4 Types of Goals You Should Set This Year

Setting goals is critically important if you want to get anywhere in life – career, personal development, family, and even ministry.

This is because without goals, our day-to-day activities tend to get hijacked by whatever seems most urgent, pressure from other people, or what we feel like doing in the moment.  Or as legendary baseball player (and amateur philosopher) Yogi Berra once said…

If you don’t know where you’re going, you’ll probably end up somewhere else. -Yogi Berra

Our team here at OurChurch.Com recently finalized our 2025 strategic plan. It’s the 20th consecutive year we’ve developed a strategic plan.

We have learned a lot about goals over these last two decades.  Perhaps the most important is that there are 4 different types of goals.  These 4 types of goals are universal. They can be applied to any kind of organization. I also use them in my personal goal-setting each year.

4 Types of Goals

1) Objectives

Objectives are broad goals.  They are what you would like to see happen in the next year.  Some objectives that organizations or people might have include…

• Church: Connect with people in our community
• Ministry: Serve the poor
• Business: Increase sales
• Personal: Become a better parent

Objectives define WHAT you want to accomplish but not HOW.

2) Projects

Projects goals are the “how;” they’re specific things you are going to do to accomplish your objectives.

For example, if one of your objectives is “connect with people in our community,” your project goals might be:

• 3 outreach events
• 2 community serving events
• build a new website
• hire an experienced Christian web developer to build a new website for us, or
• optimize our website for search engines

3) Processes

Process goals are also how you’re going to achieve your objectives. But while projects goals are achieved when the project is complete, process goals are regularly recurring tasks. Some examples of process goals are:

• send follow-up cards to new church visitors every Monday
• update the website every Tuesday
• write a weekly blog post
• post new content to Facebook four times a week

4) Metrics

Metrics are the specific data you are going to track and the specific numerical goals you want to reach to indicate success. Numerical goals are things like:

• increase sales by 10%
• reach 1,000 website visitors a month by the end of the year
• start 10 new life groups

When people hear the word “goals,” many people’s thoughts immediately go to these types of metrics goals, but I would caution against that.

In my opinion, our culture tends to over-emphasize results, which we have much less control over rather. We would be better served by focusing on project and process goals, which we have more control over.  What do you think?

Consider this post part one.  We’ll talk more about how to develop each type of goal next week.

As Steve Keating says…

We seldom fulfill our dreams until we turn them into a goal and develop a plan to achieve them. -Steve Keating

If we don’t pray about these things, ask God for guidance and write down where we sense him leading us, we have a tendency to get distracted, lose our way, or forget exactly what God has called us to do.

Goals Month

Our focus this month at OurChurch.Com is on helping you set and achieve the right kinds of goals for your church, ministry or business. We encourage you to share your perspective in this month’s Listening Post. Keep an eye out for more posts about goals and specific goals to consider for your website and SEO.

1. Kick Off 2025 with a Free Website Review and $50
2. Should Churches Set Goals?
3. Our 7-Step Goal-Setting Strategic Planning Process
4. Your REAL Online Goals
5. The Best Small Church Websites: 3 Tips
6. 5 Church SEO Goals to Prayerfully Consider

Bonus: Church Outreach Articles

• 22 Church Super Bowl Party Ideas
• 22 Church Valentine Ideas for Events & Social Media

Discuss

• Have you set goals for your organization for 2025? Why or why not?
• Which type of goals are you and your organization setting this year?