Video Transcript: Strategic Planning Part 2

Welcome back. Last time, we looked at a model for strategic planning. And you'll notice this  session is entitled, Strategic Planning 2. Again, we're in that part of the model that goes  beyond vision now to prayer and planning and how this has taken place within your  leadership process. So prayer and planning. And the last time we talked about strategic  planning, and how it starts with a certain kind of vision. So you develop your vision, and then  you look at your values, the values of the culture you are in, and you decide which of those  need changing. And then you develop focus areas, you look at where, who needs to take  action in order for the vision to become reality. So in a church, it's, you know, the various  departments in your, your ministry, it might be something else. But you look at those, and  then you begin developing goals for each of those areas. And we talked about smart goals  and, and what those look like. So today, I want to look at the fact that there are many of you  who are involved in ministries or churches or various nonprofit organizations, or wherever you are, there are some of you who have had a vision that you've been working with for a long  time. And now it comes time to just look and do that next strategic plan. So you've been  doing this vision thing. But now, the other strategic plan has run its course, you've, you've  maybe reached 80% 90% 100% of your goals that were developed within three to five year  period. And so now you want to redo all of that, how in the world, you make the next strategic plan. That's what I want to talk about during this session briefly. And to begin with this man.  And notice, it's Max Dupree, I've quoted him before. Max DePree is a long time businessman  here in this West Michigan area. But he's known throughout the world, for producing office  furniture, he was the CEO for a company here in West Michigan for a long time. And he's  written several books on leadership, expert in leadership. But his great quote is "the first  responsibility of a leader is to define reality. The last is to say thank you, and then between  the leader is a servant." So the first step in redoing a vision is to define the reality. Now, you  have to do that in a couple of different ways. One, you have to do that inside. In other words,  in the organization, what is the reality in the organization, and that would include some of the  history and where you've been probably some of the history where you've been in living out  your previous strategic plan, some of it will be what's happening within the Ministry, what's  happening, what has happened within the ministry. And, for instance, here's one church that I  had some contact with a few years ago. And look what happened in their ministry, you'll just  see the decline in numbers. Now the top line there represents the addition of the bottom two.  So the blue line and this one are slightly purple. That blue line represents professing numbers. In other words, these are adults, or teenagers, who have come to a point where they have  officially and publicly professed their faith. The next line, the red line, down on the bottom,  represents baptized members in my tradition, we baptize children, and then we teach them  as they grow, and hope that they will become covenant keepers, when they become  teenagers. or shortly thereafter, they'll make a choice to receive Jesus Christ as their Savior  and Lord. And so those two together are the top line. Now, you'll notice many questions that  come out when you do this. This is a 15 year graph of their officially reported membership  statistics. And I had access to this and so did this and talked with the pastor of this church.  And we looked at what's your reality? Now a lot of questions you don't like say what happened 2006 to 2007, when you've got that huge plunge of that graph there. What happened in 2009, when there was a slight uptick in 2008, and 2009. You know what happened with the uptick in 2015 2014 to 15. What happened there, you'd ask those kinds of questions to try to ascertain  reality. But the big reality, looking at a graph like this is that this church is dying. It's only one  small step from death. They've gone from about 450 people total, down to a total of a little  over 150, a drop of almost two thirds in 15 years, this church does not have a long life to go.  That would be one of the first things that I would say to them. And in fact, it was something I  did say to them to the pastor and a couple of elders, you are dying, you're dying. So that  would be one way of doing defining the reality inside. Now, here's another church. You'd ask a lot of questions. Well, what happened in 2009? Anyway, what that huge 2009 to 2010, wow  that was a huge growth time, you know what happened in 2013 to 14 with that decline I  happen to know, because this is the church that I served. And this is again defining, you  know, professing members and baptized members and the totals. Now, the totals, now I can  say what happened in 2013 was two things. One, we had a failed building proposal, we 

