Improving Your Church Calendar

Here are some great ideas from the book Missional Renaissance by Reggie McNeal:

The church calendar usually starts with, “What do we want to do this year?” or, “What did we do last year?” In order to create a missional mindset and community focus, your calendar should start with the community’s calendar.

- Look first for community events, festivals, and rhythms (county fair, back-to-school, art festival, etc…)
- Make sure there are links within your calendar, and perhaps elsewhere on your website, to those events
- Then put in church events
- Reduce the number of church-centric events on the calendar, making sure your people aren’t too busy in church programs to be involved as missionaries in the community

If members feel that the church calendar is somehow different from the calendar of their community life, they will always feel that the community comes in second. By making sure that community events are calendared and not just church year stuff, you support your external focus.

[from Planting Space by Bradley]