This step helps to ensure that what staff are doing day-to-day, lines up with the vision and goals of the organization, and keeps employees focused on church priorities. What would need to happen for this goal to be realized? And that means periodically coming back to these tools and ensuring that your day-to-day decisions are in line with the conclusions that come from these meetings. You can work through your analysis this way: It’s a lot easier to imagine where you’d like to be in the future than it is to know how to draw a map to get there. For a deeper dive into church strategic planning, check out the free ebook, Vision, Mission, and Purpose. Now you take these Church (organizational) annual goals and break them down at the department level. To help you succeed, use this proven strategic plan template, and the information below details the 13 … This is done by thinking through the high-level action steps needed to complete the tasks involved. There are so many spinning plates and pressing items to take care of that strategic planning can almost feel like an imposition. Then move on to your weaknesses. Simple Methods: 1. you’re building—and that’s the greatest challenge churches experience when trying to create strategy. A gap analysis will help you determine what steps need to be taken to get from your current state to a desired future state. They’re seldom the most important things you could be doing, and the more energy you spend running from fire to fire, the more urgencies you seem to create. As you will notice the objective (goal) for Susan is taken from the action steps in the departmental goal. It answers questions like: Without a strategy, it’s possible to remain busy all the time and even accomplish some measurements of success. Join over 25,000+ subscribers and receive weekly tips to help you manage your church! Some churches don’t have employees but may use volunteers to help accomplish goals. For instance, you might want to have a really good worship team in the future, but right now you don’t have many musicians. But you can never really be sure if you’re moving toward a specific objective. Concrete examples of successful Christian church strategic plans are provided from the Metropolis of San Francisco and Metropolis of Atlanta, which have both undertaken this transformational process. By Susan completing her goal, it allows Pastor Joe Smith to accomplish his goals, which supports the overall church goals. What do we want to convey about our church? Strategic plans are extensions of the mission statement, as it is the mission statement that guides the goals and serves as a means of measuring an organization's success. This strategic plan helps to guide the church’s decision-making for the next five years (2018-2022) in achieving its vision and mission for the student population of our church, including where to focus, how to approach our ministry, and how to best allocate people, time, and resources. Performing a SWOT analysis is a lot easier than it sounds. Departmental goals should be delegated to employees within the department to share the responsibility for getting things done. The more regularly your leadership meets, the more these tools become part of your congregation’s lifeblood. It involves a pretty significant investment of time and effort, but without anything immediately concrete to show for it. This involves high-level goals that the church as a whole is trying to accomplish. These determine your culture: How will you live out your mission and fulfill your vision? The structured process should include a cycle that begins with writing goals, communicating expectations, monitoring performance toward goals, assessing performance and lastly ends with the performance appraisal. And, as each department identifies their goals and objectives, it provides the information needed to write individual (or volunteer) job descriptions and goals, which support departmental goals, which support organizational goals and ultimately the strategic plan. By being intentional and strategic, you can begin making plans that move the church closer to its aspirations—and experience a level of success that isn’t accidental. Remember, you want to be as specific and honest as possible. In the absence of a plan, work still gets done on a day-to-day basis but often lacks a sense of purpose and priority. iBossWell, Inc.’s McNerney reiterates that there are not hard and fast definitions for the terms goals and objectives , as well as many other strategic … Without clarity of vision, any organization is susceptible to steering off course. The first step is to identify the outcome – what it is you want to accomplish in three years. Once you’ve identified what it is you want to accomplish (this should line up with the mission/vision) the next step is to start mapping out what it will take to get there. It’s going to answer these kinds of questions: Once you’re finished, you should be able to create a simple, bulleted list of values that guide your church’s behavior, not only as a corporate entity but individually as well. You’ve identified where you’re going in the future. This provides a direct link between staff members’ job duties, their department goals and ultimately the global goals which support the strategic plan. You have to chase it down, and that means coming back to the map over and over again to reassess things, make sure you’re on the right course, and cross out any