How To Not Waste January (Part 2)
In January, you have permission to slow down enough to be intentional about the rest of your year. The goal isn’t perfection, it’s progress. And progress starts with planning.
In the next part our series, “How to Not Waste January,” we’re moving from reflection to talking about what’s next. It’s time to refocus. By refocus, we mean two things: create plans and establish rhythms.
In this episode, Sean and I talk about how to plan when things are going well at your church, the key questions to ask when planning, and how to calendar tangible planning rhythms.
The earlier you catch the drift towards maintenance, the easier it is to regain momentum. [episode 431] #unstuckchurch Share on X When we don’t plan, we don’t ask ourselves what needs to change. [episode 431] #unstuckchurch Share on X Drifting without direction is far more dangerous than an imperfect plan. [episode 431] #unstuckchurch Share on X Millennials are now the biggest church attending generation. [episode 431] #unstuckchurch Share on X
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Transcript
Sean:
Well, welcome to the Unstuck Church podcast. I’m Sean, your host, and I’m here again with my friend and teammate, Amy Anderson. We’re in this new series that we started last week called How Not To Waste January. And in our last episode we talked about the power of actually taking time to reflect in January, doing an honest assessment of what’s working and what’s not working in your church. And today we’re gonna move from reflection to talking about what’s next. It’s time to refocus.
Amy:
Yeah. And by refocus, I think we mean two things, Sean. Just create plans and establish rhythms. Those things don’t have to be completed by the end of January. Thank goodness. ’cause it’s only 17 days away till we’re done with it.
Sean:
Right. Yeah.
Amy:
But now’s the time to be thinking about it.
Sean:
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 panel 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.
Well, let’s start with this common scenario. So things are going well at your church is steady, you’re probably growing something like that. People are engaging. Why mess with a good thing? Why do we even need to plan when everything feels like it’s working already?
Amy:
I don’t think pastors avoid planning because they fear it will mess something up. I think it’s because of the relentless pace in the life of the church. Lead pastors already have this rigorous weekly schedule right, with a final exam most Sundays as they deliver their message. And then after all that energy expenditure, they come back to a blank screen the next morning. And do it all over again. So I think this is especially true for lead pastors that haven’t developed out a teaching team yet, and they’re carrying, you know, 40, 46 Sundays a year.
Sean:
True.
Amy:
What’s funny, Sean, I was working with a pastor last fall and he preaches like 48 outta 52 weeks a year. Oh my. And not only that, he teaches every Wednesday afternoon and then during the school year every Wednesday evening for a college service. And he said to me, Amy, I’ve just gotta preach. Even when I go on vacation, I call a church in the area and ask them if I can preach while I’m there. All that to say, I think he’s the anomaly.
Sean:
Yeah, I think so.
Amy:
I think most pastors love to preach, but not at a pace like that.
Sean:
Right, yeah.
Amy:
So, for the majority of pastors, I just think it’s difficult to make time to plan and disrupt their very disciplined weekly schedules. But of course, here’s the problem, right. Without pausing to plan, without carving out the time to plan, here’s what can happen. And it happens all the time. Churches that have made their way up to that church lifecycle and sustained health, which again is where you wanna be, they’re in danger of drifting outta health by coasting and assuming past momentum will carry forward. We have story after story of pastors that have taken the church lifecycle assessment and they’re surprised that they’re in maintenance, right? Because you can still be a growing church and be in maintenance.
Sean:
Right.
Amy:
It’s just that growth has softened fewer people are being baptized, yet maintenance is often where finances are really strong. So it’s easy to miss the signs that you’ve kind of crested in the life cycle and are now losing momentum. It’s very subtle. So the good news for a lot of those churches is that they caught it earlier, and the earlier you catch the drift towards maintenance, the easier it is to regain momentum. Think about it this way. Okay. It’s January and warm beaches are on my mind.
Sean:
Of course.
Amy:
So have you ever been playing like in the ocean or in the lake, but in the ocean with friends or your kids? And after a while, you look towards the shore and realize that you have drifted down the shore. Like you’re looking for your umbrella and you’re like, how did we get way over here? That’s the subtleness for me of losing momentum in the beginning. You’re just doing church, you’re running your plays, and then one day you look up and you’re like, wait a minute. So scheduled planning time really helps prevent that drift.
