Video Transcript: Strategic Planning Part 1
All right, exciting day, we get to move on to another aspect of leadership. Now, you know, just a reminder, again, I know you're going to get sick of it. But we've been talking about leadership in terms of this model, that the leader enters a situation and interacts with the culture, and interacting with that culture and the people in it, he develops a strategic plan for a preferable future, a vision for the future, excuse me, that's what he develops, not the strategic plan, develops a vision for the future, and then provide the impetus for the prayer and the planning that need to happen in order for that vision of the preferable future to become reality. And so in the next sessions, we're going to focus on what it means to our prayer and planning. And in particular, we're going to talk about what it means to do a strategic plan. And then some of the things you have to keep in mind, as you think about planning strategically, for getting from here to there. Now, we talked in rolling out the vision that it's all about being here, and what this is, and then going there, and why that is so much better. So we're in that section, that is, this is how we're going to get there. These are the specific steps, we're going to have to take Wow, that was a tough one to get out. specific steps were going to have to take in order for that vision that we've had to become reality. Now I showed you this diagram, this model, a while back, this is by executestrategy.com. And this is a good one, I in this session, I'm going to go through how they recommend developing a strategic plan. And then in the next session, I'm going to look at another model for doing it another way of doing it when you've got the vision established, and how you can go about you know, refreshing the vision, renewing it on a regular basis. Now, just a word about strategic planning, there used to be a general wisdom that you would make a strategic plan for five years, and then you would change it or update it at year three. Nowadays, I stopped doing that as far as strategic planning for five years and start a strategic planning for three and updating it at years one and two. Now, the reasons for that are obvious change is just becoming more rapid in our world. And so making a change, a strategic change may become irrelevant two years from now. And so you've got to be ready and keep your your, your your people and yourself on top of all of those changes. And so you've got to keep looking at certain things. And the other thing that made me change it is I found that in year one of a three year strategic plan 70%, something like that of your goals are attained in year one. And so you have to get your people and yourself to rethink what are the next goals? What are the next thing, but in this model, it starts with a vision, you spent time developing, praying about talking with key people and develop a vision for a preferable future. Then after that, you look at a variety of things, the values of your organization. Now in the area and culture, you went through that process of identifying what are the values in this particular culture. And then you get to focus areas. So those are the three areas I really want to key in on today. Let's look at how that'll work. You've got a vision, and you've got a value system. And you're going to look at how in the world, this value system is going to be worked out in various areas of your ministry, and I'm going to speak from my experience with the better church, you're going to have to translate it into your own. So you've got a vision, and you've got a value. You've done your visioning. Now what? Well, now you ask questions about how you achieve your ministry, what has God called us to be and become through the mission and vision, and then what values reflect the completion of the mission. In other words, here's where things get rather testy. Because one of the things that are going to have to change if you are going to accomplish, the vision that God has given you is that some values will have to change values are very much part of a culture and this is how the culture is going to have to change. Now, as I've said, culture is powerful, that force of keeping things the way they are is powerful. One person likened it to a rubber band, you know, the further you stretch a rubber band, if you get the rubber band between your two hands, and you stretch it, the force to push you back to what was the starting point becomes greater and greater. The further and further you go? Well, in many, many respects, the values that you hold, the values that your organization holds, are part of a culture this, this inborn, inbred belief about what is true about their their group and what is important to their group. And so they're becoming growing pressure to push you back in to what was. Now when I was first in ministry, as I shared before, I didn't know the first thing about creating a vision or selling or, you know verbalizing going public with a vision or, or bringing the key people on. And so we would just create visions, a few people, and I would just create a vision of the future. And that future and that little church was that, you know, we were going to build a new building, our building was, was made to seat 90, some people, and we were going to expand it maybe to seat you know, over 190, would go up to about 200. But that would involve either changing dramatically our worship space and being out of it or building an extension to our building. And so we began talking about it in those terms. But then I looked at the history of that church, and it had a history of growing, you know, to that maximum of about 100. People in worship 90 some people do or work people in worship, and then you know, it would go down, and then would go back up and go back down similar to that pattern, of a new church planting as we're going to talk about it. And I realized that there was all this force that was being exerted to make us go back, you know, we'd like to the way it was. And so those values, when you're talking about changing those values, you've got to know that this is where the rub comes. And this is where vision can help you overcome the reticence to step back and push back in ways we've talked. So how does that happen? Well, in the church, I served in Southern California, I've shared some of that. And so we looked at some of our values and we realized that they had to change. There were traditions that were very important