paths that have proven to be fruitless. A plan asks “What are the important steps?” Helping Churches Manage Their People, Time And Money. Every church makes plans. (Remember, you want to be as specific as possible: Is there a particular cross-section of your community that you are poised to serve?). After all, they have services, ministries, classes, and programs to organize. Having made that time during this process will … Job descriptions should be written to reflect individual goals which support the departmental goals as well as reporting relationship (this is to identify who the boss is). How to Create a Church Strategic Plan. They don’t have the luxury to tear down everything they’ve built or stop construction entirely in order to rebuild their foundation. What impression do we want our community to have about our church? Many churches have done some or all of these things, but they’re nowhere closer to making their mission and vision a reality. What future problems could prevent us from fulfilling our vision? This is the updated THIRD EDITION of this book and has been expanded with chapter questions to reinforce learning. By utilizing a more logical, This requires assigning the goal to a specific department. But until you clearly identify the gaps that exist between where you are currently and your objectives, you can’t build a bridge to reach your goals. Increase the number of church volunteers by 20% (50 new volunteers based on 250 current volunteers). Sample Strategic Plans Strategy is more than simply achieving business goals. But the truth is that when you use these documents correctly, they’re incredibly sensible and functional. And without a strategy, you can never really know if you’re making the. 12 Questions to Ask at the Next Church Board Meeting. This kind of plan can be both short term (3-6 months) or long term (1-3 years). A strategic plan guides us in the church’s journey and governs the decisions of every minister and committee. Take some time to brainstorm or visualize what that future state looks like. This not only lets you easily prepare an effective document, but it also simplifies the process a great deal. 5 NELLCO STRATEGIC PLAN, 2010-2014 5 and employs 1.75 FTE, NELLCO rarely has the luxury of time for reflection. It is always available via the Management System, functioning as the primary tool for communication and staff accountability. Are there community attitudes, prejudices, or behaviors that negatively affect our impact? Over time, all those short-term solutions start creating long-term problems. The more people who help, and have accountability for achieving goals, the more achievable the implementation becomes. As the organization works toward accomplishing the strategic plan there needs to be a structured process to take the organization from where it is to where it wants to be. Strategic planning is very similar. The Assembly Council encourages congregations, courts and committees of the church to use the strategic plan for both current work and ministries and the development of new initiatives.. Disciples of Christ; Empowered by the Spirit; Glorifying God and Every week we post articles that provide helpful tips for managing the day-to-day operations of a church! This is done by identifying the steps the employee needs to take in order to accomplish the goals. The bottom line is this; the Strategic Plan is “the plan,” demanding the attention, focus, and priority of all church staff and Eldership. © 2020 Pushpay Holdings Ltd., and affiliates. How you would like your church organized. For example, to plant a church, you need to ask the question, what are the steps that need to be taken? Here’s an example of some core values: These statements aren’t an end in themselves, they are a means to an end. Don't worry you can unsubscribe anytime!. Churches that invest the time clarifying their mission and vision, and develop a strategic plan that disseminates goals throughout the ministry, not only experience success at implementing the plan, but also engages employees and volunteers to support the mission of the organization. Once the organization has some direction for what it wants to accomplish during the next twelve months, the priorities can be shared at the department level. This detailed planning can be put in the format of an action plan. It should also be used as a time to course-correct if an employee has gotten off track. What plans need to be implemented in order to fulfill our aspirations? It’s about understanding and seeing the difference between long-term and short-term goals. Because of this, a lot of pastors groan when you bring them up—but they’re essential. No charge. The Pandemic Continues – 5 Tips To Get Your Members Back In Church, 10 Signs Your Employment Culture Is Dysfunctional. You need to regularly come back to them. Vision. EXAMPLE AIM/OBJECTIVE Every person is valuable to God and His Kingdom. Even if a church will not use a strategic plan, it is still possible for them to achieve their goals. Fulfilling a church’s mission requires taking the time to develop a strategy, planning the steps to get it done and management of the process. The steps for strategic planning aren’t too tricky, but they do take time. What about ten years?”