It’s the end of 2019, and things seem to be slowing down a little bit. One by one, the end of year events are happening. Except for Christmas Eve services, there is not much more to do before the year ends. This time of the year is an excellent opportunity to do a few things to prepare for next year. By taking some time now, you might save some time and effort as you begin the next year.
So here are six things you can do right now to help set yourself up for the new year.
1. Take Some Time Off
I know I just said that you could get ahead, but the best way to set yourself up for the new year might be to take a little time off. Take an extra day here or there. Get some Christmas Shopping done, surprise your spouse by cleaning the house, or take some time off that you can spend together. By taking some time for you, your spouse, and your family, you can recharge those relationships as you end this year and go into the next.
2. Prepare Your Calendar for Next Year
This is an awesome time to get your youth ministry calendar in order. Right now, when you have a few appointments is a great chance to look at your calendar for next year. Enter any important dates that come up in the life of your church. Get your school sports and activities calendars and enter those dates. Look at your spring breaks, Easter holidays, and other calendar items to see how they will affect your programming.
Even if you did a full year of planning with something like Grow at the beginning of the school year, this is an excellent time to see where you need to make adjustments.
3. Clear Out the Clutter
The New year is the perfect opportunity for a new commitment to clear out the clutter. Take a day and empty that closet that everything seems to get filled up with all the stuff no one wants to put up. Go through your basketballs and volleyballs and other sports equipment to see which need to be fixed or thrown away.
Go through the office and throw away your stacks of paper. If you need it, then file it or use something like Evernote to capture everything. Go through dropbox or Google drive and see if there is a curriculum or files you no longer need. Go through your photos and organize them into albums or upload the ones on your phone to something like Google Photos.
4. Schedule Ahead All You Can
We send out a daily text message verse of the day. If I try to remember to do it every day, I will miss one. However, this is a great time to sit down and schedule a whole semester worth of text messages. It is also great to create a social media schedule if you do not have one or to go ahead and plan out a few weeks on your Instagram posts or stories. You can also take time to create posts for your upcoming events or some generic graphics.
5. Pray and Read and Be Still
Most importantly, take time to refresh and recharge yourself. Read a book of the Bible that you aren’t using to write a bible study. Take time to be still and pray for your family, your students, and your ministry. Read a book not related to ministry. Use this time to try out some new spiritual practices like journaling.
6. Learn Something New
During the hustle and bustle of ministry is not the best time to learn a new program or try out something new. However, right now might be the perfect opportunity. Maybe you can learn how to use Trello to organize your ministry or learn how to create better social media content. Or perhaps there are some new curriculums you want to consider.
You can read up on some new youth ministry blogs, check out some new podcasts or read a new book on youth ministry issues.
Next year is going to be excellent, and I know God has great things in store for each of your ministries. I hope that you will be more productive and prepared because you took the time now to plan with these simple things.
What do you do at the end of year break? What would you add to the list?
Cover Photo Photo by Adam Tinworth on Unsplash