In a recent sermon on being generous with our time, I mentioned that every year my wife and I go away for a night or two to pray and to think about God’s calling on our lives, and then we discuss how to best structure our schedule around those priorities. It seems that numerous leaders I have known who have had fruitful lives for the kingdom have done some version of this every year. Since the sermon, I’ve had a few people ask me, “What process do you use for writing it all out?” With fall approaching, I imagine it is a good time for many couples in our church to be thinking about these things. If you are single, you could modify this process to do the same thing for yourself personally.

If you come to any issue that is a point of conflict, stop and pray together. Submit your hearts to the Lord, and say again, “We want not our wills but your will to be done in our family.”

We’ve used a couple planning methods over the years. Randy Pope is a pastor in Atlanta who has a process for life planning which you can find here, and that has worked well. But this past year, Shannon and I followed the strategic planning process our elders use for our church, which also worked really well and led to some great discussions. That is what I want to share with you now.

If you are interested in doing this as a couple, you will want to set aside a full day. We went away to a cabin. We started after breakfast, broke for lunch, and ended before dinner. But, much of what we talked about continued more informally into cooking and eating dinner. All of this should be nicely written up, perhaps in a Google Doc as a Family Life Plan document. (One note: if you don’t get through the whole thing, that is okay. I think you will find that even getting through a few steps is rewarding and helpful!)

Here are some steps to follow, with loose suggested durations for each step. 

1. Begin with prayer (30 minutes)

Begin the day with a length of time for prayer. Most couples never take this amount of time to pray together, so take this opportunity to do so. Try going back and forth, taking different categories of your life: relationship with God, marriage, children, church, work, friends, unbelievers, other passions. Take time to pray through each of these categories and ask the Holy Spirit to guide you in how the Lord can be honored in each area.

Also, make sure to pray at every step of this process. If you come to any issue that is a point of conflict, stop and pray together. Submit your hearts to the Lord, and say again, “We want not our wills but your will to be done in our family.” Then go back to trying to hear and understand one another.

2. Write a family vision/mission
statement and core values (30–60
minutes)

This might seem strange to some people (or overly “business-y”), but having this discussion will help bring alignment to what is most important to the two of you. A vision statement is a short statement that captures the heart of what your marriage and family are about. Ours is:

People experience the delight of Jesus’ kingdom, and go out into the world changed.

Similarly, core values describe how you behave. You are finding ways to describe the culture of your home, which really should be more about how the gospel plays out in your specific household. We began with a family verse, and then we wrote core values unpacking that verse. One way to do this is to take key words and then write a short sentence describing what they mean to you. Here is an example of our core values:

“Steadfast love and faithfulness meet; righteousness and peace kiss each other.” - Psalm 85:10

1. Gospel—We know that you and I cannot live without grace.

2. Church—We serve the church, as you are our family.

3. Hospitality—We welcome you as Jesus. 

4. Long Relationships—We honor long relationships for the gift you are.

5. Being Yourself—We delight in your uniqueness.

6. Creativity—We make, so you can share in God’s beauty.

7. Play—We love to laugh and play with you.

8. Depth—We will go deep with you.

Record these on your Life Plan document.

3. Answer the question, “Where will we
be in five years?” (15–30 minutes)

Some people say that you really can’t see five years into the future. So much will happen and change that you could have never anticipated. Maybe you can see one year, but even that is a stretch.

I don’t disagree with that, but I believe this exercise is still helpful for aligning the hopes and dreams of a couple. Since you really don’t know for sure what will happen in five years, this exercise is not really about committing to doing anything in particular. Think of it more like a brainstorm (there are no bad ideas); basically, any realistic idea can make it onto the list. Begin with prayer. Just start making bullet points, listing out things that you see as being a part of your life five years from now. Let all of these, even if you are not sure about them, appear in the document. This should take 15-30 minutes. 