proposed a building project to the church and and it was voted for, but people didn't vote with their money. And so we had to come back to the drawing table. And at the same time, there  was a new ministry, exciting ministry, exciting church that opened up in our community. And  so we had a little over 100 people go and join that other church during that time. So you say,  Wow, that's, that's significant. The earlier drop, you can say there was a recession in this  community back then, that was the great recession. And so we had people moving out of the  community, far greater numbers than we're moving in. So you just look at some of those  things. What happened in 2016, to 2017, that there were those drops? in ministry, you look at those kinds of things to have to find the reality inside not you might want to define the reality  in a different way. How many customers? Are you receiving? You know, how many people do  you have working on these accounts? How many accounts? Are they working on? How many  subjects are they addressing? You know, what are people's job descriptions, those are all  kinds of things of defining the reality inside which jobs are relevant, which are not all of those  kinds of things are defining it inside now in the church. In our church, we also defined it in  terms of the reveal survey that was put out by Willow Creek many, many years ago now. And  they talked about the fact that there are four steps for people who are coming to faith and  growing in their faith. And our mission statement was to help each other take the next step in  our relationship with Jesus Christ. And so we define what are those steps, and we, we defined  it other ways, but then when Willow Creek came out with this, we use their system. And we  said, here are the steps, exploring Christ. In our church at that time. 10% of the people who  are attending our worship services regularly, were not believers. They were still exploring  Christ. they were checking him out 44% had crossed the bridge into belief, and they were now growing in Christ. In other words, they were learning about prayer, and they were learning  scripture, and they were learning. You know how God answers their prayers. 25% were close  to Christ. In other words, they, scripture reading was normal for them. Prayer was normal for  them, they they found God answering their prayers, often they were serving Christ. And then  the Christ centered people, were able to say my relationship with Jesus is the most important  relationship in my life. It guides everything I do 21% of our church. Now, as we began to look  at the defining of reality inside, we began looking at those things. And that became part of  our strategic plan. Because we said, how do we move people along? From exploring Christ to  growing in Christ? We've got to have strategies and goals for doing that. What kind of  activities can we take in our strategic plan? For those who are going from growing in Christ to  close to Christ? What do we do for those people that are going to help them take that step of  growth, because that's an area where people often get stuck, they come to faith, and they  just kind of exist for periods of time. And then how many people go from close to Christ to  Christ centered, we don't want people getting stuck there anywhere, either. Christ centered  people are characterized by a willingness to give their life away in service of Jesus Christ.  Now, it's easy to get stuck. Now, there's an old story, I suspect it's true. About a it was in a  school. And one of the teachers was promoted, who had been there five years, was promoted  into the administration. And another teacher in the same department came to the  superintendent furious and saying wait a minute, he's only got five years experience, I've had  25 years of experience, and the superintendent looked at her says, You have not had 25 years of experience, you've had one year of experience 25 times. While sometimes if you apply that to this graph, people get stuck in the area of growing in Christ, have the same experience  over and over and over again. So we've got to have strategies that help them take that next  step. And so we developed those so you define reality inside and you also define reality  outside what what is the broader culture in which you are living? And how do you make plans  in that regard now, sorry for the small print for this, but this is just some of the population as  we were looking at a strategic plan in 2014. You'll notice that the population of our community was growing. In fact, from 1990 to 2000, it had grown well, an annual growth rate that was  healthy. And it continued to grow from 2000 to 2009, there was a percentage of growth rate  there. And it was growing again projected to continue to grow through 2014. And in fact, had,  and so the population percentage was growing from 16 1/2% in that first part to 7 - 8%. And  then 5%, projected growth, and we knew it was a growing community that meant people are  going to be moving in, there are going to be changes, how do we connect with those people? 

