they had waited too long to assess and then the outcome was stuckness.
And it felt like a staffing level issue at first. But going through our process, they realized that they now kind of had this overgrown ministry plan that desperately needed pruning, but they were so busy growing and responding to growth that they, to use the analogy from John 15, let too many branches get overgrown. So just regular checkups prevent major health failures down the road. And as we talked about quite a bit last year, your data is gonna be telling you a story earlier than when you feel and sense what’s happening. So assessment kinda wards off future surprises and slowdowns.
Sean:
That’s good. Yeah. Okay. So those are the tensions. What’s the solution? How do we actually do this well?
Amy:
Yeah. And jump in here Sean, if you have any ideas, but I just think don’t just rely on personal reflections and memories of the year. Consider some more objective and structured assessments. We have several of these in the Learning Hub. For example, the solution starts with objectively redefining what success looks like for you based on where you’re in the church life cycle. By understanding where you are in that life cycle, you can have clarity on what success actually looks like for your church next. It’s what I love about the church, Sean, and the way Tony Morgan wrote it is if this is where you are, here’s the key things that you need to be working on to stay healthy or to get healthy.
So for example, if you’re one of the fast growing churches we’ve been talking about, you might have been in momentum growth this year, and the church lifecycle, that’s the left side of the wheel climbing towards the top. And what that typically looks like is you’re just busy making space for new people. You’re kind of air quote, come and see, or invite culture is all revved up. Momentum is contagious. You’re reaching a lot of people in this phase. Well, the next steps, one of them, one of the key next steps in this phase is to give leadership away. Like, this is the time you need to move from managing people to leading people. Senior pastors, this is a time when you need a senior leadership team. This is where we have to start talking about, are we raising up leaders of leaders, right? For ministry leaders, this is where the muscle of engaging not only volunteers in ministry, but volunteer leaders, it’s critical. You don’t wanna be that church. And I’ve worked with many that look up one day after this time of growth and go shoot, we hired doers of ministry, not leaders of ministry.
Sean:
Yeah. Another critical step when you’re in that momentum growth season is to define your vision. And your growing church really needs clarity around those, what we call bold moves that God’s calling you to make. And that’s different than your mission. Your mission is your purpose. Your mission is why you exist. A vision is what tells people really where you’re going, where you’re headed as a church, right?
Amy:
Yeah, that’s right. One more example, Sean. Say you’ve made it out of momentum growth and now you’re in strategic growth, what that looks like, you know, after moving through this season of rapid growth, you realize, hey, we actually need some systems to keep up with the growth God is bringing us because your reach strategies are working well, you now have a lot of new people that need to grow in their faith. So one of the key next steps as you’re moving from momentum to strategic growth is to get clarity around how to engage people in the life of the church beyond the weekend service.
So what are those easy first steps we want people to take? What are the key bigger next steps we want them to take? And Sean, you know this, we talked a lot about Orchard Church in 2025 in Brighton, Colorado. But this is why amidst a huge growth season at their church, they assessed those first steps of engagement. They didn’t like the story their data was telling them, and they revamped and installed a new system. So back to my point, you need to redefine what success looks like based on where you’re at in the church lifecycle.
Sean:
Yeah. That’s really good. And for our listeners, if you wanna know where you are at in the church life cycle today, you can actually take the assessment for free at theunstuckgroup.com/assessments. That’s within our Learning Hub. But you can take the Unstuck Church assessment completely for free. You don’t have to subscribe to the Learning Hub to be a part of that.
Amy:
It’s a great way to start the year; get it done.
Sean:
It is. Absolutely. So let’s talk about solutions then, Amy.
Amy:
Yeah. Continuing on the same train of thought, when you’re taking time to assess, use objective metrics. So again, our Vital Signs assessment that looks at key ministry areas with benchmarks for more than thousands of churches nationwide that have contributed to our database. And this just gives you this unbiased snapshot of your church’s health. Things like weekend attendance trends, baptisms, volunteer engagement, giving patterns, these metrics, not one of them, but all of them as they come together, again, will tell you a story about your church health as you’re assessing.
And the last thing I’d throw in here, Sean, is just to get fresh eyes on the weekend experience. It’s so easy when we’re around our weekend service to kind of habituate to our environment, we don’t see what new people see and experience. You know, I just went to one of our church locations with my husband recently where we’re a four location multi-site church. I hadn’t been there for almost a year, like to that specific location. I go to church every weekend, but attend and serve at our broadcast location. So when my husband and I walked through the doors, I like almost immediately started pointing out things that our team just wasn’t seeing anymore. And maybe they saw it and they just hit the walls. They’re trying to get things done, but I just shared it with my husband, you know, these are the things, a new person experiences and they’re solvable problems.
So I just think it’s so important to assess your weekend intentionally once in a while, step back and really assess how it feels to the new person. In fact, we have a tool that you can use in our Unstuck Learning Hub called the Weekend Service Assessment. And it’s a guide you can download and you can use to get fresh eyes on your weekend, to help train your team or train a team of people to get fresh eyes. So again, to start the new year, right. That’s a very easy step to just get fresh eyes there.
Sean:
I love that. Love how practical that is Amy. But I’m guessing that some of our leaders that are listening are thinking, this sounds great, but when do we actually do this? And who helps me with it?
Amy:
Right, right. That’s actually what gave me so much fatigue in December, coming into January. Everyone wanted me to make these bold moves, you know, to kinda reconstruct my life. But here’s the deal. Here’s what I recommend. Just put it on the calendar now, don’t wait. Block out some time this month for your senior leadership team to do these things together. I have to believe you meet at least weekly or bimonthly. Grab one of those times and do these things. Hopefully it’s a standard meeting you can just redirect.
