When it comes to project management and the church, you might wonder what your church should treat as a project. Are weekly services a project? Is facility maintenance a project? What efforts should be put into a standard project management process versus handled as an ongoing task? Thankfully, once we settle on a common definition, it’s not hard to determine what to treat as a project.
In this post, I shared the definition of a project from the Project Management Institute as “temporary in that it has a defined beginning and end in time, and therefore defined scope and resources.”
With that definition in mind, here are examples of what you may want to treat as a project at your church:
#1 – Events, Special Services, & Outreaches
Every church hosts a variety of events throughout the year. Vacation Bible School, Easter Egg Hunts, Christmas concerts, community outreaches, and other events certainly fit the project definition mentioned above.
#2 – New Ministry or Program Launches
If your church leadership decides to launch a small group ministry, you’ll have a significant number of tasks to complete before the big kickoff service. From training small group leaders, to providing an online method for people to sign up and more, you’ll need a project team to make this a successful launch. The same concept applies to starting an addiction recovery ministry, establishing a disaster response team, and other new programs at the church.
#3 – Facility Updates
Remodeling the church sanctuary, installing new equipment, expanding the nursery, or repainting the parking lot lines are all examples of church facility projects. Of course, a new building or renovation effort would qualify as a project as well. For these efforts, you’ll likely need to engage vendors to help with architectural drawings, city permits, and other specialized trades.
#4 – Moving
Whether it involves staff members changing offices or the church moving into a new building, there are many logistics involved in a move. Setting up furniture and equipment, stocking office supplies and restrooms, coordinating who moves when, and more are all aspects of that project to manage effectively.
#5 – Software Migration and Implementation
If your church decides to change accounting software or selects a new church management system, you’ll need to track all the tasks required to make that a seamless transition. For these types of projects, you’ll need to get the software vendor involved to make sure the process runs smoothly.
#6 – Website Redesign
Church websites periodically need a detailed review and update. Managing this as a project will involve considering various factors such as the church logo, font and color selection, integration with online giving options, updating the content for each page, and many other details. Even for a fairly simple website, this project could become quite extensive. Assigning someone to be the project manager can help your team complete the effort in a timely manner.
#7 – Capital Campaign
A church leadership team considering a capital campaign should treat that effort as a project. Creating a project charter to define the goals of the project can help the team focus on what’s most important for this initiative.
#8 – Succession Planning
Even if we expect and hope that someone will stay in their current role for many years, it’s always wise to have a succession plan. You could treat this as a project for each role, and include steps such as documenting tasks, identifying skillsets required to be successful in that job, and considering who on staff has the potential to move into that role in the future. This project is a matter of stewarding the future of the church by ensuring there’s a plan ready to fill any role in a timely manner.
#9 – Weekly Services
Now, this one might be a bit of a stretch to treat as a project since it’s an ongoing effort. However, each service does have a defined start and finish (well, depending on how long your pastor preaches that week…). You could treat weekly services as a project with the following task categories:
- Sermon preparation
- Worship set
- Pre-service announcements
- Bulletin design, printing, and distribution
- Volunteer coordination
- Children’s ministry programming
- Special service elements, such as communion and baptisms
- Notes to display on screens
- Sermon graphics and online notes
- Service live streaming
Your church can leverage a standard project management process to coordinate these efforts more efficiently, saving the church time and making the best use of its resources.
Interested in jump-starting your church’s project management efforts? Purchase the Church Project Management Starter Pack collection of templates and save your team from the hassle of starting from scratch.