Sean:
Yeah. That’s good. And you think about how much changes over the course of one year. There are people who are on your staff team or they were at the beginning of the year that aren’t now. There are people who are a part of your church that aren’t now. Your financial situation may be very different. Some of the challenges that you’re facing are very different. And so just like you, just the analogy you just used, Amy, there is drift happening unintentionally. You’re not intentionally drifting away from something, but it is happening. And not recognizing that and planning, developing sort of this year’s iteration of our plan.
Amy:
That’s right.
Sean:
In the context of that, it’s gonna be a big miss. Amy, I wonder why else do you think that pastors need to plan when it, again, feels like everything around them seems to be working?
Amy:
Well? I think the reason is when we don’t plan, we don’t ask ourselves what needs to change. And this is so natural for churches, but when churches stop asking what must change now and we keep running the same plays, we have to recognize that’s not effective over time because the landscape around us is changing all the time.
Sean:
Right.
Amy:
You know, for example, how people handle money. That shifted drastically now, it was probably two decades ago. But I remember I was still leading in our church and I was watching our ushers pass these ugly green felt bags down row after row.
Sean:
I remember those.
Amy:
Yeah. Remember? It was like the most awkward time in our service for guests. Plus most people just passed the bag, like literally passed the bag. No one carried cash or checks anymore. And I was with the church a couple of years ago and they were still passing bags and I suggested they approach it differently and the pastor said, well, man, our bags are our third biggest giver. And I said, then you have a bigger generosity issue if that’s what you’re banking on for the few who carry cash and remnants. Now, I know some churches still pass bags and you like that moment in your service for people to bring their tithes and offerings. You’ve made an intentional decision around why you do it. But many churches don’t make an intentional decision. They just do what they’ve always done. And that’s the risk as a landscape around us is changing. We aren’t.
Sean:
Yeah.
Amy:
Another example, millennials are now the biggest church attending generation, right? And they’re different than Gen X. Millennials are more relational, they’re more vision driven, they’re more community oriented. When we don’t stop and ask what needs to change and keep ministry and keep running the ministry strategies created in 2005, we will miss them. They’re wired up differently.
Sean:
Right.
Amy:
The churches that are asking the question, they’ve actually made changes about the millennials, made changes to how they voice their website. They’ve pivoted to digital drip campaigns to get information to this generation so they can have a self-guided way in their learning. They’ve stopped expecting people to go to a three or four week classroom format for connecting with new people at their church. I could go on and on, but you get the point. Culture changes quickly and we need to have regular eyes, keep our eyes above the waterline so that we can adapt to what’s adapting around us. I don’t know, Sean, anything come to mind for you on this topic of just when we don’t pause and ask what needs to change?
Sean:
Yeah. Well, Amy, you know, I think when churches don’t take time to plan, they end up maybe letting the kind of event calendar drive everything instead of the vision and the goals. Maybe the really the strategy of the church, and here’s what I mean by that. When the event calendar drives decisions, maybe when we get to the summer and we focus a little more on VBS. Actually, what’s being communicated is the need for volunteers at VBS. And I’m not discounting VBS, but what can happen is that sometimes our regular week to week volunteering in our children’s ministry suffers. Because it doesn’t get the same attention, the same vision cast as maybe VBS does.
We also don’t typically have as clear next steps for people that are being communicated, especially in our weekend services, when we’re consistently communicating about the next event. So, how we connect people in groups, how we connect people in serving opportunities, how we engage people in generosity when we’re constantly talking about kind of what’s coming next on the calendar. We aren’t really creating space for people to take next steps and encouraging them to do that through our weekend services. And of course that just takes planning.
Amy, you and I did this in our churches for years where we would look out at the calendar for the coming year. And in my church, Amy, the first question we asked was, what is the next step that we want people to take. Coming out of the weekend service and how do we design a service and strategy in order to help people take that step? You know, we knew that every February people would be looking at a credit card statement coming from Christmas.
Amy:
Yeah.
Sean:
And people are probably thinking about that right now as they listen to this episode. So every February we try to be very intentional about aligning Financial Peace University as that kind of key next step from our February series to help people kind of refocus on healthy finances and budgeting. When we would have a series around Easter, we would talk about life change and new beginnings. And we would have a specific weekend where we would really encourage people to step into faith maybe for the very first time and get baptized. That was a key focus for us, but that takes a lot of intentional planning. So just all of that to say, if we’re only looking at events on our calendar and not planning in future for those specific next steps that we want the people of our church to take, that can create a big miss for us.