. Write a mission statement. Reinforcing the positive and celebrating the successes can influence future positive behaviors. Social Justice: Empowered by the grace of God and following the example of Jesus Christ, we speak our truths and beliefs as we challenge and change social and cultural structures that perpetuate unfair and unjust impact. A strategic plan is a roadmap to grow your business. Here are some brief steps for creating a church mission statement: Your mission describes the ultimate reason for your church’s existence. The next thing is to look at where you are. What Story Does Your Church Website Tell? But you can never really be sure if you’re moving toward a specific objective. As you begin to discover where your biggest gaps are, this will help you come up with creative ways to take things to the next level. I would suggest meeting at least once a quarter to look at your progress, reevaluate your goals, and do some more planning. The purpose of these three statements breaks down this way: There are a lot of online tools for creating these documents, but here are some helpful steps: A mission statement will lay out your church’s distinct purpose. On the one hand I … Starting with Our town and one global community in the fall of 2004/winter of 2005. What does missional success look like for us? The process of developing a plan helps the manager (and the team) step back and examine where they are, where they want to go, and how they are most likely to get there. There was a time when strategic plans went as far out as five or ten years, but because of rapidly changing conditions, shorter-term plans seem to be more common. Although objectives, strategies, and tactics are core elements in any example of a strategic plan, they are not the only elements. Who has God called us to be in our community? Next, create a timeline for completion of objectives and determine how many weeks, months or years it will realistically take to complete the objectives. Start by listing some of your church’s strengths. Without a strategy, it’s possible to remain busy all the time and even accomplish some measurements of success. When goals and objectives are written to have a straight line influence on the strategic plan it helps to achieve the long-term goals of the organization. If you have an outreach event coming up, you’re going to need a plan to ensure that all of the pieces come together to make it a success. A step-by-step church strategic planning template. Have your team answer the following questions: Once you have a list of your strengths, have someone copy them down into a document so that you have them later. This is arguably the most important step because it sets the direction for the church. Over time, all those short-term solutions start creating long-term problems. A plan asks “What are the important steps?”, A strategy asks, “What are the important plans?”. Creating a comprehensive game plan requires that churches become incredibly proactive. Strategic planning can mean many things to many people. When creating a strategic plan document for your church, you need to know it is what will determine the success or failure of your institution. Vision, Mission, and Purpose: How to Grow a Lasting Church Legacy. Once you’ve identified where you are and where you want to go, it’s time to make a plan to bridge that gap between the two. Only love. The only way that you can do this is by readdressing this information again and again. Partnering with proven church planters locally, nationally and globally; … There’s no way around it: Your church is going to be making plans. For example, if your goal is to achieve success as a strategic planner, your objective would be to write all sections of the strategic plan in one month. Identify strengths that can be leveraged to take advantage of opportunities. The purpose of your mission statement is to summarize your organization's underlying purpose, or vision. The first step is to write a church vision, mission, and values statement. But these aren’t set-it-and-forget-it tasks. Instead of needing to build our own momentum, where is God moving in our church or community where we could simply join Him? A strategy is a way to get a much larger picture. The performance appraisal process should be a time to reflect on the last year and celebrate successes. Once you’ve identified your mission and vision, you can look at your values. It answers the question: “If we were to remain faithful to our mission, what would our church look like in five years? These determine your culture: will you live out your mission and fulfill your vision? This means coming back periodically to reassess how your plan is progressing. How about the way we deal with those outside of the church? If you have an existing mission statement, ask if it still communicates your goals and distinct characteristics. Committed to a deeper understanding of God's word, we aspire to grow personally and communally, to As a group project, a SWOT analysis usually makes for an interesting, informative, and fun discussion. If you’ve already done your vision statement, a lot of the preliminary work is finished. What originally drew each of us to this church? What legacy do we want to leave for the future leaders of this church? Most managers can benefit from having a strategic plan. Now we will take the above departmental goal and break it down into steps for an employee or volunteer to accomplish. Use church strategic plan templates that can give you an idea on how you can properly and strategically plan the call-to-action, objectives, and processes of your church. Strategic Planning