in that church, some of the traditions involved the church building and what went on in various places in the church building. Some of them involved programs. For instance, in my tradition, you know, we recognize years and years ago that we needed something to do for children, right, we wanted to be part of training children in the knowledge of what God wanted for them, that they were loved by God, and that they were precious, and God wanted them to respond to that love in meaningful ways. So we were going to build a children's program, which involved Sunday school, of course, but then we did something that we saw happening elsewhere, Boy Scouts, but we didn't trust Boy Scouts as an organization. So we created our own and called it Cadets. And then we created one for girls that was called Calvinettes it became Gems. Now, good programs, good programs, good people involved in them. But we realized that nobody identified with them, anybody who was coming in from the community that was becoming joining our church, anybody that was connected with various of our small groups or mission groups that were out in the church, if you talk to them about Cadets, they wouldn't know what that was. But they knew Boy Scouts. And so we were going to make some decisions that were going to change how these things were perceived, and how they were administered. So the new value was going to be relevant to our community. That involves worship. I'll talk about that in a moment about that. And, and it created a bit of a push. When we decided we got into our new facility, we relocated, and we decided that we were going to invite some of the leaders of Boy Scouts, who had joined our church to hold their meetings in our building, free of charge, open up our building to them. In fact, we had a whole section of our campus at that point that was dedicated to ministry with kids with boys. And so there were power tools and other stuff that they can use. But we said we're gonna open that to the Boy Scouts, because that's more relevant to our community than our traditional group. Now, the group that was the traditional Cadet group, or they rebelled, they didn't like it at all, it took a long time for them to come on. But each time, we're talking about the fact that this wasn't my decision, it was a decision based on our vision to become more relevant to become people who are reaching out into this new community where we were coming. And we were inviting people and and, and in fact, Cadets was feeding into that our excuse me, Boy Scouts was going to feed into that because these families we expected will come join us. Once that they experienced the good people that we had involved there, they become part of our church. So that's a change in values. So you got to look at your values, you got a vision, and then look at your values in terms of vision. In our church, we were closely identified, as I said earlier, with a Christian school in the community. We were supporting a church of that in other words, we helped families who couldn't afford the tuition to pay the tuition so that they could send their kids to the Christian School. We were listed on the Christian school materials as one of the supporting churches of that school. We had money set aside in the budget to support the Christian School. The majority of families at that point in our church, sent their children to the Christian School. And we said, We've got to change that. If we're going to fulfill our vision of becoming a lighthouse in this community, we can't have people coming in as they were, and saying, oh, man, to really be part of this church, you've got to send your kids to the Christian School. Now, some made that choice, and that was fine. But we wanted everyone to feel welcome. And so we began to talk more about the value of being a church for the community. And, and having new people you become part of that. And some people who even out of mission and vision left the Christian school to have an engagement in the public schools, teachers who are in the public school system, leaving the Christian school system to teach in the public school system, so that we could have a greater impact there have a way in to share the good news, and that very important part of the broader culture of our community. So that was a huge change, ethnic change, as we looked at our community, we found that it was 53% Hispanic, and the number of Anglos was going down. And we looked at our congregation said, you know, what, we're mostly white. Now, that's a monoethnic group is normal in church in the United States. In fact, there's a church growth principle called the homogenous unit principle, and that is that people gather with people who are like them. And others have criticized that saying that, you know, Sunday morning is the most segregated time in the in the church in the United States, because people gather with their own groups, ethnically, but we looked at our community, we began to get a vision of creating a multi ethnic church, a variety of ways of doing that of inviting people in of creating strategies with this new value and new vision, creating strategies that will allow us to make inroads into other ethnic groups. And that resulted in eventually a Hispanic church, that was meeting in our community, and we begin to do things together. And gradually, as some people became more comfortable with English, and their children became more comfortable with English, they would join our church community. But it meant a change in values. That we aren't about being white, we're about believing being believers. One of the huge changes was what was known as the worship wars, the old music to contemporary music. Now, we had a very good, a very good worship, team and experience and staff and worship. But our worship was very, pretty traditional. We sung out of a couple of hymnals, we had a choir that sang in robes, we did all kinds of things like that. But we said, you know, if we're going to be relevant, people don't hear this kind of music out in the world. And we're trying to win the world. So what's relevant to them, and we began to have people listening to that music and coming back and reporting about it doing studies, surveys in our community to say, what kind of music do you listen to, and start saying, we got to have that kind of music here, so that when they come in, they find that we are relevant to them, we are important to them. And so we, we went through a short period of time of introducing it, I made some