Building a year-long calendar

Lewis Carroll wrote, “If you don’t know where you are going, any road will get you there.” In other words, you need to know where you’re heading in order to find the best way to get there. That’s what makes a clear vision and an overall strategy so vital. Having a year-long calendar gives a clearer image of where the ministry is going. Now is a good time to start planning your 2016-2017 calendar.

The intention of the calendar isn’t to set everything in stone, but rather gives you a working document for others to help you prayerfully discern God’s direction. Most people tend to be editors (not creators), so having this calendar gives you, the youth ministry team, parents and church leaders an idea of what to expect.

Here are some steps to formulate your year-long calendar. (There’s a sample calendar below that walks through the steps):

1. List what time slots you’re responsible for (e.g. what regular meetings with specific groups in the youth ministry).
2. Identify the “big rocks”. These are any major events involving the youth ministry (e.g. retreats, church special occasions).
3. Use the preceding and following weeks to ramp into and out of each major rock.
4. From the broader strategic plan, identify what key themes/issues are scheduled for this coming year.
5. What areas can you “streamlined” with other areas? E.g. If you are discipling a core group of youth as student leaders, use that time to walk through some “primer materials” on the upcoming youth group lessons.
6. It’s helpful to schedule when you’d like feedback from key groups (e.g. students, parents, volunteer leaders, a church governing board like the CE committee or deacons). This is elaborated in the blog post “A Culture of Feedback”.

At this stage, you don’t need every specific detail. Hopefully you can delegate some parts of the calendar for others to own and give shape.

Life doesn’t always follow our intended plans (Proverbs 16:9 reminds us of who’s ultimately in charge). Sometimes, something comes up and needs to be addressed (e.g.like a current world event such as the Alberta fires). The point is to at least have an idea of where God is leading this youth ministry towards this coming year, and to continue to ask for God’s guidance in the year-long process.

How do you put together your year-long calendar?

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Here’s what a sample calendar could look like. We’ll assuming this is a youth ministry of 10 students and 3 leaders that meet every Thursday night and the adult leadership team meets once a month.

Step 1: Identify what time slots you’re responsible for.

Step 2: Identify the “big rocks”.

Step 3: Ramp in and out of “big rocks”

Step 4:  Using CBOQ’s curriculum for remaining weeks