A Radical Approach to Planning for the New Year

The Emotionally Healthy Leader Podcast

Emotionally Healthy Spirituality

Newlifefellowship, Religion & Spirituality, Leadership, Richvillodas, Petescazzero, Emotionallyhealthyspirituality, Christianity, Faith, Peterscazzero, Churchleaders, Spirituality, Emotionallyhealthy, Newyork, Pastor

4.8 • 673 Ratings

🗓️ 22 December 2022

⏱️ 31 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Does the end of the year feel like a complete whirlwind?

For most pastors and leaders Christmas activities dominate the month of December and then we only get a week's break before launching into a new year!

In January, pastors face the difficult task of vision-casting, goal-setting, and steering the direction of the church for the next 12 months.

Too often, our planning is driven by:

Expectations from others (i.e. board, supervisors, people we serve)
Internal pressure to be a great leader or to create momentum.
The “shoulds" of everything that feels important. (i.e. “We should be doing more of this...")

All of these things can feel like a tremendous weight, under which many pastors buckle over time.

But planning doesn't have to feel this way.

In today's episode, I want to show you a radical new approach to planning. I'll show you how I plan for the season ahead in a way that produces joy, not anxiety.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hi, my name is Pete Gazzar. I want to welcome you today to the Emotionally Healthy Leader
0:08.1	podcast, our final one for the end of the year. And I want to offer you a practical invitation
0:14.6	for you as we enter the new year. And I'm simply calling this podcast a radical approach to planning for the new year, a radical approach
0:24.4	to planning for the new year. And I've really enjoyed actually preparing this as I prepare for
0:30.0	the new year as well. So for most leaders, the end of the year is filled with a lot of activity,
0:35.4	a world win actually. Leading up to Christmas, of course, New Year's.
0:39.8	There's also a break between the two.
0:41.5	And then boom, we have a difficult task of vision casting, setting direction, often goals for the upcoming year.
0:48.8	But the transition can be very challenging from end of one year into another because there are expectations of other
0:57.0	people that we have, whether it's your board or supervisor or people you're serving,
1:01.7	there's external pressures such as how other ministries or other organizations are doing
1:06.3	that seem to be flourishing. And you look at yourself and say, hmm, what am I lacking? And then there's
1:11.9	internal expectations or pressure as we put on ourselves. I often call it the internal slave driver
1:18.5	of Farrow, the shoulds, that we should be doing this or more of this. This should be happening.
1:25.7	And so we fill our calendar up quickly with half-toes.
1:28.5	And we end up again in another year with too much to do in too little time.
1:33.7	And we feel pressure a lot.
1:37.3	In fact, I get exhausted just thinking about it because I did it for years.
1:42.8	And so to help in my early years years at least, I would bring in a
1:46.2	consultant around Christmas and New Year's as soon as the New Year began. I'd want someone to help
1:51.9	sort out all the strategic opportunities that were presenting our team and our mission and our
1:57.6	history. We'd look at our past and what was right, wrong, missing,
	...

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