usually has two purposes: Q The activity of seeking God’s Will for a ministry or church Q The decision to act in faith on what has been discerned For this exercise we define strategic planning as a comprehensive review of all activities, programs, and ministries of the church. Pull together the key people needed to make this a success. A HEART FOR CHILDREN. This goal document is a valuable tool during the annual performance appraisal process because it helps to ensure that what the organization wanted to accomplish at the beginning of the year was completed. As a thank you, we will send you a FREE copy of our eBook – “Are We There Yet? It is leadership’s responsibility to make sure it gets done. As you create the action plan document, you will identify objectives or steps that individual church departments need to take to support this strategic objective. This is done by spreading the responsibility of the goals to the departmental and staff level. What are we doing that it would be ridiculous to stop doing? Does Your Church Have a Mission Strategy? Once you’ve identified your mission and vision, you can look at your values. include their plans as part of the process going forward. The fact that you had this discussion and drew a map isn’t going to get you any closer to finding that treasure. Every Christian church should have the same goal (to grow the Kingdom), but a mission statement should communicate how your church does this in a way that only you could. And, goals are only as effective as the people who are responsible for completing them. Ministry Plan Example | Jim Baker 10 CHURCH MULTIPLICATION Simple Message: Starting and growing churches is the biblical strategy for reaching all cultures for Christ. That’s usually because they don’t come back to this material after creating it. A gap analysis helps you plan to make your dream a reality by identifying the potential steps required to get you there. These high-level goals are typically what a Business Administrator is accountable for to the board or governing body. This can be done by developing annual organizational goals that are written to break the long-term goals into bite-sized pieces. It allows you to see where you are going and the steps to get there. For more action-oriented people, these statements can sound like abstract nonsense. This will be the beginning of the plan. They become the lens through which you look at every opportunity and decision in the organization. But it’s a challenge to create and work from a blueprint while you’re building—and that’s the greatest challenge churches experience when trying to create strategy. This step also provides the framework to accomplish them in steps and stages, rather than the overwhelming task of trying to do them all at once, and a tool to monitor its progress. Strategy Development 101: Strategic Plan Example. But until you clearly identify the gaps that exist between where you are currently and your objectives, you can’t build a bridge to reach your goals. This plan provides general information about the services we provide and the strategies we will As is the case in most organizations, it’s hard for churches to justify pouring a lot of effort into something without an immediate payoff. The plan begins in the Word of God. As you will note, these goals line up with the individual’s departmental goals. Obviously, anyone would choose the former over the latter. One problem that churches tend to experience when drafting this document is that they make this so broad that it’s ultimately unhelpful. No spam. – ie: identify church plant leader, identify new church location, decide on church model, a transition plan for the leader, timeline to new church opening, etc. • Define strategic issues – clarify key factors in the development of a strategic plan. As you can see, the responsibility of organizing adult discipleship classes is on the administrative assistant’s job duties description. But just because you have a lot of activities in place doesn’t mean you’re accomplishing any real objectives or pursuing your highest ideals. Through these discussions, you have been able to sketch out a rough map to where you think the treasure is hidden. It simply looks at your church in four specific areas: You can accomplish this by gathering your team together, pulling out a large whiteboard, and working through each area. But after sharing them with the congregation, posting them on the website, and working them into the bulletin, they never seemed very helpful. . We are to be the body of Christ and we need to improve spirituality, serve our neighbors and It creates clarity, alignment and organization-wide engagement. A structured performance management process incorporates annual goals into the employee performance appraisal and holds employees accountable for completing those goals that support church strategy. But that’s the age-old problem with urgent things. Eventually, a church finds itself on a treadmill of programs and crises that can only move them closer to their ultimate goals by accident. In this strategic plan example, we review the structure of a strategic plan for a hotel chain and include elements of the plan itself.New England Hospitality Company, a fictitious company that owns and operates 37 hotels, is embarking on its first strategic plan and will be used for this strategic plan example. Discuss ways that strengths can overcome potential threats. For each