10 Year-End Rituals for Personal and Ministry Success in the New Year

What are some things you can do at the end of the year to set yourself

up for success in the new year, both as a person and for your ministry?

I’m going to be sharing about 10 or so things that I do at the end of every year

to really reprioritize, reorganise, clean the clutter, and set myself

up with intention and purpose to move into the new year with a strong start.

This is based off a question that came from one of our members

in the Worship Ministry Training Academy.

I wanted to share my response with her, but also share it

with all of you as well.

These are just some of the things that I do, and hopefully, these ideas will

spark some ideas in you for what you can do to prepare to move into the new year

with intentionality and purpose.

First thing I like to do at the end of every year, and this is strange,

and you maybe have never heard of this before, is I like to review all of

my photos from that past year.

My family and I, we sit down on our couch and we open up Google photos

on a web browser.

Google Photos, if you don’t know, it’s a free app that you can download,

and it uploads every photo from your phone to Google’s clouds

so that they can spy on you.

And all sorts of analyse stuff that they do.

But it’s also very useful to have free photos backed up to the cloud.

And so what we like to do is sit down on our couch and we like to

scroll through the entire years with the photos and really remember

all the things that happened that year.

I don’t know about you, but I have an awful memory, and it takes a photo

to remind me and spark that, oh, yeah, we went to the Grand Canyon.

Oh, yeah, we adopted a puppy.

Oh, yeah, Annie lost her tooth, whatever.

I mean, there’s so many things that happen in a year that you

forget about at the end of the year, but these photos really rekindle and reignite

your memories to really reflect on what happened that year.

I usually have a Notes app open on my phone, and I’m typing every major

highlight that happened that year into a list called something like Big Things

That Happened in 2023 or whatever.

It helps you look back at where you’ve been so that you can know

where you need to go moving forward.

That’s the first thing I do, is sit down with my family and look at all of

our photos from the past year.

The second thing that I like to do is review my what I’m learning list.

I keep a list in my phone called what I’m learning.

Every month, as things pop into my mind or a thought gets crystallised,

or a concept becomes concrete, I like to put it into my phone and just

write it down because I like to capture my insights so that I can go back and look

at them and remember an important principle that I’ve learned in life.

I don’t just want to go blindly through life.

I want to learn what I’m supposed to learn and really grab hold of it and make it

a part of my life and my character.

As I look at that list at the end of the year, I get to see all of the lessons

that I learned throughout the year.

I’ll be honest, most of them I’ve forgotten already.

That’s why I like to look at the list because it’s like, Oh, yeah,

that’s an important principle that I need to remember.

Some months, I’m really good at capturing the ideas, and

other months I completely forget, too.

So don’t be legalistic about it.

But at the end of the year, I like to go back and look through

what did I learn this year.

I like to review my what I’m learning list.

Maybe that’s something else that you can try in your life.

Again, I know these are personal.

We will get into the ministry stuff in a bit, but I think it’s important

that we take the end of the year to reflect both on our personal life

and our ministry life together.

I’m just sharing what I do. If you like it, great.

If you don’t like it, go to another video.

It doesn’t matter.

That’s the second thing I do.

The third thing I like to do is review all of my tasks.

I am very task-oriented, and I like to build my life systematically.

If I want to accomplish this, I should do these certain actions on these certain

days of the weeks or these certain days of the month and repeat those actions

to get the result that I want.

You can do that for your life and for your ministry.

That’s what I teach in the academy is how to build a healthy ministry

by doing the right actions at the right times in the right ways.

I do that for my ministry and my life.

What I want to do at the end of the year is look at all of my recurring tasks and

say, Are these still the right actions that I should be taking?

Are these still serving me?

Are these still valid?

Or should I cut some of them?

Because as you grow, as you change, as situations change, as people

come in and out of your life or ministry changes, you may or may not need

to be doing some of the tasks that are on your task list or on your calendar.

Really looking at your calendar and looking at your task list and saying,

Are these actions still serving me?

Are these actions still valuable?

Are these actions still moving me in the direction that I desire to go?

That’s something that I would encourage you to do as well.

As you’re doing that, think, if they’re not serving me

anymore, let me delete them.

What actions should I be doing next year in order to move towards my goals?

That’s the fourth thing that I do at the end of the year is I review my goals.

I like to set goals at the beginning of the year for my family life, for my

business, for my ministry, and say, What do I really want to accomplish this year?

So at the end of the year, it’s good to go look back at those goals.

Actually, I encourage you to look at those goals quarterly or weekly even because

they keep them at the top of your mind.

But at least review your annual goals at the end of the year

to see if you hit those goals.

And for me, It’s a good year.

If I have 10 goals, if I hit 5 to 6 to 7 of those goals,

to me, that’s a great year.

Four is a little bit low average.

But if you hit 5 out of 10 of your goals, that’s way better than zero out of 10.

I like to review my goals.

Hopefully, you’re setting goals in the new year.

If you don’t, check the podcast archive or the video archive or the link

below this video, because I have a couple of videos about how to set great goals

for your life and for your ministry. So check those videos out.

And then the last thing I do on a personal level, and then

we’ll move to the ministry side.

But the personal side, the last thing that I do is I

review all of my quarterly reviews.

I review my reviews, yes.

So if you go below this video in the description, you’ll see

another video called Time Management Tips for Busy Worship Leaders.

That video will show you how I plan my weeks, my months,

my quarters, my years, and how all of those things feed into each other.

So check that video out if you want to be better at planning your life.

But one thing that I do at the end of every week is I review that week

and then I mark down my biggest wins.

Then at the end of each quarter, I look at all of my weekly reviews and I take the

biggest wins from each week and put them into my quarterly wins and be like,

These are my biggest quarterly wins.

