Your church needs a strategic vision
After serving as a full-time pastor for over 20 years, I changed vocations in 2011 and started teaching the principles of servant leadership to the leaders of city governments.
One of the things that I enjoy the most about it is leading city councils to develop a long-range vision for their city. The process I use to help them do that is actually a process I originally developed to help churches create long-range strategic plans.
Unfortunately, while I’ve facilitated many strategic vision processes for cities, I have not found churches to be very interested in strategic planning. And, although I understand the reasons, I can’t help but think of the truth of the old adage, “Failing to plan is planning to fail.”
There are plenty of Biblical examples that illustrate the place and power of strategic planning. The book of Nehemiah is a case study in strategic planning. The conquest of Canaan, the construction of the tabernacle, and the apostle Paul’s intentional evangelistic focus on the “God-fearing” Greeks are all examples of God’s people making use of a carefully created strategic plan.
And yet, when you look at the typical church in America today, you’re more likely to find a 1995 Vacation Bible School T-shirt than a cohesive, current strategic vision. For an organization that has been charged with making Christ-followers of the entire globe, most churches sure seem content with doing business as usual.
Strategic vision or strategic plan?
Is there a difference between a strategic vision and a strategic plan? Absolutely!
A strategic vision is all about where you want to go; what you want to become; what you want to accomplish. A strategic plan is how you get there.
The fact that we so often use these terms interchangeably simply illustrates how foreign this whole topic is to the church. To borrow from Nehemiah, for example, his vision was a rebuilt wall around Jerusalem. The strategic plan was how he was going to make it happen, including things such as how he would get materials, how he would gain credibility and how he would maintain morale.
If you have a plan without a vision, you are just doing busy work. If you have a vision without a plan, you just have a fantasy.
There are three things that need to be remembered about a vision.
1. Visions must be futuristic.
I heard a church leader say once that he planned for 25-years out or 90-days out, and that was all. He spent no time on any other planning. He may have been a little bit extreme, but I always believed he was on to something.
Most of us are playing the middle game and missing out on the power of the long-term vision, as well as the power of a 90-day plan!
2. Visions must be shared visions.
A colleague of mine often repeats a quote that one of his mentors taught him, “No man is more apathetic than the one in pursuit of another man’s vision.” That’s so true!
One of the problems is that while the pastor or leadership team may have a vision, it is not a vision that is widely shared by the congregation. And it doesn’t matter what form of church governance you use. If the people don’t share the vision, there’s going to be conflict and apathy.
Many pastors believe that merely communicating the vision will cause it to become a shared vision. However, it’s worth noting that “hearing” and “owning” are two very different things.
3. Visions must be priorities.
Visions help you make good long-term decisions. A church can adopt a vision, but if it is not guiding decisions in terms of personnel, programs, funding and scheduling, then it’s a toothless tiger. Let me share a story from one of my pastoral experiences that illustrates this.
I served at a church off the campus of Colorado State University in the 90’s. At one time, the church had a strong and vibrant college ministry, but through the years the church had declined and the students had departed. When I arrived, we faced the need to rebuild the church in every way, including the attendance, the vision, the volunteer base, the budget. You name it—it needed attention.
However, the people were eager to work, and many of them could still remember the good ol’ days when college students were a large part of the congregation.
Shortly after the new school year started, one of my friends, an older man in the church said to me with deep emotion, “Mike, we have to do something to reach these college students!”
I said to him, “This church made decisions five years ago, that determined that we would have virtually no chance to reach these college students.”
It was a cold, hard, brutal facts kind of statement, and though I said it with tenderness, I attempted to say it as forcefully as I could.
I then went on to tell him, “However, all over this state, there are seventh-grade boys and girls who five years from now are going to be attending CSU. The decisions we make today will determine whether or not we’ll have a chance to reach them for Christ when they get here.”
I am thrilled to say that this church agreed with that idea. We started to work together, to make good decisions, and to follow our plan.
By the time we reached the five-year mark, we were reaching more and more college students. That wasn’t the only pillar of our vision, but it was an important aspect. It was that experience, in part, that led me to focus my doctoral project on strategic planning.
It’s been almost 20 years since I completed that degree, and I continue to learn more and more about the power of organizations having a strategic vision. I believe in it more strongly today than I did then, and every time I help a city create or renew their strategic vision, I pray that the Lord would help the churches of that city do the same thing.
Over the next few months I’ll be sharing more about the importance of having a strategic vision, and more importantly, I’ll be sharing what I’ve learned about the process to follow in order to develop a shared vision.
Photo source: istock
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