4 New Year’s Resolutions for Your Church

Does your church have a New Year's resolution? Here are 4 resolutions that can help your church step into 2022 with clear focus and intentionality.

Aaron Buer

Digital giving apps and tools

Hey, it’s almost a new year!

Let’s talk about resolutions.

I’m not talking about your personal resolutions, although, I hope you’re able to keep those.

Let’s talk about resolutions for your church.

It might be a good idea to capitalize on the season and set some goals. There’s an opportunity here. I have a few suggestions to get the ball rolling.

1. Clarify the Mission

Everyone is thinking about goals in January.

So, what’s the goal for your church?

In other words, what’s the mission? What are you trying to accomplish and does everyone know?

church-mission

For us, our mission is to:

Lead people into a relationship with Jesus and His church

That’s what we’re all about. Everyone knows it because we talk about it all the time.

A simple and effective New Year’s resolution for your church might be to clarify the mission.

If you don’t have a clear mission, take the time to establish and clarify your mission.

If you do have one, what would it take to make sure everyone knows the mission and is working to make it happen?

2. Evaluate

It’s amazing how easy it is to be busy doing stuff without really knowing if the stuff is effective or worthwhile.

Maybe this is the year to evaluate your practices and determine if you’re still on track or if it’s time to make some changes.

We are in the habit of evaluating every event or program with something we call "4 Helpful Lists".

For example, after our upcoming student ministry winter retreat, I’ll gather my team and ask four important questions:

What was right?
What was wrong?
What was missing?
What was confusing?

We use a large white board and write out all the answers to these questions and the result is 4 Helpful Lists that help us determine how to make the event or program better or whether or not we should continue the event or program.

4-helpful-lists

Sometimes we make immediate changes. Other times we put the list in a file for next year’s event.

In my experience, if you’re interested in pursuing excellence in your church or ministry, honest evaluation is crucial. Maybe choosing to evaluate in 2022 would be a great resolution for your church.

3. Put Your People First

It turns out that pulling off church every week is hard work!

There is a lot that needs to happen to provide excellent ministry for each age group in your church.

The challenge is that the busier we get and the more focused on our tasks that we become, the more difficult it is to communicate value to people, especially our staff and volunteer teams.

Maybe a great resolution for 2022 is to put people first.

Let’s be real, if 2022 was a year in which your church staff and volunteers felt more valued, invested in and listened to, it would be a great year!

One of the best ways to value your people is to help them grow and develop in the ways that they want to grow and develop.

It’s one thing to say:

"We need you to be better at making spreadsheets so we’re sending you to a workshop on Excel."

I mean, sure, that’s personal development but it doesn’t feel very personal.

It’s an entirely different thing to say:

"Hey, what do you want to be doing in 5 years? How can I help you get there?"

The second questions is one of my favorite questions to ask as a leader.

Although, watch out because sometimes your people will say, “In five years, I’d like to have your job.”

Umm... I’d like to retract my question.

What would it look like to put your people first in 2022 and invest in their growth and development?

One great way is to ask them where they want to be in five years and be ready to take action to help them. As an employee or volunteer, it feels great to know that your leader cares about you as a person. People who feel valued and heard typically do great work. It’s a win-win.

4. Focus on Your Greatest Gift

Maybe an important resolution for your church has less to do with your staff, strategy or practices and more to do with you personally, as a leader.

Maybe a great resolution for 2022 would be for you and me to focus on our greatest gift to our congregations.

And, by this, I don’t mean your greatest talent or skill.

I mean your faith. I mean, your relationship with God.

Our senior pastor constantly reminds us that the greatest gift that we bring to our congregation is not skills or abilities, no matter how strong they are, but rather it’s our consistent and growing walk with Jesus.

As church leaders, let’s not forget that discipleship is about multiplication. We are teaching people to do what we do and live like we live as we seek to follow Jesus.

If 2022 is a year in which we grow more like Jesus it will be a win—for us, for our families and for our churches. So, if we do nothing else in 2022, let’s prioritize pursuing God in our personal lives.

Wrap Up

Well, there you go, 4 resolutions for your church in the New Year.

If one of our suggestions struck a chord with you, run with it. If not, spend some time thinking about resolutions for your church. We’d love to hear about them. Feel free to leave some ideas or suggestions in the comments below.