Amy:
Sean, do you think some pastors avoid planning ’cause they don’t feel good at it?
Sean:
Absolutely. Yeah. I think it feels like a weakness. There’s not a muscle, there’s a muscle there that either has never been developed or it’s just atrophied over time. And so there’s a lack of confidence also as they approach the planning conversation, they just don’t feel like I know exactly what to do to help us develop a plan that we’ll actually follow through on. And maybe that’s part of the challenge in the past is there has been time when they’ve approached planning and then they’ve never done anything with the plan. They spend all this time and conversation and it never moved forward. And so there’s some disillusionment that they can even sense from the team about sitting down to plan together. So I definitely think that.
Amy:
A part that’s my sense too. I think many pastors can feel inadequate or know that they’re not naturally gifted at planning, which I think creates some fear about even starting the process. So if that’s you out there, let me just set you at ease. It’s okay.
Sean:
Yes.
Amy:
You need to get people around you who are gifted at it and then keep owning what only you can own. You need to be in the room for planning ’cause your whole team needs to hear your voice, but you don’t have to be the expert in planning. In fact, Sean, I think there’s just a real vulnerability in saying let’s create a plan when you’re not confident that you know how to create it. And you probably have some fear about follow through, but the alternative, as we’ve been talking about drifting without direction, is far more dangerous than an imperfect plan that you’re willing to refine along the way. Right?
Sean:
Absolutely. Yeah. And that word you just said, refine is actually where your plan is going to get better. Coming out of two days of conversation with your leadership team, your plan won’t feel perfect. It’s when you implement that plan over time that it’s gonna get better and. And you’re going to refine it. Let’s get really practical then with this. When we talk about refocusing through planning, what are the key questions that church leaders should be asking themselves?
Amy:
Sure. These should sound familiar if you listen to our podcast, but number one, what’s our vision for the future? And again, this can be an intimidating question, most pastors are just like, I just wanna reach as many people as I can. But when you lead an organization, hopefully a growing healthy organization, people need vision, right? “Without vision, the people perish”—that rally and cry that unites the church to take kingdom ground.
Sean:
Amy, can I just jump on that one real quick? So I think for when, again, going back to the church lifecycle, those churches in sustained health at the pinnacle of the lifecycle, one of the key questions they’re asking themselves every single year is, what’s next? What’s next for us? And there’s this sense of new, and I really think, if you can think about this vague, sometimes overwhelming word of vision as really just answering for our church and our team. What’s next. I think that’s the most, a better, more helpful way to reframe it.
Amy:
Yep. That’s really good. Here’s another one. How can we reproduce health and momentum on all levels of our church? Like not just in the weekend services, but in groups, leadership development, community engagement. Just how can we get better? How do we increase momentum? That’s a great planning conversation. Yeah. Um, or what do we need to start doing? Or what do we need to do differently? You know, some of the things teams came up with this past year, one of the things they needed to start doing was leverage their database and a partner, they chose Studio C to get better at communicating in today’s context.
Sean:
Absolutely.
Amy:
Another church, they needed to begin to project out growth and make plans for expansion because both, whether you’re gonna do a physical expansion, multi-site merger, any of those take time to come to fruition. So they just realized that’s something we have to start doing. Another church, they answered that question by saying we have to align our ministries, we’re we need to shift from gender and age-based adult ministries, which honestly, Sean, we’re behaving like several churches within a church.
Sean:
That’s right.
Amy:
And we needed to get that aligned and go to a more engagement discipleship pathway. So that’s like, what do we need to start doing or do differently? Another key question, what do we need to stop doing? And this is often the hardest question, but the most important for creating space, really for what matters most. That church I was just referred to is significantly pruning the number of events that all those separate gender and age-based ministries have been creating. Going back to your comment about the calendar is running us. And redirecting those energies. And so they’re doing a lot of pruning around events so they can get the ministries aligned. And then several churches, man, they determined they need to stop spreading autonomy in their multi-site models so that they can launch new locations. They need to pull back some of that energy to launch.
Oh. And of course, who needs to be in the room for this planning? You can’t do this alone. You need the right voices. So, you know, I remember I worked with one church this year, this is the second time they’ve gone through our planning. They actually intentionally invited the next tier of leadership into the room, you know, the folks in their late twenties, thirties, early forties. And you know, it needed to be validated by the true senior leadership team, executive team. But that’s one way they got some fresh voices in the mix. I don’t know. It looks different wherever we go with who’s in the room. But how would you describe that, Sean? Who needs to be in the room?