What kind of households are we going to have? And how many exist? What about the ethnic  makeup of our community. And if you looked at those numbers, you can see the percentages  and how they're changing. And you find that, unfortunately, we live in a pretty white  community, which is just starting to experience some ethnic diversity. We looked at the  generations and saw the percentages of each age group. And then we looked at our church  and said, How do we compare to the community? And what do we have to do? And we found  out some very important information, and that is the number of children were on the decline  in the community. And we had just built a building for children's ministry. So we said, how is  that going to impact us? As we do our ministry? Do we scale back? Do we rededicate part of  that building to something else, and we decided that we should keep that building the way it  was projected. Because what we figured and turned out to be true, is that people love their  children. And they desperately want them if they're a believing family, to grow up around  other Christians and grow up with Christian teachers who are going to model faith with them  and for them. And as some of the churches in our community were growing smaller and  smaller, people began to look for a church with a thriving children's ministry. And so he said,  Yep, we've got to continue to put resources into children's ministry. But it created discussion  based on what's happening in the community, we find that there's a huge growing number of  retired people, we are becoming a retirement community. And in fact, 22% of the community  is over 65. Now, we haven't done much in living out ministry to those people. So how are we  going to strategize to reach all of those people who are buying a condos in our area in usually  condos, to which they retire. And we found various ways to minister to them. For instance, we found out that many men who sell their homes and move to a new area, one of the things  they get rid of a lot of men is their tools. And so we happen to have a full service wood  workshop on the third floor of our building, the long story about how that developed as a  ministry, but we decided we can do something. So we partnered with a community  organization that has a broad base of membership, that's in the retired community 55 and  above. And so we partnered with them, they made it known that on a certain night, we were  going to have a project night, and just invite anybody to come. There'd be a slight cost for  materials, but anybody could come. And so somebody in our church had caught this vision  was going to head this up. Those are the kinds of things of making plans related to finding out what's the reality outside. And at the basis of this, we began talking about intergenerational  worship and intergenerational experiences, realizing that in the typical church, we segment  the population, right the children meet during the worship service over here, adults meet in  the worship center, middle school meets here, youth, high school meets over here, and we  segmented we said, what if we did an intergenerational thing where in some small groups, we were combining various age groups, where we had older people mentoring kids to grow in  their faith, what if we could actually accomplish that, but it grew out of looking at the  population. We looked at our population, and we found that there was a growing number of  people with special needs children. In fact, only 8% of those families that had grown up that  had a special needs children in their family, only 8% of them attended church because it was  distracting. And we had a little bit of experience with this because we had some families who  had autistic children who were on the autism scale attending and we had made  accommodations for them in worship. We said what if as we did, specifically targeted goals  and plans, strategic plans that would make our church a place where those families could  come. And so we created a ministry called Special Treasures and it thrives it's been growing  by leaps and bounds. In the five years we had a staff person who is passionate about this and  took this on. And what happened was families were so grateful to us. I remember serving  communion once we were doing communion where people would come up individually or as  families to have communion, and I was serving communion to this one couple, and the man  grabbed my arm, and he said, I just want to thank you, says, This is the first time that my  family has been able to worship together since meaning this child was born. And we had an  impact in the name of Jesus. But the plan for it came out of looking at statistics, and looking  at the strengths we have as a congregation. So you look internally, you look externally, and  then you gather your teams, and you do three exercises. Now, again, this relates to the  former one, in that you've got various focus areas, right? So children's worship, outreach, 

ministries, care ministry, you name it, you've got these various areas of emphasis Men's  Ministry, women's ministry in some places. And so you gathered teams together volunteers  and staff, probably, and you have a time where you're going to be talking about vision, now  could be talking a variety of ways about vision, but you share this information with them.  Certainly you share it with the elders of the church, and those who are in significant decision  making positions. You share it. And then you work through some exercises with them. One is,  what are we doing now? What could we be doing? And what should we be doing? Now it's  easy to make a list of everything we're doing now. And that's rather revealing because you  realize you're doing a lot of stuff. And sometimes it reveals that you're doing some stuff that  isn't really effective anymore, in attaining the vision, and the vision of becoming a church,  that blessing the community, etc, we found some of those kinds of things. What are we doing  now? What could we be doing? You know, what are things right now that we could be doing  with just a little bit of diversion of some resources? What could we be doing that we could do? We just haven't thought of it before. And then what should we be doing? What are things like  the Special Treasures came out of that department. What should we be doing to make a  difference in this community, and in our church body? Now you'll find all sorts of things that  come about in that kind of conversation. What are we doing? What could we be doing? What  should we be doing? And then after you've done all of that, you start making strategic plans.  