As the fall semester will be upon us soon, I wanted to write a series of three posts to give you tips for planning. I’m sure most campus ministers have done some planning already at this point, but have you done effective planning that will ensure success for your ministry in this new school year?
Sometimes when planning, past successes hinder us because we believe it was the strategy that brought success. So, we try to use the same strategy again, but the success we’re trying to replicate actually was inspired by God and didn’t come from a certain strategy.
Moses striking the rock is the perfect example of this in the Bible. When the Israelites were complaining that they were thirsty he was told to strike the rock and it would bring forth water. The second time this situation occurred he was told to speak to the rock, not strike it like the first time. In frustration he relied on his past experience and struck the rock. Sometimes, like Moses, we assume what worked before will work again.
There are a few reasons that we tend to rely on past successes:
We’re scared of change.
Coming up with new ideas takes time and effort.
We grow content with the results we’ve seen from past efforts.
Do any of those sound familiar? Now, don’t get me wrong, we don’t always need to reinvent the wheel. There are practices your ministry has perfected that should remain the same. However, there are others that will need to be changed or adapted for this upcoming school year.
So, how do we best figure out what needs to stay and what needs to go? That will be the focus of my next post – the importance of regularly evaluating your ministry.
Have you relied on past successes only to see them become failures? What was your response?