“By failing to plan, you are preparing to fail.” Benjamin Franklin.
This year at Seven Oaks we are trying to be more intentional in our efforts for Christ. We don’t want to just take a shot-gun approach where we have lots of things going on, but not much productivity. Nor do we want to take an undisciplined approach, which just allows what will happen to happen.
We have not gone into great detail or totally changed much of what we do in a typical year, but we have tried to simplify and clarify our aims and plans. We began a few new ministries that are focused on community outreach and tried to focus our outreach into 7 key programs or events for the year.
After hearing Allen Webster from the Jacksonville church of Christ, which publishes House to House, Heart to Heart, discuss how they produce a Plan of Work book each year for their church family, we decided to do one here. As any organizational and writing effort goes, it took a significant chunk of time. The elders, Ryan, and myself all worked to make these plans and produce the book.
I discussed some of the new ministries last Sunday as we discussed our community outreach. We will cover more of the plans this Sunday. We gave each family a book last week.
The leadership has been working since late in 2012 to restructure the Deacons and ministry assignments. We went to a new method with deacons over an area which has various ministries within that category. So they don’t have a given ministry, but assigned categories of work for which they are responsible for the ministries that go on within that category. We are announcing and sharing this information with the church in this book.
I planned out most of 2014’s sermons. I am planning on doing several series through the year and I have announced these to hopefully build interest.
Finally, we included various missions and ministries of our church family to help members and new members better understand them and be involved in these works.
We had the books printed through Createspace.com for $2.15 a piece plus shipping. Overall we are proud with how they turned out. The book is also available in PDF form on our website or by clicking this link –(Plan of Work 2014). The verdict is still out, but we are hopefully this book and the plans made will be beneficial for the work of the Lord.
If you have questions concerning how we produced or printed these books or anything about them, I would be willing to help.
