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As the end of the year approaches, now is the perfect time to start thinking through evaluations, and focusing on this year’s mission work is a great place to start. Mission work is one of the tools your church can use to spread the Gospel and make disciples. By evaluating this work at your church, you’ll be better equipped to engage in effective mission planning for 2020. 

Take a look at what you can do now to plan for an effective year of outreach.

How to Evaluate the Previous Year

In order to successfully evaluate your previous year’s mission planning, ask yourself these questions:

  1. Did you reach all of your mission goals?
  2. What strategies worked best to accomplish these goals?
  3. Were there specific activities and tasks that helped your church succeed in the area of mission work?
  4. Who was the main go-to person for each mission event and was it successful having a point person?
  5. What outcomes did your church experience?
  6. How long did the planning take for each mission project?
  7. Did you stay on track with implementing each event, and if not, how did you recover the time lost?

How to Prepare for the Upcoming Year

After you’ve successfully completed the evaluation process above, it’s important to take the results and allow them to guide you through the upcoming year’s mission planning process. Here’s a great list of mission planning questions to help you get started:

  1. What are your mission goals?
  2. What strategies can your church implement to achieve these goals?
  3. Are there specific tasks to do before the actual mission work?
  4. Name the point person for each project.
  5. What are you hoping to gain from each mission event?
  6. What measures of success can you set in place to determine if you’ve achieved your goal?
  7. What is your timeline to make each event happen?
  8. How do you plan to track all progress for each event?

These questions should give you a steady foundation to plan the upcoming year’s mission events so that you can start off the year running. 

Steps for Success

Mission planning at your church is critical for furthering your mission and taking the Gospel beyond the walls of your church. In order to be successful, here are a few easy steps to follow.

1. Create an Ultimate Mission Plan that Aligns With Church Goals

Create a mission planning team that will create an outreach strategy that details each mission event. If there are specific tasks for each department, include those so that you can quickly give information to whoever needs it. Be sure that this plan lines up with your church mission and overarching ministry goals.

2. Get Inspired

When planning your church outreach events, don’t hesitate to look around and find what other churches are doing. For example:

Hephzibah Baptist Church is planning a Fall Festival.

Worship Center leads multiple mission trips each year.

First Baptist Bryan partners with local organizations.

3. Identify Your Target Audiences

Every mission work or mission event is different. You serve different people with different needs in different areas. Not every event will be the same. When you are planning, be sure to consider your target audience so that you can tailor plans and promotions accordingly.

4. It’s All in the Details

Finally, in your planning, be as detailed as possible. It’s always better to have too much information that answers all the questions than to be halfway through your mission project and realize you never thought to plan for a specific incident. 

Next Steps

Another way to prepare for missions is through education. Whether it’s taking an online course or simply learning from those experienced in your community, you’ll find the more time you set toward learning, the better your plans will be. Check out the Church Relevance course shop to get inspired and equipped for a successful 2020.