annual church event calendar

How to Budget for Church Events in 3 Easy Steps

Part of your responsibilities as a church leader is to be an excellent steward of church finances. Events tend to be a significant portion of church ministry. Therefore, it makes sense to budget for church events and monitor them closely. Here are three easy steps to budget for church events and keep your ministry on track for the year.  Step #1: Determine What Events You’ll Host This Year In a recent blog post, I mentioned the importance of planning church events a year in advance. The first step to planning in advance is to determine early which events to host throughout the year. Facilitate a meeting with church staff and put all potential events on a large wall calendar (erasable is best). This is a great visual that helps you see what the year might look like. Next, host a follow-up team meeting to review the calendar with department leaders, the Executive Pastor, and the Senior Pastor. Discuss potential workload issues for your staff as well as budgets for each event, which leads us into Step #2. Step #2: Create a Budget for Each Church Event  Next, you’ll need to create a budget for each individual event. Here’s a list of items you should account for when creating a detailed budget:  Step #3: Review the Budget Depending on how your church handles the annual budgeting process, budgets for events may roll up into each department’s budget for the year. Regardless of how this is handled, you should review each church event budget before approving the event to take place. If an event is too costly, you can likely scale it back instead of canceling it altogether. That’s why reviewing is such an important step in the budgeting process. Church event planning can quickly get out of hand if there isn’t a clear process. To help you stay focused, shortcut the budgeting process with this Event Budgeting Template (see below).

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5 Steps to Planning Church Events a Year Ahead

There’s no denying it, church events can be incredible ministry tools. Unfortunately, they can also drain your budget and burnout your staff. It is possible, however, to get all the benefits of hosting events without all the trouble. How do you do it? Plan in advance. In fact, I recommend planning church events a year out.  No, I’m not saying you need to create a detailed to-do list a year ahead. However, it’s wise to decide which events your church will host for the year. By doing this early, your team will have time to get all their ideas on the table, discuss what events are best at each time of year, and determine whether or not you need to space the events out. From my own event planning experience, doing this exercise when there’s no time crunch will help everyone to stay focused on the big picture. Here’s how to get started planning church events a year ahead: Step #1: Put Everything on the Calendar This is the fun part: Get a huge wall calendar (erasable is best) and write out every event you intend to host in the upcoming year. Have each ministry department leader put their events on the calendar and make sure you include all other church-wide events. Step #2: Organize a Calendar Review Meeting Once you’ve written them all down in one calendar, organize an event review meeting. It’s important to have all ministry department leaders, the Executive Pastor, Senior Pastor, and ministry support department leaders (Finance, Communications, Facilities, etc.) participate in this calendar review.  Step #3: Discuss the Calendar  At the calendar review meeting, get to a bit more detail for each event you intend to host. Here are some questions to help you move along the discussion:  Step #4: Evaluate the Workload Dive even deeper into your review discussion by evaluating the possible workload issues that could arise with too many events. Ask these questions:  Step #5: Consider the Budget As you’re planning church events, the next thing to consider is the budget. Do you have a budget set (at least a draft) for each event proposed? If not, prepare those numbers before finalizing the calendar. You might find that you don’t have the cash flow to support several events at once. This could lead to you eliminating, scaling back, or spreading out events. Planning church events can be a bonding and exciting experience for your team, but only if you have enough time to enjoy it. With a little bit of intentional planning ahead of time, you can set your team up for success down the road.  If your team could use a step-by-step guide to planning events, I can help! Check out The Church Event Planning Toolkit book AND The Church Event Planning Course. You’ll find a proven, simple process that works for events with a few hundred to several thousand attendees. Don’t waste time trying to figure it all out on your own. Use this process (and the templates included) and make hosting church events more successful and less stressful today.

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