If 2020 has taught us anything, it is that planning can be rather difficult, and that the world is not always going to be keen on letting anyone have their plans. However, the response to such a jarring year should not be to give up on planning entirely, if one even plans at all. The proper response is to move forward with the cautious optimism that ought to be second-hand with faith: a reasonable understanding that it is good to plan ahead without putting all the eggs in one basket.

As 2021 kicks off, churches remain in a nebulous position across the U.S. and the world. In some states, life has nearly returned to normal when it comes to worship; in others, in-person gatherings are still met with harsh rebuke from the state.

While one can never account for everything that may come one’s way, it is still important to plan and work in a way that allows not only your church to continue to operate efficiently, but also allows you to bring the Gospel light to the millions who have not heard it.

There is an old modicum of thought that believes that churches do not need to plan much at all. Perhaps it is a side-effect of being a religious institution predicated on faith, or perhaps it is simply an effect of the once small and minimally staffed churches which dotted — and still dot — the world. Regardless, this is a thought process which needs to be done away with. Churches, now more than ever, need to plan and work out future events and operations, along with being willing to adapt and renovate some of these events in accordance with modern mentalities.

In this podcast and through this blog series, we are going to highlight some ways that you can help your church to step and to plan ahead in 2021, utilizing modern tools and theories to help elevate your church after the shakiness of 2020.

Before diving into the rest of this series of blog posts, a great thing that you can do is to go ahead and write down what you believe are going to be some of the big events of the year for your church. Of course, things like Easter and Christmas are a given, but are there any other popular events that come every year, like a youth night or a couple’s retreat? Write as many of these down as you can with a date or range of dates that each event is expected to fall on.

As you continue to read through this series and listen to the podcast, write out some notes under these events of what you could change. One thing that we will talk about is changing a large, one-day event into a longer, multi-week event. Are there some events that would do better like this? Write that down. Write down some possible design choices, or some dates when you know that you are going to need to send material to designers as we lay out timetables for print and digital marketing material.

Hopefully, by the time you have finished this series, each of these events will have some notes as to how you can evolve and innovate them for 2021. Moving forward is all about taking one step at a time, and we hope that this can be a first step into an evolution for your churches events and materials.

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To learn more about this topic, check out this episode of ChurchMediaHQ: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8CxcyFohjRw&list=PLyKR6mIKUtvjbDUcqC6TDd8Jcnyzl8V8_&index=