Sean:
Well, I think, I mean, thinking about people who can see the big picture, who can think future focused and future oriented, and not everybody is like that. Give you an example. I was in a planning meeting and there was a person in the room who really shouldn’t have been there based on their giftings. And this person at the end of the two days together felt very frustrated and was on the verge of tears because they felt like they just could not add value to the conversation. It wasn’t the way that they were wired.
Amy:
Right.
Sean:
They weren’t designed for that conversation. And so think about those people on your team who maybe are and aren’t wired to sit in a room and dream about the future and think strategically, think sequentially about the steps to get there. Not all of us are designed that way. And that’s on purpose. That’s the way God made it.
And Amy, I think it’s good to talk about planning rhythms also. I think a lot of people hear planning and picture this kind of one time strategic planning retreat a few days away. But that’s not really what we’re advocating for here. Right? Planning shouldn’t just be a one-time event. It needs to become a rhythm ideally on, we use 90 day cycles. Where you continually refine the plan. Think of it as consistent strategic obedience. I love that term. We borrow that from our friend Paul at Sun Valley, regularly asking God, what, what are you calling us to do next? And then adjusting accordingly to that.
And churches like Sun Valley and Prairie Lakes up in Iowa, they’ve built this into their DNA, and I think it’s really transformed how they lead and make decisions. So they’re sitting down on a regular basis that maybe annually having those two days together. And I know Paul at Sun Valley does this, they have six or eight campuses now. I can’t remember exactly how many.
Amy:
So many.
Sean:
They do this with every single campus. They sit down for a couple of days every year, go through their strategic plan, build out their sense of the right steps for them to take as they focus on their ministry over the next 12 months. And then they have these regular check-ins. And that’s really what’s key because you are gonna come out of any planning meeting with some good action steps. Really, if your planning’s done well, you better have some clear action steps. And so every so often, again, we’re encouraging 90 days, you’re sitting down with that same team again and you’re saying, what did we accomplish? What was done well? Where did we get stuck? And then what do we need to do next? And that’s really the—
Amy:
Hey, Sean.
Sean:
Yeah?
Amy:
I’m gonna jump in. I was feeling it as I was talking about it. Planning sounds so boring, doesn’t it? Doesn’t planning just like, like we’re trying to convince you to go to the dentist right now. Like it’s good. You know, only floss the teeth you wanna keep was a phrase I heard recently.
Sean:
Yes.
Amy:
But here’s the deal. I wish I could create a better word picture. I never see teams more energized when they have gone through planning.
Sean:
True. Yeah.
Amy:
They’re also tired. But they are so energized ’cause it’s so uniting and it. They finally had the conversations they need to have. So if Sean and I are making it sound boring, that’s on us. It really does create a ton of energy coming outta that process.
Sean:
That’s funny. I’m glad you picked up on that. I think we’re already convinced. I think that’s part of the problem. I’ve been in those meetings. I sit at the end of two days of planning with a team and a church, and every planning engagement, I ask two questions, how do you feel and what questions do you have for me? And hearing them process how they feel. They feel both tired and excited. Thrilled. Optimistic about the future. And that really, I mean, you want your leadership team walking out of the room feeling that way. So, yeah, of course, these steps in the process, it needs to be clear what we’re doing. And I think that’s why the steps are important. But you do come out of that with a much greater sense of excitement. Alright.
Amy:
You do.
Sean:
It might just be my personality bringing the—
Amy:
No, I was, me too. I was just like, as I’m saying, I’m like, we aren’t selling this idea of planning very well, but I just think it’s one of those things in general, pastors wanna preach. They wanna help people take next steps. They don’t wanna like hole up in an office for two days to come up with plans. They just wanna get out there and get it done.
Sean:
Well, the other thing we haven’t talked about yet, Amy, is, you know, like you just said, pastors do wanna focus their time on other things and they should, they shouldn’t just be in planning meetings five days a week. Right? So for a pastor to have a clear process where every 90 days they’re able to sit down with their team for a few hours and the team walks out, then aligned, locked arms, we know what we’re doing. And then you can trust, as the lead pastor, I know what our team is focused on accomplishing. That then releases you. I mean, it relieves a lot of stress and a lot of anxiety, but it releases you to go back to the things that only you can do while the team continues to run after the plan. So. I think if there’s anything to be excited about as a lead pastor, it’s probably that.
