When you create a new goal in Ministry Goals, the very first choice is Kind: Lead or Lag. It’s worth a moment to understand the difference, because the two answer different questions.
Lead goals: the inputs you control
A lead goal measures something you can directly do today. You decide whether it happens. Examples:
- Hours spent in prayer
- Sermons drafted
- Families visited
- One-on-one discipleship meetings
- Chapters read
- Volunteers personally invited
Lead goals are about faithfulness. They answer the question “Am I sowing the seed?”
Because you control them, lead goals are excellent for daily and weekly cadences. Streaks, daily cadences, and cumulative counts all fit naturally here.
Lag goals: the outcomes you long for
A lag goal measures a result that takes time and depends on God’s work and the response of others. Examples:
- Members baptized this year
- Leaders raised up for the next season
- New small groups launched
- People who completed the orientation pipeline
- Disciples who began discipling someone else
Lag goals are about fruitfulness. They answer “Is the seed taking root?” You cannot will them into being. You can only steward the ground and watch.
Lag goals usually have longer cadences — quarterly, yearly, or tied to a specific season or initiative. Funnels, ratios, and counts with multi-month targets fit well.
Why you need both
Tracking only lag goals is discouraging. Outcomes lag the work that produces them by weeks or months, so a healthy ministry can look like nothing is happening — until suddenly it is.
Tracking only lead goals is dangerous in the opposite direction. You can pile up activity that produces no fruit and never notice, because the dashboard always looks busy.
The pairing is the point:
Lead goals tell you whether you’re being faithful. Lag goals tell you whether faithfulness is bearing fruit.
When a lead goal is steady but the matching lag goal isn’t moving, something deeper deserves attention — perhaps the strategy, the soil, or the season. When a lag goal moves without a corresponding lead goal, give thanks; God has done it without you.
A practical pairing
Here’s an example of how a single SuperGoal — Year of Discipleship — might combine the two:
Lead goals
- Weekly one-on-one meetings (cadence count, target: 4/week)
- Daily Scripture preparation (streak)
- Monthly leadership huddles (cadence count, target: 1/month)
Lag goals
- Disciples who began discipling someone else (cumulative count, target: 6 this year)
- Leaders ready to lead a small group (cumulative count, target: 4 this year)
Six goals total, all under one SuperGoal. The lead goals give you something to do every week. The lag goals give you something to pray for over a year.
Switching between kinds
If you set a goal up as one kind and realize partway through it should be the other, open the goal, tap Edit Goal, and change the Kindfield. Your activity history stays intact.
What’s next
- Choosing the Right Metric Type — pairing the kind with the right measurement
- Organizing Goals with SuperGoals — grouping leads and lags under an initiative
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