BIRMINGHAM, Ala. (ABP) — Warning that “inertia is against planning,” Mark Wingfield said churches must make an intentional effort to achieve effective long-range planning.
Wingfield, associate pastor of Wilshire Baptist Church in Dallas, was among more than 140 workshop leaders during the recent Cooperative Baptist Fellowship general assembly in Birmingham, Ala. He and Jerry Bryant, retired executive vice president of Baylor Health Care Systems in Dallas, addressed the topic “Grassroots Congregational Planning.”
“If you don't intentionally set out to plan,” Wingfield said, “you won't plan because you won't find the time.”
Among findings from an in-depth planning effort at Wilshire was that “we were not communicating with each other about what we were doing” as a congregation, he noted. As a result, “we have designed and implemented a significantly updated internal communications process.”
Wingfield said church leaders also have “introduced some new concepts into the congregation” such as an intentional focus on spiritual formation and mobilizing members for ministry.
Bryant, who has served as a consultant throughout the church's planning process, said grassroots congregational planning includes a succinct mission statement that leads to key priorities, strategies and tactics.
“The mission defines what the calling or the purpose of the organization is,” Bryant explained. “It needs to be simple enough that people can remember it. If the folks understand what we are here to do, there are some amazing things that can be accomplished.
“The mission statement should not define how it is going to be achieved,” he noted. “If you do that, you're actually putting yourself in a box.” How a church accomplishes its mission “will change as the world changes and as our congregation and resources change.”
Once a church has produced a clear, concise mission statement, Bryant said, the next step is to establish a few key priorities that call for specific action.
The priorities should lead to strategies that “define the direction or course of action into the future,” he said. “A strategy is nothing in the world except a definition of work that needs to be accomplished in order for something to be done.”
Bryant described the next step — tactics — as “the to-do list” in accomplishing the church's priorities.
“Why would we want to do planning?” he asked. “If we're not watching changes and addressing those changes with a good plan, we may find ourselves unable to keep up.
“This process starts with a rich review of data,” he added. “If we don't look at the data, we have absolutely no idea where we are and it's hard to tell where we want to go.” He said such data should include an accurate evaluation of key church statistics such as baptisms and attendance trends as well as community demographics.
“The planning part is the easy part,” Bryant told workshop participants. “The tough part is the implementation process. Enlisting the right person to take responsibility for a strategy has everything to do with whether that strategy goes anywhere.”
Bryant encouraged church leaders to review and revise ministry strategies every three months.
“I don't believe a plan ought to go in a book and stay on a shelf,” he said. “Review: What did we achieve in the last quarter? What are we going to try to achieve in the next three months? What's working and what's not?”
Both the planning and implementation process should involve evaluating “what are some of the things we do really well and some of the things we don't do really well?” Bryant said.
He encouraged church leaders to “make a note of strengths, weaknesses, opportunities or threats” the congregation faces and use that information to help determine ongoing strategies.
Describing effective strategy planning as “a living tool,” Bryant said such efforts can help “create a shared consensus of what we believe God wants the congregation to become during the approaching five years.”
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