I have served the women of our church for many years, first as the women’s ministry leader, then women’s pastor, and now as the assistant pastor. As such, it has been my honor to lead teams that plan events for our women. We had a Christmas brunch last year, and our women loved it. This year, we are returning to our evening Christmas party. Our women so loved the brunch, though, that we are planning one for May. Planning a brunch for the women of our church involves several steps to ensure a successful and enjoyable event. Here’s a comprehensive guide on how to plan a women’s brunch, whether for your church or other group or organization, to help make sure your event is successful, too.
How to Plan a Women’s Bruch
Pray
I am a pastor, so naturally, I am going to suggest that every endeavor be bathed in prayer. The importance of prayer cannot be over-emphasized. I understand that you may be reading this and your event may be corporate or not faith-related at all. You may be tempted to skip praying. That is, of course, up to you. I don’t recommend it. In my humble opinion, if it’s worth doing, it’s worth doing well. Which means it’s worth praying about. JM2C.
Know Your Why
After you’ve spent time in prayer, you may already know the purpose of your brunch. If not, now is the time to determine that. You need to know your why. Know why you are gathering the women, such as to celebrate a specific occasion, to foster community, or to launch a new ministry initiative, which will help guide you in decision making. It will go a long way toward assisting you in determining many things, including venue, theme, decor, and much more.
Recruit a Team
Unless you are superwoman (hint – you are not) you need a team that can help you with vision and planning. Please note that some women may help with both. Some women may help with one or the other. If a woman is gifted in vision casting but is not gifted in the details, it wouldn’t be wise to ask her to contact the caterers for quotes. It is important to recognize the gifts in the women around you and empower them to operate in their gifts. Asking women to operate outside of their gifting will frustrate them and you. This is where open, honest dialogue is key! Look for women who complement your gifting (not sing your praises, but have gifts that you don’t have). Their gifts and your gifts combined should create one cohesive team of gifts. As the saying goes, team work makes the dream work.
Volunteer Recruitment
Every good event needs volunteers to set up, serve, and clean up. While your vision casting and planning team may be part of the set up, serve, and clean up team, they may not be. There may be other members of your church that thrive serving in these areas and want to help. Give them a chance. Of course, servant leadership is where it’s at, so do not neglect putting on the apron yourself and brewing coffee or cleaning tables. Even if it’s a pitch-in style brunch, someone has to set up the serving area and be available to clean up afterward. You’ll need to recruit volunteers to help with all of that unless you plan to do it yourself.
Organize Logistics
When choosing a date, select one that works well for your church calendar and your attendees. When possible, consider hosting avoiding seasonal busing times like graduation or scheduling a few weeks before or after key holidays. Most of the women in your church will want to attend the brunch, but if they have to choose between their grandsons graduation and the brunch, or lunch with their daughter for mothers day and the brunch, they are going to choose their family. As well they should. Family first. Make it easy for them to choose the brunch.
If your church or organization has a facility that has usable space, then use it. If you need to rent a space, be sure to calculate the cost of that into your budget.
Choose a Theme
Select a theme that resonates with why and with your audience. If your brunch is seasonal, such as our Christmas brunch was last year, then selecting a passage of scripture that has to do with the holidays may be ideal. Last year, we spent time learning about the women in the lineage of Jesus. I asked one of our women to share specifically about the women of the Nativity. She shared an amazing insight about Elizabeth calling out the gift in Mary and how we as women, are to call out the gifts we see in each other. A few other ideas for themes include:
- Women of Grace
- Chosen and Called
- Not Easily Broken
- His Favorite
- Firm Foundation
- Woman after God’s Own Heart
- Boundless Love
Determine Decor and Ambience
Choose colors that align with your theme. For example, pastel colors can create a warm and inviting atmosphere. If your event is seasonal, then you’re going to pick colors that go along with that. Be sure to ask for input. I generally gravitate away from pink because I think it’s overused. When I created the graphic for our upcoming brunch, I created three different graphics and submitted them to my team, and I was quite surprised when they chose the one with pink flowers.
We’ll likely use the same floral graphic for some table decor and such.
Add Personal Touches
When planning a brunch for the women of your church or women that you care about, it is important to add personal touches. Let them know that you care. When possible, use flowers or plants to add a life to the tables. Of course, you can use silk flowers. We used wonderful long stemmed silk gerberas for our Ladies Teas for several years and they were magnificent. Seasonal wreathes or little Christmas trees are also beautiful. My team and I once handpainted teapot planters for centerpieces then used them as door prizes, so they pulled double duty as decor and giveaways. It was a fun twist on the decor that we’d used in the years prior.
Menu Planning
When considering your menu planning, you need to determine first whether you will have your event catered, you will have a team prepare the meal in house, or it will be pitch in style.
For a well rounded brunch, consider including a mix of breakfast casseroles, quiches, fresh fruits, muffins, granola, yogurt, and beverages like juice, tea, and coffee.
Be sure to consider allergies and dietary restrictions and ensure that there are options available for guests that may have them. In our church, we have several women with severe nut allergies, so we have a nut-free campus. We have to be careful that granolas and pastries have no nuts in them, because we don’t want any ER visits as a result of our brunch.
Create Agenda
You will need an agenda, or timeline of sorts, for your event. Be sure to include any pre-event and post-event items for your team. A sample agenda might look something like this:
- Pre-event set-up
- Welcome and Introduction: Begin with a welcome and introduction to set the tone.
- Prayer or Worship: Include a time for prayer or worship to align with the spiritual focus of the event.
- Speaker or Activity: Consider having a speaker or organizing an activity that supports your theme.
- Closing Remarks: End with a call to action or closing remarks.
- Post-event tear down and/or clean up
Adding general time frames to your agenda is one of the biggest keys to planning a women’s brunch. It can be a huge help to your team. It gives them an idea of when to expect certain transitions.
Swag
Everyone loves to walk away from an event with a little swag. Whether it’s a simple bookmark or framed prints that match the theme, or printed t-shirts with the theme, or journals. Something. I think it’s important to have something at each place setting and then also have some door prizes. For our upcoming brunch we’ll have a few door prizes. Because our theme is His Favorite, we’ll have a few copies of the book You Are Loved by Jessica Wait as door prizes. It is filled with words that will encourage you to embrace God’s gifts and live a more courageous and wholehearted life.
We’ll have a few other door prizes, as well, including a copy of Crafted in Faith, by Monica Stoltzfus, and a few other things. I’m also working on designing bookmarks and table centerpieces that can be taken home, etc.
Promotion and Feedback
If your event is faith-related, you can plan to use the church’s social media pages and handouts or bulletings to get the word out. Encourage your women to invite one another and use word of mouth to promote the event, as well. Nothing beats a good old-fashioned personal invitation. Providing digital invitations that your women can use to text or post is a great way to encourage them to invite their friends. We’ve also found luck with using business card-sized invitations with QR codes that can be scanned that lead to registration pages for certain events.
Use a simple survey, which you can either email or distribute at the event, to gather feedback for future improvement.
By following these simple steps to planning women’s brunch, you can create a meaningful and enjoyable brunch experience for the women of your church or group.
Here are some tips on How to Plan a Women’s Retreat and How to Start a Group Bible Study for Women, as well. Best wishes as you empower the women around you.
