Three Things Every Pastor Should do in June
By Raul Rivera
Now that Memorial Day is behind us, activities in many churches across America slow down a bit. Instead of accepting the slowdown as a reason to coast through the summer, now is the best time to start preparing for an explosive start to the fall season.
Every year pastors get caught off guard
Let's face it, no matter how hard we try, many pastors are never prepared for the slowdown that occurs after Memorial Day. Many feel let down and abandoned by the Lord. The truth of the matter is that slowdowns are a necessary part of growth, and you should look forward to them as an avenue to spend more time with the Lord, strategizing plans for the future of your ministry.
Strategy is the key to success
Without strategy, no general will ever win a battle, much less a war! In the same way, your church's success will rely on the strategies you carefully lay out. From counting the cost (Matt 14:28) to preparing for the future (Pr 16:3), planning is essential to success. A common problem with many churches is their failure to plan ahead for events and seasons. That happens because they improperly use the downtimes as a time to either coast or moan.
Why not look at your church through the lens of seasons and events. Seasons are periods of time that are measured by beginning and ending of events. Let me give you an example.
Fall season: Begins when school starts and ends with Christmas. Within that season there are events such as Labor Day retreats, college and high school football games, back to school outreaches, October Fests, Harvest Festivals, Halloween outreaches to the lost, Thanksgiving feeding of the poor, Christmas plays, and so on. When you look at the fall season, there is much planning that needs to take place beginning right now.
Three things to do in June
So here are the three things you must do in June to have an explosive start to the fall season.
1. Assess the past:
Have you taken time to assess the past five months? What were January through May like? What worked? What failed? What do you need to change in order to keep moving forward? June is the best time for using extended hours to take long, hard looks at all that you did. There may be some things that need to be stopped and others that need to be tweaked. Why not take a weekend and seriously consider what your heart's desires really are for the church? June is also a month to assess the ugly side of ministry. What decisions have you make this year that you wish you could take back? What conversations did you have that were out of line? Assessment allows you to better understand who you are and it helps to laser focus you for the next season.
2. Prepare at least two sermon series:
With the start of a new school year, many churches see a natural bump in attendance as people get their lives back on track and want to go to church. The wisest of pastors will anticipate this time and begin to prepare for that season before it arrives. As I have written before, “the best way to receive a blessing is to be prepared for it!” In talking to pastors of growing churches, they spend their summer months in preparation, drafting several sets of sermon series that can be advertised to the general public using mail marketing and other means to get the Word out. They know a season of growth is coming, and they are getting ready now. Below are an entire set of titles for one series.
- Extreme Home Makeover - Family Edition
- Heroes - They are Everywhere
- The Making of a Godly Family
- Divorce Proofing Your Marriage
- Raising Champions For Christ
- Desperate Households
3. Start a CDC:
A CDC is short for a community development corporation. The summer months are a great time to start one because it can play an important role in helping you raise funds for outreach. Many churches try to raise funds for their outreach programs but often times end up raising little to no money. The most common reasons people do not give to church outreach programs is because they either already give to their own church or they just don't give to churches at all. A CDC is of particular advantage here because it is not a church. It is simply a community outreach program that has a goal of serving the community. My wife and I started a CDC in Florida to run our community outreach programs. The amount of money we were able to raise was exponential. Our first ever outreach was a back to school event. We were able to raise over $45,000.00 in funding in about 60 days. The key to our outreach was that the CDC was not set up as a Christian or religious organization, but rather a community development organization that had no religious purpose. This made it easy for us to receive funding from grants from both religious and non religious organizations. Then in every outreach that we conducted that served the community, our church played a major role in reaching the lost. There is no better time than June for strategic planning. For more information on starting a CDC, please call us at 770-638-3444.
Closing Thought
Like it or not, June will come and go. It is a 30-day season in the history of your church that can alter the course of your life. Your journey as a leader will pass through many June seasons. This one can be special because it may be the first time you decide to use it for carefully planning the next season. So, the only question is, "What will you do this June?"
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