Have you ever worked long and hard, all day, only to discover at the end of your day you really accomplished nothing? Yes, it is true you can have activity without productivity. The more that I work with Pastors and Christian leaders, the more I see that the majority of their time is spent putting out fires instead of expanding their ministry.  If this has been your mode of operating, I encourage you to no longer operate in firefighter mode but to know that expanding your reach is your number one priority.

If your serious about expanding your ministry each day you should invest time in activities that expand your reach. The amount of time that you will need to invest depends on the goals of your organization.  I recommend that you devote 2-4 hours each day on activities that will expand your ministry.  I know that this may be hard for you to grasp at first however; this is what it takes if you’re serious. Without people to serve your ministry has no reason to exist. First, I want to list some of the tasks you absolutely should not do during your dedicated EYR time:

• Check voicemails
• Plan or book travel
• File
• Run errands
• Balance your checkbook
• Talk to staff members
• Engage in idle chat
• Plan meetings
• Respond to low-priority e-mail
• Surf the internet
• Pay bills
• Take or make personal phone calls
• Watch television
• Explore new apps

Sample EYR activities to consider focusing on, depending on your niche, your unique grace, and your expansion plan include:

• Building strategic alliances
• Teaching
• Writing (sermons, articles, newsletter, blog)
• Speaking
• Recording videos and audio spots
• Social media (if applicable)
• Website updates
• Networking
• Creating systems
• Sending out cards
• Education
• Creating products
• Business development
• Hosting events

Expanding Your Reach Assignment

1. Make a list of all the tasks that you perform in a typical week. Be specific.
2. Identify activities that do not expose new people to your mission. Prepare to eliminate or delay them.
3. Schedule 2 hours each day during which you focus on activities that expand your reach. (minimally, 10 hours a week)

Are you ready to expand your reach but not quite sure which expansion activities fit your audience or your message? Join Janice at her Road to Expansion Live Event where you will have access to one-on-one help and so much more. Click here to register today!

You’ve made up in your mind that this is THE year that your ministry is going to expand! No longer will your ministry merely exist— it’s NOW time for you to reach those you are called to serve in large numbers and consistently. So what do you do first to ramp up your ministry marketing efforts? Gather the team? Count your costs? Pray and fast? Or, do you say “forget the details, let’s just get to work”?

Many Christian leaders, just after prayer and fasting, go straight to work on building the wall, fulfilling the vision, making it happen. While this sounds admirable it is the worst thing you can do when it comes to creating consistent expansion in your ministry. While marketing your ministry is important to the growth of all Christian organizations—marketing for the sake of marketing never works.

So how do you create a ministry marketing strategy that will create significant results without going breaking-the-budget, overwhelming your team (even if it’s just you), or compromising your message? Well it’s pretty simple. Here’s what you do:

1. Set clear, tangible goals. Know “what’s good” for you and your ministry.  Too often ministry marketing efforts are dismissed as ineffective, simply because they are embarked upon without an explicitly, expressed predetermined destination.  Before starting any ministry marketing (expansion) effort be certain that you are clear on your desired outcome.(Side note: Leaders not only must we predetermine our destination, we must explicitly express it with those who serve alongside us…more on that in a future article) My work with Christian leaders around the world has led me to find that the best place to start when creating ministry marketing goals is to focus on one (if not all) of the below expansion critical areas :

1. Impact – what is the number of lives (families, communities, individuals) you want to actually connect with through/with your ministry?
2. Influence – what is the effect you want to create or have in the lives of those you are called to serve? How do you want them to see you or your ministry?
3. Income – how much the revenue would you like to generate from your efforts?

2. Increase your opportunity for success by limiting your options. I know it sounds oxymoronic, but the fewer options you have on how you are going to reach your goals the greater your chances are for achieving them. As visionaries, it is easy to get lost in the land of endless options—resist the temptation to try everything. By putting all the options on the table and narrowing them down to the top three you substantially increase your chances of reaching your destination. A good tip for narrowing down “how to get there” options is to focus on.