mistakes. When we talked about change theory, I'll talk about some mistakes I made in that regard. But these are the kind of value changes that are necessary. So after you do the vision, and the values, you look at those, what's the vision now what values have to change in order for us to get there, because the vision is now going to rule the values, then you start looking at focus areas within the church. So what are going to be the areas that have to be thinking about strategies in order to accomplish that vision and live out the new set of values? I'll give you some examples for us in a church, here are just some of the focus areas worship that department, children's ministry, youth ministry, outreach, or missions, a local and international preaching you're preaching is going to be changed as a result of the vision as a result of renewed values. So what does that look like? Well, let's say the vision is to see part of the vision some part of the vision is to see 100 people come to faith in the next year through our ministry. Now, that's a huge goal statement. But it's also a visionary statement saying, You know what, we're going to lose our Inter ingrown character, and we're going to become this outreaching and receiving body of believers. And so we're going to do that by setting this goal out there that we want 100 people to come that's part of our vision for this next year or next two years, the next three years. So what does that look like for focus areas? Well, the core value is we're going to be an outreaching ministry. We call it Relevance Reaching Out These are things are important to us. And this is going to guide our choices for the next years. So in the area of worship children's and Men's Ministry, for instance, worship means things like, we're going to give an invitation regularly. We're not going to assume anymore, that everybody's sitting there as a believer. In fact, we're encouraging our people, we are training our people, we're reminded our people, we're challenging our people, to be inviting others to come into worship, to be engaging them in their communities. It meant making music relevant and inviting. It meant holding up the value of being an outreaching. Ministry in worship. And so when people would come to us and say, We don't like what you're doing, we say, Yeah, but this is why we're doing it. And we preach on relevant topics within the light of Scripture. And so occasionally, we would preach on those things like the family, because that was a huge felt need back then. Now, this is important. Because if you are able to articulate well, your vision, and your values, then when you get into these kinds of areas where you have to make decisions. And you're doing things that people don't like, it gives you a reason to respond, and people will respond better that way. I have in mind a delightful couple, who are now in their 90s. If they had their choice, they would be worshiping probably an Episcopal Church. And what I mean by that is a highly stylized liturgy, a liturgical kind of worship. I know that's not true in many Episcopal churches anymore, but that's what they liked. They liked the organ. And occasionally, they would go there, but but they were avid supporters of our church. Why? Because they would say, we don't really like this for us. But we're doing it because we want them to come and know Jesus Christ. And so as you're making strategic plans, and you're saying, This is what we're going to do, they'll say, Okay, I recognize that, I reckon, because I bought into the vision. And so this is the way it works. In the Outreach Department you're going to have to train people in evangelism, because not everybody is going to come in. And you don't want to be just being attractional ministry, we want to be out in the community, so training people to lead their neighbors to faith in Jesus Christ to engage their neighbors, and then events that touch the community. That may be, you know, change things for your church it's a little bit controversial when we decided on one Sunday, a year initially, to cancel our worship service. Instead, we asked people to gather together and go out and serve the community. And so we each had blue t-shirts, and it was called Day to Shine. And we would gather at church, we'd just do a brief thing, gathering in our teams praying for the day, and then be sent out on Sunday morning, to go out and serve in the community. There were some people who hated that. I mean, it was, it was, it was unbelievable to them that we would cancel a worship service, because that was such a powerful, powerful part of our culture, powerful part of our tradition. And yet, as we began to explain it they'd say, it's not for me, I am ago, I'm not going to leave the church, but I'm going to church somewhere during that day. And so we would tell, I would tell my friends in ministry around, be watching, on that first Sunday in May, you could expect some of our people. But what happened was, we got a reputation in that community over several years, that involved people coming to us, just because they saw our passion for the community. You know, one man's story is probably fairly typical of what happened. He was on Sunday morning, what he did is go to the coffee shop, and he would take one of his kids and he'd sit and have coffee and have a muffin with his one of his kids, and they would talk and they're on the way to the coffee shop that day in our town. And as he's traveling, he sees he's traveling by a city owned group of shops with docks by them. And he sees a group of people in blue shirts, just cleaning up, putting down mulch, planting new flowers, that sort of thing. Drives further and he goes by the beach. So we're a beach town here in Michigan. And he sees another group of blue shirts are just picking up the beach and pulling up the snow, the snow fences that are put down for the winter, and getting it all ready. And then he drives around and he's heading up the street. And he sees another whole group, which is putting mulch on a bike path. And he's so curious what all these blue shirts, he's thinking, are these a bunch of convicts out there. What is that? And so he stops and he goes to a group of blue shirted people and he says, Who are you people anyway? And the man said, Well, we're from Covenant Life Church, and this is something we do, we're committed to this community. And so we we are, cancel our worship service, because we said, it's more important that we be out here today, then that we