Women’s Ministry Kick Off Planning
By Julia Bettencourt

A Kick off Meeting is a great way to start the new year of your Women’s Ministry. A lot of churches dispense with regular women’s meetings and activities over the summer, so fall is usually a great time to plan one, but it doesn’t really matter what time of year it is held. This is a great time to get everyone on board with the women’s ministry of your church, share ideas, give out the yearly calendar, and highlight the various ministries your women are involved in.

This list is just basic and general advance planning and not detailed information.
Several weeks prior to your Kick Off, pass out a women’s ministry survey and give a deadline date to have the surveys returned. Go through the returned surveys and get a general idea of what the ladies in your group expect from your Women’s Ministry and what type of projects and activities they would like to be involved in.

Hold several brainstorming sessions with your Women’s Ministry Team or those that are actively involved in your planning. Discuss ideas, projects, and activities and finalize your plans for Women’s Ministry for your year. Have your Women’s Ministry Team join as prayer warriors all during the planning process.

You may want to only plan out 3 months of your year (quarter) or 6 months or up to an entire year. Personally, I like doing detailed planning no more than 3 months or so ahead because I like the option to re-evaluate and replan accordingly. Tentative broad scale planning can and should be decided upon for the year. How advance you want your detailed planning is really up to you and how it fits in with your particular ladies group. I like doing the yearly tentative planning but only handing out a Women’s Ministry Calendar of Events for 3 months at a time. If there’s a few events you hold only once a year, it is a good idea to get those on the calendar as soon as possible.

If you enjoy doing themed monthly meetings, there are Women’s Ministry Themes on the website for you to get some ideas. Find Themed Monthly Planning Samples Here. If you are looking for Bible Studies to implement by current day authors for women, Lifeway has the best list of them, their websites, and their book studies.

Bible Studies for Women. (This is not an endorsement of all of them, but it is the best source to find them all together on one page.) Make sure you touch base with your pastor and church leadership on your basic plans and get things cleared on your church calendar. Reserve any rooms, buildings, etc. as needed for events, activities, and bible studies that will be held throughout the year.

There are a lot of helps for planning on the website. If you haven’t made a Women’s Ministry Workbook yet, check that out choose a theme for your Kick Off. Make it something exciting to gear the women up for service. Follow through with decorating, food ideas, etc. and make sure everything is carried out in preparation for the event.

Have all handout materials for the event copied and ready ahead of time. If you have various church ministries or areas of service that you want to highlight, you may want each ministry to make a display for your event. Make an agenda. Include everything that you have planned out for your Kick off Meeting.

This article “Women’s Ministry Kick off Planning” was written by Julia Bettencourt
www.juliabettencourt.com

This article may not be not be written by an Apostolic author, but it contains many excellent principles and concepts that can be adapted to most churches. As the old saying goes, “Eat meat. Throw away the bones.”