And again, if you've got staff, that's a wonderful place for to engage them. If not, you  probably have to do it as a team of volunteers. You start thinking of strategic planning, based  on those last two, what could we be doing? What could we be doing? Now, our church, one of  our great growth engines was a ministry called Bounce Around. And it was just came from the idea of a couple of women in our church would experience this elsewhere, where they had a  time where they just brought preschool children, mothers and other caregivers, grandma's  grandpa's, would bring a care their children, preschool children for time of exercise a time of  play. So we bought it didn't cost us much at all. We bought some bounce houses, when we  talk about what could we be doing bounce houses. And we opened up our children's ministry  facility on Thursday mornings, air conditioning is on in the summer, heat is on in the winter,  bring your kids, and the kids will be running and people from the community came in droves.  And they would check us out because their kids were used to the children's ministry. So on  Sunday, they could come and feel comfortable the kids could. So the parents began to come  to our church as a result, but it came out of this kind of strategic planning of what could we be doing? And then to think outside the box, you know, not just what could we or should we be  doing? But let's think outside the box. Let's think of something. That's how Special Treasures  came for us. But that wasn't on our radar. And yet, as we looked at things we looked  internally, we looked externally, we looked at the passions of a couple of staff members who  had children with special needs, and began to think out of the box about what could this  ministry look like. And as they think about today, they've got all kinds of new things that  they're thinking about because they continue to think outside the box. And in those terms. So  that's exercise one, exercise two is to look quantitatively and qualitatively at who you are.  And sometimes you look at things like this, name five qualitative, and five quantitative  statements about where you are now, and where you want to be in five years. Now, that  might be a little difficult. Here's some directions I gave to our church. A qualitative statement, by definition is one that defines a quality, something of who we are of the nature of what  we're doing. And a quantitative statement describes the quantity a number I know that's too  simple. I suspect some examples will work best for instance, worship. Five years ago,  qualitative. We were engaging people in worship they they connected to what we were doing  in worship, we were appealing to multiple senses. We would often have times after a message where people would come and apply that by, you know, burning incense, although that got to  be a difficult for some people or they write something out or they would smell something or  they nail something to the cross or we would burn sins, that sort of thing. We'd have them  available that way quality music five years ago, qualitative. And then five years ago,  quantitative we were averaging about 400 in worship, at a budget of about $30,000, we had  about 60 volunteers, so five years ago, and that was, this was done back in about 2011. And  then we look five years ahead, what is it going to look like? Well, we still want to be doing 

those top things in engagement, but we want to be doing more in video. So how are we going  to get there, we want to use capitalize on that means of communication. Five years  quantitative, we want to be 600-800 in worship, and then later it went from 800 to 1200, that  we want to be in worship. And the budget went from $30,000 to $65,000. In that five year  period, 60 volunteers went to 120. You get the idea? You know, where are we now? Where are  we going to be quantitatively and qualitatively in five years. Children's Ministry, you know,  five years ago, when a focus was on parental involvement organized around small groups,  kids to engage in big worship. In other words, they came to the Worship Center. And they  were dismissed partway through quantitative 3 part time staff, a budget of $50,000. 75  volunteers, and 39 staff hours and five years ahead. We looked at qualitative saying, You  know what, we're going to put worship into the children's ministry so that there's not that  time of coming here and going there. And we continued to be arranged, arranged around  small groups. But we're going to make it far more professional, we hired professional help  quantitative, full time person, three, or four part time people a budget of almost $100,000,  $150,000, etc. quantitative and qualitative. That's the second one. And then the third one is  rather a simple one. Writing Our history in advance, what are we going to look like? You know, by God's grace, we are going to be a church that looks like this in the future. Now, what we do is kind of a combination of these exercises is to get our elders and staff together on a  Saturday and spend the day just looking at each one talking about where are we going,  everybody having input, throwing it in there, and then I as a primary leader, would take that  and write that in a plan. With all of the statements, the goal statements about, you know,  here's what we are going to do, here are the goals, here are the ways that we're going to do  it, and then the departments have to come up with the SMART goals, etc. So here's another  way of finding out what God is calling you to do. It, adjusts your vision revises your vision a  little bit, but doesn't change it. That's the important thing. You're living out the vision. But now you're checking in and create a new strategic plan. Do these things and you'll become more  effective, more effective and living out of place that God has put you being an impact in the  place God has put you when your ministry or you as an individual