April 29, 2025

The SEND U Blog

Reflections and Resources for Lifelong Learning for Missionaries

Tag: goals

Dealing with Deadlines
Photo by Andrea Piacquadio
Success in ministry

Dealing with Deadlines

As we approach the end of a year, we face approaching deadlines, often coming more quickly than we had hoped. Many of our goals in our Annual Ministry Plan Season are due at the end of this year. Back in January, we identified some projects we wanted to complete in 2022, and now we just have a few more weeks to do so. I already know that my team and I will not complete some of these goals this year. Hopefully next year, we can finish them. We also face deadlines in more personal areas. Christmas is just two weeks away, and we still have gifts to purchase and wrap before then. The deadline set by Canada Post for sending Christmas cards within Canada is December 16. To send cards to the USA, our deadline is even earlier – December 12. For sending to most of the rest of the… Read the whole post
Ken Guenther2 mins read
Finishing Well: Running Your Leg of the Race
Photo by Jenny Hill on Unsplash
Gospel, Finishing Well

Finishing Well: Running Your Leg of the Race

This entry is part 4 of 11 in the series "Finishing well". Let’s continue thinking about finishing well in a ministry assignment. In our last blog post, we talked about receiving the baton well. So now we are running our leg of the race. We are now fully engaged in our ministry assignment. Furthermore, we have a working knowledge of our host language and culture. Yes, we will want to continue to grow in these areas as we serve. But it is now our turn to run well with the baton we have been given. How we run our leg of the race will significantly impact finishing well. Of course, we want our ministry to further the progress of the gospel. We want to make a contribution to the contextualization of the gospel in our host culture, building on the progress of those who served before us. In the New… Read the whole post
Gary Ridley2 mins read
Building teams that work
Teaming, Team Formation

Building teams that work

These days, one of the projects that I am working on is developing a “Team Launch Toolkit”. One of our regional directors has asked for a teaching plan, visual aids, assessment tools and the handouts that he or another mission leader would need to facilitate a two- to three-day team building workshop for a brand new ministry team, ready to be launched. This workshop would focus on helping the team answer some foundational questions related to their identity and work as a team. The toolkit would also include a list of supplementary resources for deeper study for team members who are interested in doing so. We do not intend or expect that this training will provide all the training the team will need during the course of its life but rather just lay a foundation on which to build other training and developmental skills.… Read the whole post
Ken Guenther1 min read
Plans that seem like nothing
Church Planting, Leadership, Evangelism

Plans that seem like nothing

It is that time of year again, when we are asked to develop annual ministry plans for the coming year. We dream about what we would like to see happen in 2017 – and then we face the reality of our limited financial and people resources.  We do not want to discount what God can do, and so we seek to set goals that call for faith and utter dependence upon God. But we are also told to make sure that our annual goals are SMART: S – Strategic (How clearly does it propel our vision forward?) M – Measurable (How will we know when we have completed the goal?) A – Ambitious (a faith-stretch) (Does it require us to depend on God?) R – Realistic (Do we have at least a rough idea for how we could work towards accomplishing it?) T – Time-bound (Have we determined a deadline… Read the whole post
Ken Guenther1 min read
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