1. What fits for your ministry ”M.O.” – which of the options you’ve listed compliments your style and how you want to be perceived by those who encounter your ministry?
2. What works best for those on your team - which of the options is easy for my current team to implement?
3. What appeals to those you are called to serve – which of the options for reaching my audience is likely to appeal to them as they are today?

3.Focus on the simple steps. Decide today that you’re adopting the “if it ain’t simple I ain’t doing it!” way of operating. I know that’s not correct English, but that’s how my grandma would put it and she tends to make a little go a long way. As leaders we get mesmerized by the grandiose ideas or the complex concepts, but it’s in the simple steps that significance is birthed. Look at it this way, if a strategy has too many moving parts, there are too many opportunities for something to go haywire. Rule of thumb number one, when it comes to marketing your ministry keep it simple. (Note: Jesus did it and it worked well for him.)

Making a significant impact in the lives of those you are called to serve does not have to be an impossible feat. By consistently taking simple, yet strategic steps forward you will find that expanding your reach is truly a blessing—not a burden.

For more insight on ways to create simple yet significant strategies visit Expanding Your Reach Live Event. Click here to learn more.

Consider the ant. One of the tiniest creatures on planet earth; they are masters of massive expansion.  Having no ears to hear, ants rely heavily on their ability to feel the ground beneath them and the vibrations around them before making a move. No move is made suddenly, everything is carefully planned.

Ants also leverage the power of their team. Rather than offloading a heavy mass on an individual ant, ants look for every possible way to divide activities into small chunks that can be easily accomplished by a few.

As a Christian leader desirous of expanding the reach of your ministry you cannot miss this powerful positioning strategy of the ant.  Ants seek to modify the environments they inhabitat. With singleness of focus, drive, and relentless pursuit ants move toward change or they don’t move at all. Amazing!

As you plan to expand your reach, take with you these three lessons from the ant:

1. Embrace the power of “the small”. Resist the temptation to go after the giant leaps forward. Not only do they require heavy-lifting, but the bigger the project the more pieces and greater is the chance for error.  Small steps in the right direction will lead you toward your goal quicker than it seems.
2. Silence the noise. Make it a practice to not be moved by what you hear, rather feel the vibration then carefully choose your next step. When the voices of your competition, colleagues, and naysayers are a non-factor  your ability to feel what’s best for your ministry’s expansion becomes crystal clear.
3. Modify don’t blend. You are a Christian leader on an assignment to allow God to transform lives through your ministry (whatever it may be) don’t settle for being just another church, business, or leader—seek to modify every environment you occupy!   When you leave a place or when those you are called to serve leave your place everything should change.

If you're ready to reach the masses with your message but not quite sure how, click here to download your FREE Ministry Marketing Makeover Kit.

I had a major breakthrough this week! Finally, [I’m pretty sure God had been trying to get me to see this for quite some time now], I realized that the expansion of one’s ministry is truly a life-long journey of character development and spiritual maturity.  As 2011 comes to a close and I reflect on my personal expansion journey I would characterize it as nothing short of a costly roller coaster ride. The highs have been really HIGH and the lows; well let’s just say they have been baritone low.  In the midst of it all there has been but one constant—and that is God and His unrestricted availability.   He has never shunned me from His presence or denied me His guidance. Yet I haven’t always made the most of this divine access.  For some retarded reason, I thought it brave to try things my way  and mistakenly  thought it admirable to be deemed the one who “cracked the code” the one who “figured out the hard stuff”.  But, let me tell you. The expense (monetarily and spiritually) of this mode of operating can be quite daunting.  And trust me whatever the prize, it’s not worth it!

You’re probably wondering what does this have to do with expanding the reach of your ministry. As I train leaders like you and dare walk out this expansion process I realize that our ability to lead and grow a healthy ministry depends largely on our continuous commitment to our own personal and spiritual development—to this there is no end.  Many of the roadblocks and challenges we as leaders face in our public ministry are a manifestation of unaddressed private matters.  My mentor would say, “when there is struggle on the outside there almost always exists struggle on the inside”.