So reflection isn’t, it’s just not something you can do completely alone. Your team needs to be part of the assessment process because they have perspectives that you don’t. So just get it on the calendar and then honestly, getting an outside perspective can be invaluable. And that’s where something like the Unstuck Process can really help having experienced consultants walk you through an assessment that can help you develop, you know, a customized action plan based on what they find. So regardless, do this work, do the assessment. But if you’re thinking it would actually be helpful to have someone walk us through the process, that’s what we do each and every week.
Sean:
Amy, I was thinking back to how you started the podcast and you talked about a little bit of this fatigue, and especially for churches that have been in a growth season over this last year. They’ve been growing really fast. How hard it is, how difficult it is to slow down and actually take some time to assess again. But here’s the thing. When you think about the church life cycle at the top, they’re at the pinnacle of the church life cycle is what we call sustained health. And those are churches that sustain health growth replication over years and years and years. And what we’ve seen is the churches who are actually going through this process annually of assessment, of planning, of aligning their structure to it, and they’re doing it every year. Those are the churches that stay in sustained health seasons for much longer.
Amy:
That’s right.
Sean:
Simply because they have this consistent strategic obedience to this muscle memory of doing this every year.
Amy:
It’s almost like they’re harnessing the growth to continue to propel them, versus if we don’t harness growth, we end up declining, we end up losing momentum.
Sean:
Yes. Absolutely. And I know this is an overused concept, but it really is the flywheel. It is this consistent turning of the wheel that really is what brings great results for them year over year over year. So this is, this might be the year to start that habit for your church. Amy for leaders who are listening right now and they’re thinking, okay, we need to schedule some time to reflect this month. What’s the first step they could take maybe even this week?
Amy:
Yeah. Well, here’s what I’d encourage. First, go to theunstuckgroup.com and take the vital signs assessment. It’s free and it’ll give you immediate feedback on where your church stands. And we’ll share a coupon code with our email subscribers so that you can do that for free. It’s not an easy assessment, meaning you’re not gonna drop in for five minutes and just grab data. You’re gonna have to do some research to really understand your numbers. But I think this is one of the most effective tools for you to understand the overall health of your ministry.
And then second, like I just said, schedule a meeting with your senior leadership in January specifically for assessment and reflection. Just try not to let other urgent matters crowd this out, just guard it. I’m telling you it’s gonna be a great discussion. And then third, just come prepared to that meeting with your vital signs, with some key metrics in hand. Whether that’s attendance, trends from the past year, giving patterns, volunteer numbers, baptisms. You need to have data to have meaningful conversations. And if you had the team walk through the weekend assessment tool, have them bring their perspectives on that exercise as well to the meeting.
Sean:
Yep. And if you’re not an email subscriber and would like to get that coupon code, theunstuckgroup.com/podcast is where you can subscribe. Amy, what about churches that realize they need more help than just doing this on their own?
Amy:
Yeah. Well, again, that’s where the Unstuck Process comes in. We’ve been helping pastors lead unstuck churches for 16 years now, but not only that, but we are a team that not only works with churches, but we are a team that is invested in our home churches. You know, there’s a few of us that consult full time, but the majority of our consultants are just like you listeners, they’re ministry leaders leading a local church. They not only lead other churches through the unstuck process, they actually lead their own churches through it to help them stay healthy and growing.
And I just say that, so when you engage with us, we begin with a thorough assessment that looks like it looks at your ministry story that analyzes objective health metrics, helps you identify your church’s unique opportunities. From there, we help you clarify what you mentioned, Sean, the vision God’s given you. And then we develop together this unique structure and customized action plan to see it all through. It’s definitely not a one size fits all approach. It’s tailored to where your church is right now and where God’s calling you to go.
Sean:
Absolutely. And our process, when we say process, it is really just an organized set of conversations and exercises that churches can have every year. So you can start this in your first year, but every year you can use those same tools and I think that’s actually where churches get better and make improvement.
Amy:
That’s right.
Sean:
Alright, well Amy, we’re gonna wrap up for today in this first episode of the new series, but any final thoughts before we do?
Amy:
Yeah, you know, I’m just realizing it’s January already, and I just wanted to remind our listeners that the deadline for our multisite and executive pastor cohorts in Phoenix is on January 9th. These are great environments to meet other ministry leaders and learn together about some of the things as we talked about today and much, much more. So you can go to our webpage to learn more and register at theunstuckgroup.com/cohorts.
Sean:
And Amy this year our cohorts are actually meeting in Phoenix in February.
Amy:
That’s smart.
Sean:
So I think Phoenix in February, I think that’s good timing, especially for you coming from Minnesota. You’re gonna enjoy that trip.
Amy:
I’ll be there. I will be there. I’ll be there early and stay late.
Sean:
It’s pretty wise. Alright, well let’s wrap up today’s episode. If you wanna learn more about the Unstuck Process and how we can help you lead an unstuck church, you can visit us at theunstuckgroup.com. You can also take that free Vital Signs assessment that we’ve talked about right there in our website. It’s within the Learning Hub. Make sure you subscribe to the emails to get the coupon code for that. And then next week we’re gonna continue our series on How Not to Waste January with an episode on how we’re going to refocus for this year. We’ll talk about planning and rhythms that’ll help you make the most of the year. So until then, we hope you have a great week.
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