Amy:
It sure is.
Sean:
Okay. So somebody’s listening to this Amy and thinking hopefully now we’ve convinced them, they’re thinking, I’m in. I wanna establish these planning rhythms. Where do, where would you encourage ’em to start? How do they actually calendar this?
Amy:
Yeah. Let me give you just a couple quick hits. I would just say, first of all, don’t wait for the perfect moment. I would try to find a full day to schedule your first like 90 day planning session. In fact, just do it every 90 days. Get four of ’em on the calendar. There’s no harm in that. Do for a half a day. You’ll figure out if you need more time, you need less, but get those on the calendar. Set that time aside. That’s just advanced planning, right?
Then we have to decide who’s going to be in the room. Right? Key staff, trusted elders, advisors. As you said Sean, you gotta choose high level strategically gifted thinkers and leaders who can think cross-functionally. Meaning you don’t want people coming to that meeting going, I represent next gen and I’m gonna advocate for them and fight for them. No, you want them to put on their global church hat for this activity and they need to be mature enough, you know, to kind of lay their ego aside and speak to what they see and what they think.
And then lastly, if you’re facilitating this, you just have to do a little bit of work to come prepared with the questions we’ve discussed to facilitate this group. Right? What are we learning? What needs to change? What do we need to stop? How can we reproduce or optimize what’s happening? So plan to start your time with assessment. Then key off those objective and subjective assessments we’ve been talking about. Come in with those questions. It’ll be amazing where you get.
But let me circle back actually to who needs to be in the room. Sean, you started that for us a little bit ago and I’ve been thinking., I would actually have you consider taking The Working Genius assessment if you’re unfamiliar with that assessment. Google it. It’s great. I think doing this would get a good mix of the geniuses in the room and would make sure you have at least a few Wonderers and Inventors and Discerners, honestly, who can fly at that 30,000 foot altitude.
You know, Sean, last month when we were together with our full team and we were workshopping some of our planning conversations, actually that was the little check that you guys gave me is make sure we have a Wonder or Invention on each of the teams as we break out. And it was so helpful. You know, those of us who have—I don’t have this actually—but Tenacity, they don’t really enjoy these meetings ’cause we’re, we’re, our altitude is too high. So an assessment like that would help you go, how do we get the right people in the room?
Also consider including staff who are closest to the ministries you’re planning for. Right? They have insights that you don’t have sometimes at a senior leadership level. And lastly, when it comes to picking who’s in the room, if this feels hard, maybe if you don’t have a strong team around you yet this might actually be a signal that leadership development needs to be a part of your plan.
Sean:
That’s true.
Amy:
It’s okay to pull in trusted board members, elders, or volunteer leaders if they fit the wiring and are aligned to the mission of the church. But if you just have this gap, you don’t know who to bring into the room, that’s something to pay attention to as well.
Sean:
That’s good. Good. Well, this has been, Amy, a very candid and also practical conversation on planning. Hopefully it’s helpful to our listeners.
Amy:
Exciting! An exciting conversation!
Sean:
And exciting. Any final thoughts before we wrap up today’s episode?
Amy:
Yeah. Just getting back to the heart behind this series. January really is a gift, and you have permission to slow down just enough to be intentional about the rest of the year. And as we said last week, try not to let this month slip by without establishing the rhythms that are gonna help you stay out of that catchup mode all year long. And remember the goal is not perfection, the goal is progress. So a plan that you refine quarterly is infinitely better than no plan at all. So if you can do nothing else today, get four quarterly meetings for your leadership team set aside so that you can work that plan in the midst of the whirlwind that always will surround church leaders.
Sean:
Absolutely. Well, thanks listeners for joining us today. Our next episode next week we’re gonna move from refocusing to forward movement, defining the time, and then creating the margin to actually execute on the plans that you’re making. Our passion here is helping pastors lead unstuck churches and through our Unstuck Process, we come alongside you, partner with you to create a comprehensive and customized ministry plan with the structure and the systems to help you execute and follow through well. And we work with you through accountability and ongoing coaching as you lead sometimes significant change in your church. We’re gonna help you follow through so you can learn how our process works at theunstuckgroup.com. And next week, we’ll be back with episode three to continue our series. Until then, every great week.
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