“Commit your activities to the LORD, and your plans will be established.” — Proverbs 16:3
Planning is often viewed as an administrative task. Scripture presents it as a spiritual one.
This week our church staff began mapping out next year’s ministry calendar. Before anyone arrived, I asked each ministry leader to pray over the coming year and bring ideas they believed would best help us accomplish our mission. We didn’t begin with a polished calendar or a spreadsheet full of finalized dates. Instead, we began with prayer, a giant whiteboard, and a stack of sticky notes.
There is something freeing about sticky notes.
They communicate that ideas are important, but they are not permanent. They allow everyone to see the big picture, move events around, identify conflicts, and ask better questions before anything becomes official. Instead of defending our own ministry calendars, we work together to build one church calendar.
As we filled the board, we continually asked questions like:
- Does this help us make disciples?
- Is there enough margin around this event to do it well?
- Could this involve both our English and Español ministries?
- Is this something the Recommission Network (our partnering churches) could participate in?
- Is there something we should stop doing to make room for something more effective?
Those questions matter because a full calendar is not the same thing as a fruitful calendar.
Once the ministry calendar begins taking shape, the next step is promotion and budgeting. Our staff completed event registration forms so communication, resources, and planning can begin well in advance. Even our budget follows the ministry plan, not the other way around. We determine what we believe God is leading us to do, then steward our resources accordingly.
Proverbs 16:3 reminds us that planning and prayer are not competitors. Healthy churches do not choose between depending on God and preparing carefully. They do both.
Whether your church has two staff members or two hundred, the principle is the same. Gather your leaders. Pray together. Dream together. Ask hard questions. Put ideas where everyone can see them. Be willing to move things, remove things, and improve things. Then commit the entire process to the Lord.
Sometimes the best planning tool isn’t another app. It’s a whiteboard, a handful of sticky notes, a team seeking the Lord together, and the humility to hold every plan with open hands.
Faithful ministry requires both careful planning and complete dependence on God. We pray, we plan, and then we trust the Lord to establish our steps.