As you reflect on your progress in 2011 and finalize your plans for 2012 be sure your expectations are in line with your actions. No tool, strategy, or even ROCK-solid expansion plan will bring you to your destination or help you receive your desired results if God’s plan for you is to endure an exercise in character development.

Remember, expanding your reach has NOTHING to do with you, but everything to do with God working through you to reach others.  The moment you accept your ministry expansion as a journey toward spiritual maturity everything changes!

Expanding Your Reach is not optional but mandatory. If you're ready to reach the masses with your message click here to download your FREE Ministry Marketing Makeover Kit.

If you have been wrestling with exactly how you can "market" and do ministry at the same time--you must listen to this interview.  I reveal not only my three part expansion process, but I also dispel a few myths  Christian leaders face when it comes to the idea of ministry marketing check this out!

Expanding Your Reach is not optional but mandatory. If you're ready to reach the masses with your message click here to download your FREE Ministry Marketing Makeover Kit.

Expanding Your Reach Assignment

1. God has called you to be of service in a huge way. What is your mission?
2. What is the message that you’re sending out via online marketing, word of mouth, or print? Is it self-serving?
3. If your message is self-serving create a plan of action so that your message can be in alignment with your mission.

Expanding Your Reach is not optional but mandatory. If you're ready to reach the masses with your message click here to download your FREE Ministry Marketing Makeover Kit.

Are you feeling overwhelmed with your ministry marketing? It’s great to have goals and high expectations for yourself and your team. We all need to set benchmarks; the problems start when we start to become paralyzed by the sheer volume of what we’ve set out to do.

You may not have realized it, but having a multitude of goals can actually cause us to get less done than if we only had one or two? Why is that? When our To-Do List becomes overwhelming our brains only have two avenues of escape

•   Inaction: That’s when become figurative “deer in the headlights” and we’re on a collision course with unpleasant consequences (loss of funding, disappointing others, etc.)

•   Random Action: That’s when we’re a “rabbit on the run” not looking where we’re going and landing in pitfalls that could have been avoided easily. This type of reaction takes its toll not only on you, but your entire staff as they attempt to make deliver on your instructions.

So how do visionary leaders, like you, avoid sliding into either of these activities? How can you keep yourself and your team motivated? Let’s explore four effective ways to achieve your vision:

1. Refresh. Stop everything that you are doing. Take a deep breath. Take a break.

Taking a day off (or even a few hours) to clear your mind will ultimately help your establish priorities. Take the time to discover what your true priorities are. I have found that most often when we are overwhelmed and unsure of exactly what to do, we start operating in what I call “survival mode.”

We engage in activities that have no clear strategic results.  Action that is not-purposeful is just as bad as inaction. It takes just as much time and energy to do something random than it does to do something right. And when you do the right things you get the right results.

2. Reboot. Now that you have taken time to refresh your mind and your body. It will be a good idea to reboot your marketing systems.

You know kind of like the way you reboot your computer when it runs slow or get stuck and won't do anything at all. I don't know about you, but I quite frequently press CTRL+ ALT+ DELETE To jump start my computer after I have overload it by running multiple programs at once?  Do you know why you do this?

Rebooting your systems clears out all the "gunk" and glitches in the system and allows your computer to get a new start. And if you (the brains of the operation) are feeling stuck then chances are your ministry marketing systems are stuck as well.

Rather than forcing things that to work (you know, pressing the ESC key twenty times when we get frustrated) take a moment and reboot all your marketing programs and systems. It’ll give your programs a fresh start and reinvigorate everyone who is working with you too.

3. Regroup. Let's get organized again.

Most ministries lack the clear organization and focus they need to get the results they expect. Because of this lack of organization ministry marketing is often performed on an ad hoc basis, or worst yet,  as a mere after-thought .

Remember random actions produce random results and cannot random generally be cannot be duplicated. Now is the time to gather the critical components of your ministry marketing:

- Goals
- The plan
- Processes/programs your are using within the plan
- The steps you'll need to take to complete those processes

The key to success is to make sure that all of these elements are all in one place that is easily accessible to your team at all times. Then Review, Rank, Prioritize.  Review, Rank, and Prioritize your ministry marketing goals.

