Hopefully you have started doing some planning for next semester with your leaders. Whether you’ve already done some planning or you usually put it off until after the holidays I want to suggest that you plan to plan. What do I mean by that?
The church I attend plans out what they will preach on and their focus as a church an entire year ahead of time. The pastors and elders get together and pray about what the Lord wants them to focus on as a church and then from there they begin to plan everything out in advance. They plan to plan.
Why not take some time and pray about what themes and portions of Scripture God wants you to touch on this upcoming semester? That may mean going through a regular curriculum or Bible study or it may mean touching on one main theme. The most common criticism of doing this is that it doesn’t leave room for the Holy Spirit to move week by week. So, when you plan out your semester make sure to leave a couple meetings open in order to be flexible and always being willing to move something around if an important issue comes up that needs to be addressed or the Holy Spirit lays something different on your heart. It’s ok to take a break from a series your group is working on for one week if the Holy Spirit decides to change things up; you’re not locked in! However, I think it’s also important to realize that God knows well ahead of time what this semester is going to look like and what will need to be addressed. Don’t you think the Holy Spirit can lead you to those things in prayer ahead of time?
Another benefit that I see of planning out a theme (or several themes) ahead of time is that you are able to clearly communicate to your leaders what you want to accomplish that semester and you can measure at the end whether you succeeded or not. For example, maybe in prayer you feel very led to reach the campus in a greater way through evangelism. So, from there you plan out a series of talks. The first week you talk on getting your priorities in order and what your focus should be, the second week you talk on the #1 priority in college (and life) – reaching the lost, the third week you talk about the way Jesus and the disciples spread the Gospel, etc. Then the fourth week you go out as a group to evangelize on campus and invite friends to BASIC with a meeting planned for the following week in which the full Gospel message is shared and an opportunity is given for students to give their lives to Christ. Along with your regular weekly meetings you schedule other social events and talks on campus centered around building friendships and having open conversation about what it means to be a Christian. By the time you get to that last meeting your students have fully grabbed hold of the importance of reaching the lost and you have 15 new students show up to the meeting. Ten of those students accept Christ as their Savior and your group doubles in size!
This is just one example, but it is easy to see how much more effective planning to plan can make your ministry by:
1. Enabling your leadership team to be pulling the same direction all semester (or year)
2. Enabling you to focus on the events and extra meetings that will help you to strive toward your goal
3. Enabling you to measure how well you reached that goal at the end of the semester (a goal that was given to your group by the Holy Spirit in prayer)