New Year Routines

What are your New Year routines? Do you make resolutions? Set goals? Do you mainly look forward? Do you spend some time looking back? Do you take time to evaluate all those goals and resolutions from last year to see where you landed? Our church planters are doing all these things this next month at our yearly strategic planning meetings.

Over the last few years, I have worked with our church planters to develop a simple assessment tool to make sure that our church plants are moving forward in the things that matter most to the health of the church plants. Each church planter takes time to first think about and assess the identity of the church and if anything has changed in the core values of the church, the cultural context of the church, and the ultimate guiding vision for the church. Then the planter then takes some time to assess where the church is in some key strategies to live out their identity, strategies like disciplemaking, engaging the lost and prayer.

Once the planter (and sometimes their team) has taken time to assess we get together and do a deep dive into how things are going. We talk through all the questions around the identity and the activity of the church plant, with the goal of identifying 3-5 “musts” for the year. These are things that must happen for the church plant to move forward into becoming the church they are called to be. Sometimes these musts are things that the planter can strategically work towards and achieve while sometimes they are God-sized goals that can only be achieved through a move of God at the church plant.

These “musts” then become the focus of our monthly coaching meetings. We talk about them, pray about them, and sometimes change them. We always celebrate when God moves and one of the “musts” gets checked off the list. Would you pray for our church plants this month as we are doing these planning meetings? Would you pray for us to discern well what God is calling each plant into this year and that we would see the Kingdom advance as a result? We have seen great momentum in part due to this strategic planning, and I pray that your life and ministry will expand as well as you look forward into 2024.

Kyle Magstadt

Associate Superintendent for
Church Multiplication