Oh, and Happy New Year!

Discover how our Groups tool can help you organize and manage one-on-one meetings effectively.

Explore Groups Tool

Looking for an easy-to-use software to help manage your church?

We'd love to show you what we built!

Join 10,000+ happy churches using Breeze ChMS™.

Name
loves Breeze

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Suspendisse varius enim in eros elementum tristique. Duis cursus, mi quis viverra ornare, eros dolor interdum nulla, ut commodo diam libero vitae erat. Aenean faucibus nibh et justo cursus id rutrum lorem imperdiet. Nunc ut sem vitae risus tristique posuere.

Try a demo of Breeze for yourself!
Name
loves Breeze

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Suspendisse varius enim in eros elementum tristique. Duis cursus, mi quis viverra ornare, eros dolor interdum nulla, ut commodo diam libero vitae erat. Aenean faucibus nibh et justo cursus id rutrum lorem imperdiet. Nunc ut sem vitae risus tristique posuere.

Try a demo of Breeze for yourself!
Name
loves Breeze

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Suspendisse varius enim in eros elementum tristique. Duis cursus, mi quis viverra ornare, eros dolor interdum nulla, ut commodo diam libero vitae erat. Aenean faucibus nibh et justo cursus id rutrum lorem imperdiet. Nunc ut sem vitae risus tristique posuere.

Try a demo of Breeze for yourself!
David P.
loves Breeze
St. Pauls United Methodist Church

Breeze has been incredible. Their customer service, commitment to innovation, and their product are top-notch. I love the features, the ease of use and the mobile applications.

Try a demo of Breeze for yourself!
Karen M.
loves Breeze
Hillcrest Church

All of our database needs have been more than met, it's easier to use than the last database we had, and the price is amazing - what a value this has been to our church! All of our staff can use this software and they do regularly. We use it to track…literally anything a church could possibly need to track regarding it's attenders.

Try a demo of Breeze for yourself!
Chris K.
loves Breeze
Crossroads United Methodist Church

Breeze has been a great asset to our church and congregation. Especially from an administrative standpoint, it has been the most adaptable and easiest church database I have ever used. The features from blast emails to giving on-line, and texting have been one of our greatest assets. Thank you!

Try a demo of Breeze for yourself!
Ed R.
loves Breeze
Church Admin

We switched from a major, web-based ChMS to Breeze and our decision is confirmed every day. We are a medium size church and we use Breeze for contributions, member management, event checkin and a few other applications custom to our church. I had trouble getting any staff to use our previous ChMS but almost all staff are using Breeze. The product is very well designed, extremely easy to learn and use and customer service is incredible.

Try a demo of Breeze for yourself!
Ellen G.
loves Breeze
Grace Church

Breeze has opened the communication highway for our congregation and staff, with very little training. Because members can update their own records and search easily for other members - and map their locations, send emails and text right from Breeze, they love it and our data is more real-time accurate. Our ministries are stronger, because they can trust the data in Breeze, which is easily accessed anywhere, anytime.

Try a demo of Breeze for yourself!
Steve H.
loves Breeze
First Presbyterian Church of Ramsey

Breeze is the first ChMS my volunteers have actually embraced. That's because it's so easy to use. The software is very flexible and gives us the opportunity to make decisions based on actual data we've collected and not just hunches or stories we believe to be true.

Try a demo of Breeze for yourself!
Allicia B.
loves Breeze
Ellel Ministries Canada

I cannot say enough about Breeze. Their customer service is so friendly, you feel like you have friends and family helping you get started, they're prompt to reply and will do whatever they can to help you get things sorted out. It's been so easy to learn, our staff is loving it and best of all even our staff who are not computer savvy find it a breeze (pun intended). We are just thrilled by our choice.

Try a demo of Breeze for yourself!
Kevin D.
loves Breeze
Central Baptist Church

From the start of our process looking for an online solution, Breeze has exceeded all our expectations. Fast data import, fast and friendly customer support, and we can’t say enough about how much we like the program itself. Very well designed and user friendly. On a scale of 1-10, Breeze gets a 15 from us!

Try a demo of Breeze for yourself!

Rated 4.9 stars – 700+ reviews