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