Identifying Objectives

Your objectives help you understand what to focus on during a certain time period (one year, 6 months, 3 months) so that you or your team can move forwards as we seek to “equip young leaders to fulfil Christ’s commission through the local church”. They are not “business as usual”, but important and strategic steps, such as:

• a key problem to solve/roadblock to remove
• a strategic or significant move into a new ministry or geographical area
• a major event or milestone
• a re-focus or orientation based on external circumstances

Objectives are usually aligned with the wider team you are part of, which means:

Your objectives will be aligned with your team’s objectives, and your teams objectives will be aligned with your country movement’s objectives.

You might have an objective which is more specific to you, which will have an impact on your wider team in the future. Areas such as ministry partner development (MPD) or educational goals may fall under this category, but they are more of an exception than the norm (unless you are just joining JV, in which case you will most probably have MPD as one of your objectives).

For the best possible chance of success, you should have 3-5 objectives for the time period you are working on.

One way to brainstorm some objectives would be to complete the sentence “wouldn’t it be great if…..” – this also ensures that your objectives are inspiring, motivating and can be completed in one or two short sentences.

The example we gave was the 2021 Winter Academy. An external circumstance (COVID19) meant the Academy (an important event for JV) could not be in person, and would have to be online. As we thought and prayed about what the Academy should be, it was not enough that we would simply run the same event online. The objective we created became – Wouldn’t it be great if….

The 2021 Winter Academy is a fun and engaging online event which builds community and equips our staff to be effective and impactful in their ministry roles.