Is it time to plan your 2024 Spiritual Launch Emphasis? Good planning helps with alignment

What is it?

Several clients use a 21-day or 28 - day Spiritual Emphasis to start the year. These can include:

• Twenty-one days or 28 days of prayer.
• Prayer and Fasting. (with various versions of fasting)
• Daily, unified scripture reading passages with commentary that focus on starting anew.
• A vision message series.
• A season focused on repentance and new starts.
• New small group launches.

Why do this?

For many individuals, be they Christ followers or not, this is a season to make new resolutions and commitments that focus on individual or family improvement. If fasting is included, it fits with post-holiday weight loss and exercise programs.

We all know many of these don’t last. They often don’t because habits are not built by just writing down a goal but by forming regular, consistent behaviors.

Churches conducting these emphases early in the year leverage the culture’s thinking about new starts to encourage believers and nonbelievers to renew their relationship with Christ during this time.

Repetition wins

In my observation, churches that leverage these emphases do them consistently every year. It is hard to see results in one or two years.

Why is that?

• They tend to grow in participation over time.
• You hit different individuals in different seasons of life. Some years, a person is “not into it,” but then the next year, they are.
• The church keeps enough consistency to the program, but also enhances it, or makes strategic changes every year to fit the situation, calendar, and other seasons.
• (For more on seasons and campaigns, see these issues of Church Leader Insider)
• Part 1,?Part 2,?Part 3.
• The program planning gets better at tying many activities, from message series, app delivery, nights of prayer, daily communications, etc., together into a complete picture.
• Timing of other program launches for the new year begins to work into the flow.
• More and more of the congregation begin to see a benefit to the season.

Liturgical season churches have known the power of this principle with the seasons of Lent and Advent in some similar ways.

Hey, wait – We already do this.?Great. How do you evaluate in your After Action Review 2023’s activities and results?

See our?Holiday after action issue from January 4?here for a good evaluation before planning for next year.

When to start?

Now we come to see differences. Some start with the first Sunday in January, whenever that falls. They believe that putting this as close to New Year’s day builds on the culture’s direction of new year’s resolutions.

Others in my orbit regularly “Take a Sunday off” between Christmas and New Years or significantly reduce the options for that weekend. (I am not in total alignment there, but that is up to each congregation)

Some wait until the 2nd?week of January to start their emphasis. The thinking is three-fold.

1.??????Attendance on that first Sunday is often low.

2.??????It fits better calendar-wise for a 21-day emphasis.

3.??????Students are back in school by then for sure.

The particular case of 2024

Just as we discussed in this issue of Church Leader Insider about Holiday Planning for 2024, planning for these emphases may also look different for January 2024.

• January 1 will be on a Monday. Some elementary and high schoolers may not return to school until the 8th.
• The unofficial end of the holidays for those in the south is the College Football Championship. Next year that is January 8, 2024. For 2025 though, that won’t happen until January 20.
• Martin Luther King Jr.’s birthday will be a national holiday on the 15th, meaning a long weekend the second week. Here in the southern United States, that can either be a peak week attendance or a low week attendance. Mileage varies.
• Some church youth groups use the long MLK weekend for retreats or special service projects.

For those that observe Lent, which begins on February 14, 2024, with Easter for most traditions at the end of March. That makes for a quick turnaround if you have special emphases during those seasons.

Observations

• I don’t watch football intentionally, so football season means little to me. But it does impact many contexts and cultures we are trying to reach.
• It is wise not to continually have the gas pedal down for the staff and essential volunteers. Some churches suspend other activities during the 21-day season, such as program launches, weekday events, rehearsals, and the like, and then mash the gas again when it is concluded. Consider that in your thinking for 2024.
• How does this fit our larger mission, values, and context? Don’t do these things just because other churches do them. Make sure they fit what you are trying to build long-term.

Plan Now

• Evaluate 2023 in this regard if you had one.
• If you have never attempted this type of emphasis, what would be the pros and cons of your situation?
• What dates, themes, and other impacts will this have for 2024?
• What will we consider fruitfulness and success in this effort?

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When you are ready to talk about your church’s future and your future as a Senior Pastor, I am happy to chat. Many of those conversations start several years before ever being engaged with a church for a formal process. I always want to share what I have learned for those that want to hear them. Just set up a time by emailing me: [email protected].