Now you are ready for our fourth and final step.

4. Re-open. One at a time

Re-open only those programs that are critical to the goal you want to achieve right now. Today. Not next week, not next month -- Today.  We often get overwhelmed because we cast BIG visions, Develop BIG plans, and set BIG goals. Then we set out to achieve it all in one BIG step.

That is an insane expectation! And if you are feeling a little crazy right now, this is probably why. Rather than trying to tackle everything at once focus on ONE thing at a time.

- What would you like to achieve within the next 30 days?
- What steps do you need to take to achieve that goal?
- Who will you need to help you make this a reality?

Whew! We covered a lot of material today. Now let’s break it into chunks so that the ideas and lessons that we discussed can actually do some good.

Here’s your ministry marketing assignment:

1. Take a look at your schedule and determine right now which day this week you are going to REFRESH.

a. Write it on your calendar.
b. Send messages to your team letting them know that you are taking a planning day (or a couple of hours whichever your schedule permits).
c. Decide where you will go and how long you will be there.
i. *Be sure it is a place where you can truly refresh…don’t leave one place of chaos and jump into another 

2. Identify the systems/ programs you have running that need to be halted and restarted.

a. Get organized right away.
b.Take a look at what you are currently working on.
c.How can you reorganize it and get it all in one place so that you can operate more efficiently?

3. Okay, now you are ready to try again

a. What will you engage in right now?
b. Why this project or program?
c. Be sure to share with your team next steps and any deviation from the original plan (the last things you want to do is have your team go one way and you another)

Are you feeling overwhelmed in your ministry but are ready to expand? Click here to schedule your F.R.E.E. Ministry Marketing Breakthrough Session with Janice. You can share you vision and ask key questions.

I am still on a HIGH from the time I shared recently with the wonderful Pastors of the North Georgia Missionary Baptist Convention. How refreshing it was to be amongst leaders committed to changing the world through the Word of God and open to learning the most effective ways to do so. While my time was amazing—once I got there—the road to Euharlee, Georgia was very long! It was during my trek up I-75 that I had this amazing discovery. There are no shortcuts! None. Not in life. Not in business. Not in ministry. And definitely not to Euharlee, Georgia! I am convinced that there are ZERO shortcuts along the road to success.

Now you may disagree with my statement—but my experience has taught me every success requires a sacrifice. Every victory will cost you something. I’ll be the first to admit that in my own life I sometimes forget this truth and I anxiously try to hurry God’s process along. I find myself believing that if I read the right book (even the Bible), study at the feet of the best teachers, hire the industry’s top rated mentors and even pray fervently and consistently—all I desire will just appear. Hahaha—not so. The truth is -- reading, studying, and praying though admirable activities are only the beginning; true success requires more. Failure to apply the knowledge, practice the principles and DO THE WORK—will leave you with NO results. In all areas of our lives and ministry, we must to do the work to reap the rewards-- both spiritually and practically.

If you are saying to yourself—I will do the work! I have done the work. I am still doing the work—why am I not receiving the results?” then I want to encourage you to trust in the Lord and have faith in the process. My travels this weekend taught me there are three essential ingredients to success in everything:

1. A proven process – you will never get to Euharlee, GA (or wherever you’re headed) without a map that details your path,

2. Faith - unwavering trust in God to get you safely to your destination despite what you encounter along the way,

3. Patience - you must remain committed to the journey even when the destination seems far, far away.

It is my prayer that you will embrace these principles and enjoy the journey. Until next week, be blessed.

Do you have a vision but are struggling with the road map to make it happen? Click here to download my F.R.E.E. Ministry Marketing Makeover Kit.

“I need more____________” You fill in the blank. Members. Clients. Money. We’ve all experience this at some point in the marketing of our ministries—the point of panic because what you need is greater than what you possess. So what do you do?

Let me tell you first tell what not to do. Don’t panic. Often when faced with difficult situations, impossible deadlines, and urgent needs--we respond from a place of panic and rather than resolving a problem we create a whirlwind of new ones.

