Four Areas That Need Your Attention This Year

Courtesy of Corey Leopold/Creative Commons License

The feelings of anxiety and excitement fill me up this time of year, and the back to school commercials do not help.  Everyone is focusing on what they need to get, do and learn before the school bells ring for the first time.  If there is a time when a check list is most important it’s over these next few weeks.

Doesn’t matter if you had programming throughout the summer, it feels like everyone is starting from scratch.  That sense of urgency fills the area and people pick up their pace. The mantra, “SO MUCH TO DO IN SO LITTLE TIME.” rings through all of our heads.

Not sure what’s on your check-list, maybe it’s long and maybe it’s filled with big things.  If you want to get that all done, there are a few areas you need to tackle first.  Those areas are:

• Your Personal Schedule – What does your week look like?  Before the madness begins, start allotting time to when you will prepare curriculum, touch base with team, and even when you’ll eat lunch.  When you create a calendar for your week, you give yourself a pace.  If you walk into the roar of September without a clear pace you’ll find yourself falling behind or burning out. Give yourself 30 minutes to create one. (For more details go here)

• Communication – What do you want them to know? and What do you want them to do?  Those two questions should proceed every email, message and presentation you give.  The tendency is to have reactionary communication, which means waiting for something to happen.  Look at your calendar for they year and determine how you want the communication to roll out.  When is the best time for people to know certain information.  When you plan out your communication you give yourself time to craft an effective message.

• Budget – It’s easy to only think about your budget when you want to increase it.  Like communication our budget needs to be proactive; therefore, create a spending plan for your ministry.  Develop a system where you know how much a week, or month you have to spend and record each item effectively.  Schedule times monthly to check-in on your progress.  Own a plan for your budget, before the budget owns you.

• Training – What’s the vision for your leaders?  Decide on one or two things you want them to learn this year.  While there is so much they will learn in the trenches, it’s important for you to intentionally prepare them for a certain area of ministry.  It doesn’t have to be meetings, but making sure resources and online trainings are available to them.  Be sure you know how you want them to grow this specific year.

These four areas will impact how you serve and what you do as a leader this year.  The reason they are so important is because of the foundation they build in your ministry.  There are a million other things on your plate, you need these areas to help you organize and fuel them.  While you still have a little bit of margin left in your schedule, just take the time to reflect on them, and then plan on tweaking them throughout the year.

Would you agree with these four or am I missing an area?