Session 9 — Decision Making 

Opening

Bruce:
All right, we are back for session nine, and we’re gonna talk a little bit about decision making.

Abigail:
Yeah, as a deacon,

Bruce:
you’re gonna be involved at some point making decisions. The next two sessions—this one and the next—will help with that. This session is just a process to help you make good decisions as a body of people who have responsibility. For the next session, we’ll talk about finances and some of the ways you can—finances always enter into ministry decisions—and so how you can effectively and successfully define the finances of your church. So let’s go—decision making. What I’m going to do is walk you through some steps to making good decisions. I have been part of church bodies—church leadership bodies—that have done them very poorly.

Abigail:
It can be hard, you know? I like to consider myself a little bit of a go-with-the-flow person at times. I can become indecisive, and decision making can be tough, and I think it’s such an important area as a church we need to be equipped on. And it—

Bruce:
—depends a little bit on the style of leadership in your church. You know, I always say, if my kids gave me the right to make all the decisions, the world would be a better place. Nobody’s done that yet. So, how do you go about—as a group—making some good decisions? I’m gonna run through them, and then we’re gonna look at a scenario that applies the principles. And then you can look at them.

Step 1 — Define the decision or the problem

Bruce:
First of all, define the decision or the problem.

Abigail:
What’s needing to be addressed, right? Is it—

Bruce:
—is it what? And what is it? Is it a pattern of ministry—ministry that needs to be cut out? (We’re gonna look at conflict later; there are some ways to do that.) But what is the decision? What is the problem you are trying to solve within your ministry? As a deacon, it might be anything you can think of that would say, “We’ve got to cut our budget,” or “We have to make a new budget,” or “We’ve got to expand the budget.” How do you go about making—define it as best you can—what do we need to do here?

The example I’m going to give you later is about a church that was facing a budget crisis and had to decide whether to continue a particular ministry. That was the decision they gathered to make the night that we met. So you define it as best you can—continue the ministry, stop the ministry, fire a staff person, hire a staff person—what is the decision, as best you can.

Step 2 — Identify the various choices

Bruce:
Number two is identify the various choices. So—what are the choices? Try to list as many as you can.

For example, “We’re going to expand ministry,” or—in the church I served in California—we were asking, “What are we going to do? We’ve got a growth problem.” (That sounds terrible, but we were in five services at one point, and it was becoming untenable.) So, what are our choices?

• Start a daughter church within the community.
• Do an extension—a video venue—starting another ministry elsewhere in town and gathering people there.
• Decide to stay where we are and just do what we do. (That is a possible choice.)

Step 3 — Get as much information as possible

Bruce:
Get as much information as possible about each of the choices.

Abigail:
Was there a cost to each of them?

Bruce:
Right. With the relocation idea, everything we found cost at least a million dollars.

Abigail:
I mean—that information is important, and—

Bruce:
—we needed information about which of the choices would even be possible. (I’ve talked about going to the city—City of Chino was part of the problem for my friend.) Would it even be possible to put up the kind of facility we wanted—what we felt we needed—to minister in the future? Get as much information as possible.

Step 4 — Project the consequences of each choice

Bruce:
Project the consequences of each choice. If you plant a daughter church, best as we can—with the help of the Holy Spirit—what’s going to be the outcome of this particular choice? What’s going to be the outcome of that one—

Abigail:
Who would be leading this daughter church? Which part of the church would start attending that daughter church? I—

Bruce:
—I know CLI has been through some big decisions in the past couple of years (choices about seeking accreditation, with whom, and so on). So, as much as you can: “Okay, here are choices. Now, what might happen if we do this?”

Step 5 — Apply the values of your organization

Bruce:
Number five: apply the values of your organization. In other words, what’s important to you? What do you see as: this is what it’s got to be, because this is what we believe; this is what is valuable to us.

Hopefully you’ve got your values written somewhere—or at least it’s an active discussion. What do you value?

• If you value the pastor knowing everybody, your choices will be limited (you can only have a church of about 100 people).
• If you value never taking financial risks, your choices will be limited.
• If you value outreach into the community—“we’ve got to connect with the poor”—(and if you’re a deacon, that’s probably one of your values), apply that to your choices.

Step 6 — Communicate clearly and often

Bruce:
Then communicate clearly and often to your church. One of the worst things a church can have is a surprise.

Abigail:
Right—somebody’s been thinking about something for a while and they’re not communicating it, right?

Bruce:
And then it’s dumped on the church. Worst leadership experience I ever had was in California. We decided to change the name of the church. The name was Calvary, and there were two large churches in our community (each over 1,000) that were Calvary Chapels. Constantly—one time—we ordered some choir risers, and they didn’t come and didn’t come and—

Abigail:
didn’t come—

Bruce:
—and people would join us thinking we were them, and people would join them thinking they were us.

We were relocating—new campus, 1,500-seat sanctuary, preschool—and we were going to be less than a mile away from one of those churches. So we said, “We’ve got to change.” I’m good at process—developed a whole process; came to a recommendation—but we didn’t communicate everything to the congregation.

We scheduled a congregational meeting to decide the new name between two of our three morning services and thought, “This is a slam dunk.” Things went south. Somebody grabbed the mic; there was anger; all kinds of stuff—because we hadn’t communicated clearly why we were doing this. People’s emotions got going. People—

Abigail:
—were connected to the name, and if they didn’t see how important the decision to make that was—

Bruce:
—a dear person got up and said, “You know, I came to Christ in Calvary Church.” Good for that person—there were needs we hadn’t anticipated. If we had communicated more clearly—used listening groups and such—we could have heard this and addressed it. So: communicate clearly—communicate—

Abigail:
—so that everyone can buy in and say, “Yeah, we need this name change.”