goal, you need to break down the steps required to get there. This book is perfect for Ministry Students, Church Board Members, Executive Pastors, Business Administrators, or Church Leaders who need help managing the day-to-day operations of a church. You’ve identified where you’re going in the future. This helps to ensure that the job description is accurate. Managing the process requires identifying who needs to do what, by when and holding them accountable for what they are responsible for doing. What three things could we eliminate today that would create the most positive change? Strategic Plan; Mailing List; The Christian Recorder; Our Church. There’s an enormous difference between planning and church strategic planning. For example, strategic objectives or outcomes may be things like building a bible school, planting churches, sending missionaries to certain parts of the world or developing worship leaders – whatever supports the church vision. After all, they have services, ministries, classes, and programs to organize. So you’ve sat down with your leadership team to look at all the information available and talked through the most likely places it could be buried. What is one reason we would like people in our community to say that they’re grateful for our existence—even if they don’t follow Jesus? Click here to download this resource today! All of this effort is only the precursor to the actual work. Consider what weaknesses are hindering your ability to capitalize on opportunities. There’s an enormous difference between planning and church strategic planning. There is no one way to create a strategic plan. Decrease operating expenses by 5%. The chart above suggests a flow of the ideas and process for a focused strategic plan. This is identifying the “Where do we want to go?” section of the analysis. Some are from our clients. Doing church as a team is God’s design for effective ministry. If we were to stick to our mission, what would our community come to believe about us? 2. What beliefs define the way we do ministry? Calvary Baptist Church Strategic Planning Committee Mission Plan November 20101. Download our free ebook, Vision, Mission, and Purpose: How to Grow a Lasting Church Legacy today. As I carefully perused each page I discovered in myself two competing sentiments. 1. It’s the steps that need to be pulled off in order to accomplish a goal. All rights reserved, But there’s an almost infinite number of opportunities available. So they hack solutions together from whatever’s laying around. Bishops of The Church; General Officers; Connectional Officers; Judicial Council. For example, a Business Administrator may have responsibility to achieve goals at the organizational level but may use the help of a ministry head or volunteer to accomplish those goals. This is where the chain-of-command or organizational structure delegates responsibilities for completing goals. Now it’s time to break that broad idealized plan into more actionable pieces. This kind of engagement is how God uses the body to build the church! Before you download one of the sample church strategy plan templates that we have got for free, you should know what a plan such as that is usually made up of. An example … The document should also list job duties that this person is responsible for. A good plan is essential to pulling off any elaborate endeavor. Goals are important because they provide direction, clarify job roles, give something to strive for, show how far you’ve come and help make the vision attainable. Encourage people to answer these questions as honestly as possible: After you’ve written all of the weaknesses onto your document, it’s time to look at the fruit that’s just waiting to be picked. If you’ve already done your vision statement, a lot of the preliminary work is finished. While having the conversation around strategic planning, be sure to keep your church’s vision, mission, and purpose in mind. Your church planting experience will be greatly enhanced through a prayerful development of a strategic church planting plan. What are the boundaries that exist between your current state and this future goal? A church employee’s or volunteer job description should include their goal responsibilities and be updated annually. Your church’s strategic plan for children’s ministry should reflect these. Formal planning has helped mobilize and motivate organizations in the achievement of goals and objectives. A gap analysis will help you determine what steps need to be taken to get from your current state to a desired future state. In 2016 the General Assembly approved this strategic plan for use in the church. Below is an example of how you can develop a strategic plan from your Kids Friendly self-review. This supports the strategic objective of growing the volunteer base by 20%, from 250 – 350 volunteers. Developing a Missions Strategy that Fits Your Church Missions Strategy Sample – Church 5 David Mays www.davidmays.org 09-12 v.1.2 Missions Strategy Sample – Church #5 ... Form temporary teams to draft a strategic plan for each community CHURCH can impact. If not, why? An action plan is merely a written document outlining the objectives (goals), action steps, responsible person(s), possible team members, the due date for each action step and implementation status. Available in various formats, the template can be downloaded easily anytime and from anywhere.
2020 example of church strategic plan