Why I Never Liked January.

I love October!

My birthday is in October. I can start to wear hoodies and comfy clothes in October.

November is pretty awesome too! Thanksgiving is in November. Pumpkin pie is my favorite pie.

Then comes December! Christmas, and all of the fun things that come with that. Celebrating the birth of our Savior!

Then comes January. And the whole month is spent talking about goals, and setting goals, and keeping your goals. Ugh! So not fun.

This year my opinion on this month has changed. Let me tell you why. 

To be perfectly honest with you, I have never set and kept goals before. I thought it was silly to only set January as a time to better yourself. Or, at least, that is what I would tell people. But in reality, I was afraid of setting goals and then not keeping them. It was easier to not set any goals at all, and then I couldn’t fail.

I have discovered, failing is not the worst thing that can happen. Failing and not getting back up is the worst thing that could happen to you.

The question isn’t am I going to fail, I will fail. The question is if I am going to get back up again.

It’s not about failing, it’s about getting back up, dusting yourself off and learning from it.

God has really been challenging me to set goals this year.

One person I know has defined vision or goal setting as ‘seeing where you are going in your mind.”

When leading people, we need to know where we are going! Even if we fall down, at least we will still be heading in the right direction.

If you don’t know where you are going, you will never get there. 

You may be asking, ‘how do I even come up with goals?’ 

Ask your self some questions:

Where do you want to be next year? Do you want to see more kids in your class? Do you want more volunteers? What are things that you want your ministry to be doing that you’re not doing now? What activities do you want to do? How can you improve what you are doing?

Once you have a list of things that you want to do, make an appointment with your Lead Pastor.

Ask your Senior Pastor what his goals are for the whole church. Then change or modify them to fit your kids’ ministry. Your goals should mirror your Pastors’ goals. If your Pastor’s goal is to be a church that is focusing on outreach this year, your Kids’ Ministry goals need to reflect that as well.

This may be obvious, but it needs to be said. Talk to God. Ask God about specific kids in your class. Do you see them growing in Christ?

It is important to have personal goals as well. Are you going to read more books?  Become more organized as a leader? Communicate more clearly? Practice your lessons each week before Sunday? This is a great time to stretch your self.

Lastly, it is important to set specific and measurable goals, because how else will you know if you completed them? I could say that one of my goals would be to be a better Kid Min Pastor. How would I know that I completed that goal? It should be more like, I am going to set a specific time each week to better myself, to learn and to grow. I will also set up an accountability group to challenge myself and other KidMin people.

Some other examples:

Develop my leaders.

Sit in a church service at least once a month.

Get more youth involved in kidmin.

Become more organized and time schedule.

Read at least 1 book a month.

Get more volunteers and train them more consistently.

Some of these may seem easy to you and some may seem impossible. Set some goals this week. Next week I am going to talk about making a vision board.

So, let me hear from you! What are your goals?