Bruce:
Right. Vital: public announcements, small-group meetings, listening times. Make sure when you’re making a big decision that you’ve communicated clearly and often.

Step 7 — Make the decision

Bruce:
Number seven: make your decision and walk out with courage and boldness, knowing you’ve done your homework.

Step 8 — Track consequences; adjust

Bruce:
And finally, track the consequences—what happens—and make adjustments accordingly.

Scenario: Bilingual Service Decision

Bruce:
Here’s the problem in a church where I was serving as an interim pastor: budget constraints. Like many in the United States, the church declined rather precipitously during the pandemic—most churches lost 40–60% of worship attendance and membership income—so now they’re asking, “What do we do?”

We began looking at each ministry. One big one was the 11 a.m. bilingual service. Ten years before, they had begun this service because many homes had Spanish as the first language, while children were English-speaking—so they started a bilingual service (both languages at the same time).

They listed choices:

• Keep things the same and cut another ministry (or a staff person).
• Transition it to all Spanish (maybe better alignment with the community).
• Spin off the bilingual service as a separate church plant (its own elders, deacons, pastor, finances)—a sister church that rents from us.
• Merge services (make both services bilingual).
• End the ministry.

Information gathered:

• Ten-year history: top attendance ~45–60 regularly; present attendance hovered in the 20s.
• Annual cost around $60,000 (part-time bilingual pastor + music leader and musicians).
• Most professions of faith and conversions were happening in that group.
• About 7% of the immediate community (within one mile) had bilingual homes.
• Ongoing question: do we have the right people in the right roles?

Values considered:
In the 1960s the church chose to stay in a rapidly changing, multi-ethnic community while many churches moved to the suburbs during white-flight. They committed to ministry in place: tutoring program; Saturday food program for the food-insecure; strong congregational support.

As soon as word got out that the bilingual service was being evaluated, my email filled up. People came to me right and left: “What are you thinking of doing?” (An interim pastor from outside can be seen as threatening; it felt like I was destroying what they valued.)

Communication:
We communicated to the whole congregation that discussions were happening. We communicated to the bilingual serviceand held three translated meetings. (I speak Spanish, but I’m grateful for translators in those settings.) People from the bilingual service came and gave input; supporters (including some who didn’t speak Spanish) came because the service is bilingual and they wanted to show support. Three meetings—good discussion.

Decision/outcome:
We decided to keep things mostly the same, but create greater opportunities to mix the congregations, because they had become two largely separate groups. One of the mixing points was the food program. We ran the food program through the same process and decided it had to be turned over to the people who used it (ABCD—asset-based community development). Some terrific leaders from that program now run it; we host it in the building.

We kept the bilingual service, made minor timing adjustments, and increased interaction with the other service—based on the value of not abandoning something we provide to the community that nobody else does. We began tracking consequences. (A year and a half later, the service is still going, though attendance dipped back into the 20s after a jump. They’re facing the question again—but now they have a process to follow.)

Another Decision Example (CLI High School Curriculum)

Bruce:
Let’s think of another decision to run through the grid.

Abigail:
Decision of adding a program. Right now at CLI we’re making decisions about whether to explore going more into the high-school curriculum. It’s come up again and again. We’re asking: is this where we should put resources and time?

Bruce:
So—identify choices. Head fully in that direction; head partially; run a test program; go “whole hog”; or not. Then: get as much information as possible—is there a market for this kind of ministry?

Abigail:
That’s what we’ve been doing—meeting with people in this space. The resounding feedback keeps saying, “This market is growing.” That’s very different than weak interest—and it informs the decision.

Bruce:
Then project consequences—it could thrive or bomb; there will be financial implications. Apply values: from the beginning, CLI valued providing training to people who otherwise couldn’t get it—quality training, not just any training.

Communicate clearly enough—sounds like you’ve been scoping users and stakeholders—then decide.

When I retired and moved from SoCal to Michigan for interim work, I said, “I never want to see another building program.” In California, we did one major addition; then proposed a huge addition but kept hitting city permit walls. We proposed redoing the whole building: 1,000-seat sanctuary plus a Family Life Center. City said, “You don’t have parking.” After lots of study, we finally got “Okay, you can start.”

Three influential leaders and I went to lunch and said, “We’re really stupid. If we do this, we’ll limit the church’s future. Every decision will be constrained by what we just did. We should stop and look at relocation.”

We stepped back for a year, looked at planting, expanding, or relocating. We chose relocation. We projected three years—it took six and a half. Today, that campus hosts three congregations—English-speaking (multi-ethnic), Chinese, and Korean. That wouldn’t have happened if we’d stayed put.

Projecting consequences—there were many we didn’t see (big financial ones; and personal ones I didn’t foresee). Still, the eight-step pattern works for ministry decisions deacons face: what community ministries to join, where to invest your time. It’s also good for personal decisions—

Abigail:
Same formula you can definitely use—

Bruce:
—buying a new car, buying a new house, whatever.

Abigail:
Great formula—use it with your spouse, right?

Bruce:
Okay, so next time, we’re gonna look at finances and—yeah—talk about deacons and finances. So we’ll see that— we’re.