Instead, pause a moment. Say a prayer—I usually ask for insight and wisdom. Then step back and take a focused look at your current situation.  Be mindful, you are not looking for “what to do” so to speak—rather you’re looking to see what’s going on (or not going on). In crunch time, every move counts so you want to be sure your ministry marketing next steps a precise and purposeful.

Here’s where I see many great leaders get stuck with their ministry marketing efforts—they try to fix everything at once! Getting out of a tough situation doesn’t necessarily require a massive overhaul (actually that will create even more havoc than you need right now). Tiny steps toward a BIG goal will get out of a tight situation quicker and with a lot less stress.

So here’s what we need to do:

1. Get clear on the real challenge you are facing. On the surface it may seem as if you need more members or more income coming in. But a deeper look may reveal what you really need a better system for engaging the members you have (or in business a process for keep clients engaged longer).

2. Identify what caused you to be in this situation. Ask yourself, “How did I get here?” Often times if we go straight to the root cause of a challenge, we can correct it almost instantly. Are members leaving? Are there few members joining? Are the visitors not staying? Notice these are all different challenges and must be addressed in separate ways.

3. Pick one challenge to work on. Though the temptation may be to fix everything NOW, this is the impossible.  Attempting to do so is the worse move you can make at this time. In desperate times, deliberate action is required. Ask yourself of the challenges identified; what if corrected now would produce the most ideal situation for my ministry. Work on that one first.

4. Carefully, plan your next step. Random action will only produce random, unpredictable and unable to be duplicated results. What you need at this point is momentum. Tiny strategic steps toward your goal are the best way to achieve this. If you are unsure of your ministry’s BEST next step, now is the time to seek the help or advice of an expert. Any misstep can set you back further than you already are—so please seek help.

5. Follow your plan thru to the end. Now here’s the exciting part! You will recover from this place of discomfort (we always do). But, it will be because of your faith, focus, diligence, and relentless pursuit of your goal. As success happens—keep moving forward! Victory during the battle does not mean the war is over---don’t sabotage your efforts by quitting midway through your plan.

I hope this article helps you to move your ministry marketing efforts from a place of desperation to one faith-filled yet deliberate action. Remember the bible is very clear “faith without works is dead” since you’re working anyway, why not focus your efforts on the work that will move you forward.

Do you need more money, clients, or members in your ministry and not sure on what steps to take next? Click here to download your F.R.E.E. Ministry Marketing Makeover Kit.

“Act in faith, even if what you feel is doubt.” I try my best to live by this principle moment by moment—but I’ll admit, at times, it seems impossible to do.  We live in a society that glorifies “instant gratification” and ostracizes faith in God and miracles. You’ve probably heard or said yourself, “I’ll believe it when I see it”. It is precisely this type of thinking that causes many of us to miss the miracle God’s waiting to perform in our lives and the lives of those we are called to serve.  Yes, you read that correctly—your doubt can hinder the breakthrough of those around you. Take a moment to read Luke 5:20-26, you’ll notice that it was the faith of one man’s friends that caused Jesus to heal him. Notice in this passage that is not just the belief that healing was possible that caused the man to be made whole; rather it was the behavior (or actions) that the faith produced that led to the miracle.

The same applies to you.  It will be your faith along with your actions that will lead you into a miraculous situation. Be encouraged  and decide today that no matter what it looks like you will always “act in faith”. Just when it looks like all hope is lost—you’ll find yourself right in the middle of a miracle!

If you are in need of a “miracle” in your ministry—no, I am not passing them out that’s God’s job—and you’re looking for the right action steps to take along the way, consider joining me for an upcoming course where I will teach Christian leaders like you how to map out your next steps so that you can finally benefit from your blessing. Get the details at www.BenefitFromYourBlessing.com

Are you looking for a miracle in your ministry but don't know what action to take? No need to worry, I am here to help. I would love to learn more about your vision, let's get acquainted. Schedule your complimentary "Get Acquainted" session and let's see if I can assist you with your next step! Click here to set up your appointment.