Assuming you have some great ideas and passion to see a church planted, budgeting your time and your money will represent some of your greatest challenges.

There is Catch 22 in church planting. It takes a person of courage and vision to get a church started. But often, visionary people are also not as organized as the church needs to be. Most church starting pastors will tell you that administration is not their strong point. However, since starting a church is doing everything for the first time, administration is extremely critical. Anyone who tells you you can get a church started without some heavy thinking on the adminstrative side is simply naiive or confused! Even if you have a good administrative person at your side you still need to manage the vision and keep track of how the time and money is invested.

Here are just a few of the things that you can do with the Action Items in the CC ToolBox to keep things on track.

Time is all you have.

In the ToolBox you can track how much lead time you will need for a particular Action Item. You may set each Action Item with a Fixed Date much as you would in your Date Book. But a much more powerful way to manage Action Items is to set the day for completion relative to one master date for the entire Project. Then as the Project Date changes all the appropriate Action Item Dates move with it. In the ToolBox we set Action Item dates +/- a number of days from the Project Date.

You need to know how much time you have for various Action Items so we set a Time budget for each Action Item. Even when you set an action item for .25 of an hour or 15 minutes, you will be surprised as to how that time adds up. Once calculated you will know how much time you need to schedule on any given day to complete your Action Items. The total Time allocated for a Project is reported to you.

As you delegate Action Items to others the amount of personal involvement diminishes. And you will be able to assign each Action Item to an individual who knows what else had to happen to make the Project complete. They will tend to get their work done on time because they will see the implications of postponing things.

Not all Action Items have a cost associated with them but many do. As you think through your Action Plan one Action Item at a time you can attach a Cost budget as appropriate. Some Projects will cost a lot and others will cost little or nothing.

If you Cost and Date your Action Items carefully, the system will tabulate a budget for you as you go along for each Project.

Additionally, because the budgeted expenditures will be attached to a date you have a complete cash flow projection for any date range you desire. For example, if you think through all the Action Items that will come due in a given month you will know how much money you must have to complete your multiple Projects. While one person might be working on decorations for a banquet they will have no idea that someone else is needing money to purchase a microphone. But you will be able to manage all the details. If you make it a standard that any planned purchases must be included in an Action Item Cost then you will have a kind of purchasing order system in place.

You can see that there is a lot in here!

It might be overwhelming. But remember this is like a visit to a library. You don't have to use all the functionality just as you don't have to read every book in the library to receive full value.

This is a good time to explain that there is a complete help system to walk you through any of the processes should you get stuck.

We recommend that you take the full week of training we supply in the Toronto area. That training may be the best investment of time you ever make. Many tell us that is so. The training will help you master the concepts and the software. One out of two won't do. You need to train your mind in what we call ToolBox Thinking. Some of the largest churches in North America are among our client list for The Ministry ToolBox. We have been at this for over 10 years and have developed a solid reputation in strategic planning for churches. When you come to the training in the Toronto area you will actually meet with the people who designed the system and wrote the text. Over the years we have trained thousands of people to use the system.

Some learn faster than others but all leave the training with a clear focus on how to improve their ministry. You will be no exception! But then if you are, what have you got to lose? I am personally promising that I will give you double your money back.

You are welcome to review the material here in as much depth as you like. But eventually you are going to have to "bite the bullet." You need to hurry if you are going to get in on our next training session so now would be a good time to get started! Make a decision to take the next step. Just click the "Featured Product" link in the left menu and place your order. We will have it ready to download within one business day and we will ship you the hard copy in the courier.

We do have a few more details in our tour. Click "Next" if you wish to continue.