Whether it’s the church’s 50th anniversary, a groundbreaking ceremony for a new building, a retirement dinner for a pastor, a community outreach, a missions conference or a statewide youth weekend, special events require planning. As a senior leader, you can head up the planning yourself or delegate its oversight to professionals, volunteers or staff. There’s a role for all these groups in the planning of major church events.

Senior Pastor’s Role

As the senior staff person, you first have a responsibility to determine and, in some cases, decide: whether or not your church will have a special event for any given reason, its purpose, its budget and who will act as the “big dawg,” or the driver of the event planning.

Your decision to hold an event should be based on whether the event’s purpose warrants the expenses and resources (human and financial) it will take to deliver it. Secondly, all your decisions should be considered as precedent-setting for future events. I remember one situation where a congregation held a church-wide event in honor of someone who was related to a board member but not for someone who wasn’t related to a board member but achieved an identical goal. Needless to say, a formal policy soon followed.

Selecting the right big dawg needs to be based on the nature of the event. If the event is intended as a thank you for all participants or to honor one or more individuals, you need a person who has experience in hosting great parties for others. If you are running an event as an outreach or want to motivate people, you need a big dawg that can run one-off events that attract and motivate.

It is also your job to ensure that staff members – regardless of who the big dawg is – will, at their own level and sphere of influence, fully support the event and its planning or delivery. The more important the event and the wider the group of people you want to have attend, the more likely it will be that you need representatives from all staff departments. The actual appointment to the planning team or committee, however, should be decided in concert with your big dawg.

Finally, as senior pastor or leader, you’ll need to have played your role well in advance of the anticipated event so that those you select to do the planning and execution will have sufficient time to do their job well. For smaller events with known track records and little chance of major changes, at least three months are required. Most often, major or rarely repeated events require a lead time of at least one year. ...