Choose the Best Schedule for Your School

Before the launch of your school, one of the last important components you need to design is your school schedule. We recommend choosing a schedule that will best serve your target audience and include important components such as worship, teaching, activation, and connection groups.

Most importantly, we encourage you to create a schedule that is purposeful, but flexible so that you can make space to follow the flow of the Holy Spirit. It is important to always plan and prepare, but is most important to engage with what He is doing in your students’ lives! Always be willing to scrap your original plan for the day when it is time to invite Him to move in a new, powerful way in your school environment.

As you read this, may you receive wisdom and insight to create a class schedule that best supports your school, leading individuals to experience the life-changing encounters that release heaven to earth.

Choose a Schedule for Your Target Audience

As you design your class schedule, our strongest encouragement is to choose a schedule that serves your target audience! What type of schedule can those individuals commit to throughout the week? What days and times would work best? There are other important things you will want to consider such as how the weather in a season will affect transportation or the schedule  availability for the facility where the school meets.

To help you consider all of these factors and choose the best class schedule, we encourage you to read through the questions below. They will help you and your team brainstorm and determine the times to meet as a school!

• Will you teach and equip pastors, university students, business professionals, farmers, educators, mothers, general church members, etc.?
• What is the typical work schedule for your target audience? What kind of schedule is feasible for them?
• Can your target audience pay tuition for a full-time or part-time school?
• Will there be other attendance requirements besides class (e.g. connection group, outreach, church service)?
• What months will your school meet?
• What are the best days and the best times (e.g. morning, afternoon, evening, weekday, or weekend) to have school for your target audience?
• Is your school in an area where certain seasons (i.e. fall, winter, spring, summer) will make it difficult or impossible to attend school or participate in other activities?
• What is the ease or difficulty of travel in your city?
• What other school calendars (primary school, secondary school, or university) should you consider?
• What is the schedule availability for the facility you are using?

Build in Transformative Components

While no two schools will have the same schedule, we believe there are key areas every school should include: worship, teaching, activation, and connection groups. Incorporating these components create a transformative school experience for students; they provide opportunities for them to grow in spiritual maturity, develop meaningful relationships, encounter the heart of God, and more.

As you think about incorporating these components in your school schedule, we encourage you to be true to your school’s identity! Seek the Holy Spirit’s guidance and include these areas in a way that serves your school’s purpose.

• Worship: Times of corporate worship invite students to develop a strong, intimate connection with the Lord. They unite students to encounter the Lord together and experience breakthroughs as a community. We encourage you to prioritize and protect this component of your school’s schedule, creating space for students to receive revelation about God’s nature in a unique way that is only attainable through spending time in His presence through worship.

• Teaching: Create space in your schedule for students to receive powerful teaching and revelation on how to develop a revivalist lifestyle! If your school utilizes video curriculum, make sure to also schedule opportunities for students to hear from live speakers, especially from the leaders on your team. By providing these opportunities, your students will be able to receive from the anointing and gifts that are unique to your school.

• Activation: Students will experience exponential growth when they are given space to practice what they are being taught! Add times of activation to your school schedule so that your students can apply what they are learning in class, ask questions, and receive feedback. Incorporating activation into your school schedule will richly support students developing confidence and precision as they put gifts and truth into practice.
• Connection Groups: Creating space for students to meet and build relationships through connection groups is a crucial aspect of school! Students experience an even greater level of learning when they have the opportunity to share testimonies or ask for prayer from one another. We recommend creating a time in your schedule for your students to experience the safety and community that connection groups offer, allowing them to discover and live out the reality of their identity as co-heirs with Christ.

As you prepare for the launch of your school, remember that you won’t have the “perfect” schedule in your first year of running of a school. Design the best schedule you can, make adjustments as you can, and then reevaluate at the end of the year! Remember, you can always make improvements. We bless you as build a schedule to equip and empower this generation of revivalists!

ACTIVATION

With your leadership team, answer the questions from the questions above. After going through the list of questions, we encourage you to look over the School Schedules (see below). This resource highlights some of the benefits of a full-time and part-time school schedule and provides some weekly schedule examples, which will help you determine whether a part-time or full-time schedule would best serve your school!

RESOURCES

• PDF: School Schedules