be there gathered together. And the guy was so impressed that he went home talked to his wife, and said we've got to check out this church. And in fact, he became part of a church plant. Few years later after that but he came became part of us. Because he saw service, it became so much that we are identified with a community that the city we are part of Grand Haven, Michigan, hired or paid 12 of their workers to work with us on various projects within the city. So we had like 700 people, 6-700 people going out to, you know, 30-40-50 different projects, all around our region, from raking leaves, to painting things to working in the schools, being by the hospital, a variety of things in the nursing homes. It was an affirmation of our, of our value, our new value. It was an affirmation of our vision. So outreach would be important that department developing strategies for becoming more relevant in our community, children's ministry, offering parenting training events outside the church. I put in there the example of Central Wesleyan Church, Jack Lynn was a consultant who used to be executive pastor there, and we hired him at one point. And he tells about the time when they were looking at their their middle school ministry. And they were averaging about 200 kids. And they began thinking about what does it mean, to be more connected with our community, they were looking to that value kind of statement. And as a result, they changed some of their practices. And they decided that instead of gathering in the church, where they had about 200, people gathering, they said, What happens if we put this out in the community? And so they identified eight different places. Now there's a price to pay. Now all of a sudden they had transportation issues, getting kids here to there, they had training of leaders issues, because now the paid staff couldn't be in all eight places. They have issues of parents reticence and, and etc. But they did it eight people, they have 200 people, when they started gathering regularly, by the end of that year, they'd grown by 35%. To 270, kids regularly gathering, that kind of thing. So strategizing, how can we do this better, and in children's ministry, training volunteers, in welcome, etc. Now, that's all part of it. And then you you get the focus areas, and then you move on to goals, specific goals in each area. So if you've got staff or volunteers, this is a tough one. This is well known stuff. So I'm just going to go through it quickly but you need smart organizational goals. A goal must be smart. That means asking questions like who, what, where, when, which why, you know, who's going to do it? What are they going to do? Where are they going to do it? When are they going to do it? Which of the choices are they going to do? Why are they going to do that instead of something else, that's what it means to be specific in the SMART acronym. And then they've got to be measurable. So that, you know, when that goal is reached, it can't be just a general statement of, well, we want to become more welcoming. That's not a goal. That's a desire, it will be nice, but it's not a goal, our goal would be, you know, we're going to recruit and train an intergenerational group for people to welcome at the doors. And then certain people we're going to recruit and train by such and such a day, this number of people, and we're going to train them to be people who follow up on visitors, etc, etc, etc. So some measurable you know, when it's reached, and you know, when it's not reached, it's got to be achievable. In other words, it's within the realm of the a pot of the possible. I like that, quote, "undersell over deliver" that's written by a man originally coined by a man who owned a whole group of car dealerships. And his was different. He said, because in the typical car dealer in the United States, what you do is you over promise and under deliver. In other words, a salesman will promise the world to people to get them to buy the car, and then they'll find out the problems later, when they find out that the dealer can't quite deliver on the kind of service they said that they deliver. But he said he flipped that around and undersell, but once they sold, they would make sure these people were passionate about what happened, that they were there was an over delivery when they were asking questions, they would more than get them answered. Said that was the secret to repeat sales and that sort of thing. Well, it's true here to. The goals have to be achievable. You don't put out a goal that you're not going to reach you're not even going to come near you got to reach a goal that's achievable so that you can have a short term win that you can celebrate and then they've got to be real realistic. In other words has been done before somewhere else and you've got to be able to say you don't yet this is doable look so and so did it. We used to talk about benchmarking certain other ministries and churches. And then finally, the T is in Smart is to be as time limited. Here it is in our table specific what will be accomplished what actions will you take measurable, what data will measure the goal? How much how many how well, it's achievable? Is the goal doable? Do you have the necessary skills and resources To do it, it's relevant. How does the goal align with the broader goals of the ministry? And why is the result important? And then it's got to be time based. What is the timeframe for accomplishing the goal? Now you notice, in this one, the R is not it's listed as relevant where in other things, it's listed out differently from that, it's listed as realistic. So here, it was relevant. Just want to point that out. Here's another way, you know, the criteria specific, it's precise, simply written, easy to understand, even for somebody with a basic knowledge of the process, etc. You know, you get all that here's, here's a table you can use, draw that on paper and say, okay, and this area of our ministry, what's the goals? What are the goals for this year, for this three years, and then for this year, what action is going to be taken? Who's going to do it, when is it going to be done by etc. Now, all of that is just to say, that's the pattern for strategic planning, starting with the vision and working it down to the goals that are going to carry out the vision. Now next time I'm going to show you a different way that you if you've had the vision in place for a while, another way that you can go about strategic planning. So see you next time