Then at the end of the year, I look back at all my four quarters and go, These are

the biggest wins from each quarter, so these are my annual biggest wins.

It’s just a great way to, again, reflect on what did you do last year, what

did you accomplish last year, how did the Lord use you, and how are you utilising

this one precious life that God gave you.

I like to review my quarterly reviews, and that’s the last thing

that I do on a personal level.

Now, let’s talk about the ministry side.

How can you set yourself up for success in your ministry?

Well, the first thing I like to do is I like to send out an end

of the year anonymous survey to my team.

I actually have a prebuilt survey for you in the Worship Ministry Training Academy.

If you’re in the academy, I would encourage you to use it.

If you’re not in the academy, you can join the academy for just $1

to check everything out for 15 days.

But you can get that anonymous survey in the academy, or you can create your own

where you’re basically just asking your team members, How am I doing as a leader?

How is the ministry doing?

What ideas do you have?

Et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.

Those types of questions.

You want to use a survey form, like a Google platform

that’s anonymous or a surveymonkey.

Com that’s anonymous.

You want to collect anonymous, honest information from your team

to see how you’re doing, how the ministry is doing, and how things can be improved.

If you want to check out the Worship Ministry Training Academy

to get the a done for you survey, you can do that at worshipministrytraining.

Com for just $1 to start, or just use your brain, or use AI to create

an anonymous survey for your team.

The second thing I like to send out to my team at the end of the year

is a team member self-assessment.

I also have this done for you in the academy if you

want to just grab and use that.

But you can send out a self-assessment to your worship team members to say, Hey,

how are you doing as a team member?

Are you committed enough?

Is this season still for you?

And other questions like that where they really to reflect on,

are they contributing what they should be contributing as a team member,

spiritually, musically, all of that.

I like to send out those two surveys at the end of the year

to really help everybody reflect on our ministry together.

Now, as the leader of the ministry, what I like to do is I like to

think through and pray through and just spend an hour or so thinking about,

what do we need in our ministry next?

What’s the next season look like for our ministry?

What’s the area of weakness?

What’s the area of growth that we want to focus on?

What does our Ministry need most in this upcoming year?

I like to really reflect on that one question

because what you want to do is you want to focus your attention on one or two

targets, not more than two or three, less than three, ideally, one target.

Is this year’s focus on team building, adding numbers to our team?

Is this year focused on increasing our musicality?

Is this year focused on improving our production?

Is this year focused on relationships and taking people out to coffee?

What’s the one focus that really will move the needle for your team?

What is the area that your team needs most in the new year?

That is what you want to figure out in this brainstorming session.

And once you have that figured out, you really want to figure out what events to

plan for that year for your worship team.

And usually you want those events to support that area of focus.

I have a whole other video also I linked in this description, so lots

of videos this time, about how to develop a strategy for your ministry.

So check out that video if you want to develop a strategy and then

figure out what to do and when to do it.

But putting events on the calendar as the leader is really important.

Like, okay, Here’s what we’re trying to do, which events will help us do that,

and when are we going to do those events?

And then you map all that out on a big old calendar or on a Google calendar,

and now you know what your year is going to look like, and the events that you’re

going to promote, and the potlucks that you’re going to do,

and the extra rehearsal nights that you’re going to do and the team

building activities, all that.

Put that on a calendar and map out your year.

That is something you should definitely do either early January or late December.

The next thing I like to do to start the year out strong

is to have an annual team meeting.

You’re going to gather everyone together early January, if you can, and you’re

going to remind them the team values.

You’re going to reiterate your expectations.

This is what it means to be part of a team.

Here’s what we expect from you.

You’re going to remind them of little things like dress code and rehearsal times

and being on time and all these little things, you’re going to remind them,

and then you’re going to cast vision for that focus point

that you determined earlier.

Hey, guys, this year, I feel like the Lord is calling us to focus on blank.

We as leaders or I as your leader, I’m going to work towards

us focusing on this thing.

We’re going to be doing these events.

Here are some dates on the calendar.

Please pencil these in.

We’re going to prayerfully move towards this direction.

You want to cast that vision for your team for the new year.

That is something that you’ll do at your annual team meeting.

Now, the last two One of the things I like to do to prepare for the new year is just

clean up any old emails that I just really got to get rid of, archive,

and also look at Planning Centre and see, are there any team members

who left the church? Maybe archive them.

Are there any songs we’re no longer doing?

Maybe archive those.

Just do a quick cleanup of Planning Centre just so that things are fresh and snappy

and clean and you’re not fumbling through old information, but you just have what’s

actually necessary to you to do your job.

Then the very, very last thing that I like to do for the new year is to set new goals

for myself and just pray and think and say, What do I want to accomplish this

year in my family, in my health, in my spiritual life, in my church, and

in my business, if you have a business?

Set those new goals and then put them somewhere visible and review them often.

Again, I’m going to refer you to the videos in the description

about how to manage your time well, how to plan your weeks, and then how

to develop a strategy for your ministry.

Click those below and I’ll see you in the next video.

Or if you want to join the Worship Ministry Training Academy, where you

can ask me these types of questions, and I can give you these types of responses.

Remember, this is a response to one of the academy members’ questions.

If you want to be in the academy, you can try it for just $1.

You get access to 10 in-depth courses on topics like set building,

team building, musical excellence, running efficient rehearsals,

group communication, admin, all sorts of stuff that you need to know

to build a healthy, organised, and excellent ministry.

You can try all of that, plus our live monthly events and our expert interviews

and our supportive community and coaches in the academy,

you can try it for just $1 for 15 days by going to worshipministrytraining.

Com. I hope to see you in the academy.

Otherwise, click on one of these videos here, and God bless you,

and I’ll see you in the next one.