4. Do a SWOT analysis (30–45 minutes)

Shannon and I did not do this on our last retreat, but it could be helpful. SWOT stands for Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats. Thinking through each of these can really bring clarity to what you should focus on for this year. There are countless things to give your time to—how do you know which is most important?

To do a SWOT analysis, take four blank pieces of paper and write at the top of each: Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats. Begin with the strengths, and on the paper write out what you think some of the greatest strengths of your family and marriage are. You can write as many as you come up with. Then do the same for weaknesses. Then list all the opportunities you see before you as a couple and family—anything that comes to mind. Then brainstorm the potential threats to the health and flourishing of your family.

After you have done all four, go back to the strengths and rank them. To do this, each of you gets three votes. By the top strength write a 3, by the second best strength write a 2, by the third write a 1. Do this on all four sheets. Based on your scores, identify your top 3-4 strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats, and record them on your Life Plan document. 

5. Identify this year's focus areas.

The key to turning your five-year vision into a productive year this year is knowing where to focus. 

First, brainstorm focus areas. These are goals or desires that come out of your mission and vision casting. Start by listing out as many focus areas as you can think of (from which you will later select five to pursue). Here are some examples:

• Prioritize family worship

• Spend one-on-one time with children

• Spend more time with non-Christians in our lives

• Play more music

• Build deeper community at church

• Work on our marriage

• Deepen my personal devotional life

• Start a business, or improve our business

• Work on our house

• Find hobbies together

• Practice hospitality

To help you in brainstorming, ask the Holy Spirit to guide you in wisely focusing your time, energy, and resources that will most honor the Lord. Write down what comes to mind as you pray.

You should also apply your SWOT analysis to help you brainstorm. For example, my son Will has an opportunity (O) for a pastor’s kid scholarship at a university in Mississippi. We might then make a focus area that is “get Will ready to apply for college.” The SWOT analysis helps to illuminate focus areas. 

Next, choose five (or at most six) focus areas to pursue in the coming year. Ours this past year were: Family Worship, Our Marriage, Our Parents (kids’ grandparents), Kids, Church, Sports. Again, you should pray and ask God to help you decide what to pursue. The SWOT analysis can also help you identify the most high-priority areas on your list. 

6. Write SMART goals for each of your
focus areas.

After you have identified your five focus areas, write some tangible goals for each one. SMART goals are goals that are Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-Bound. Make sure each goal under each Focus Area is actually SMART.

7. Write annual events and a weekly
schedule.

After deciding our focus areas, we wrote out, month by month, some key annual events (camping, vacations, church events, etc.). 

However, I think even more important to consider is your weekly routine. How are your focus areas going to happen in the rhythm of your week-to-week life? 

In our life plan document we inserted a table with seven rows and two columns. The column on the left is the day (Monday, Tuesday…), and the column on the right has bullet points of things that happen that day. (For example, Tuesdays we have a drink with my mom in our basement at 6pm. Or Saturdays at 6pm we have dinner with my brother Scott.) You should know we definitely do not keep these routines perfectly—in fact, we might have missed more of these Tuesdays and Saturdays than we actually made! But, we did way more than we would have if we had planned nothing. As one pastor told me, “You gotta have a plan. You don’t have to stick to the plan! But you gotta have a plan.”

You could write this in your planner or journal, or add these notes to the family's digital calendar—anywhere that will be accessible to both of you and easy to reference as needed. You could also put reminders in your calendar to read over your plan throughout the year.

8. Update your budget accordingly.

For budgeting, my wife and I use YNAB. It is basically the “envelope system” made into an app with electronic cash instead of paper cash. Are there any new budget lines that need to be made in order to accomplish your goals? Where will the money for those budget lines come from? Ours includes things like vacations, youth sports, financial goals, and youth retreats. Make a record of these decisions, and whoever manages the budget can make sure they are implemented.

If you have never done a process like this before and it seems overwhelming, do not feel like you have to do it perfectly. We will do this work and forget about our plan for months! Nonetheless, the process helps create a tremendous amount of alignment and I believe it is valuable. So, put the date on the calendar, and happy planning!

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