Strategy Part 4: Implementing Your Plan – Chris Hollies

Reflections after watching Greg Hawkins on The Power of a Strategic Plan…

Strategic planning… keep it ‘simple’.

Strategic planning within a church context need not be complicated. As a consultant I have seen a variety of approaches to the planning process, some very useful and others perhaps not so. But no matter what the process, the plans that have been adhered to, seemed to have something in common. They were all ‘simplistic’.

But please don’t misunderstand the term simplistic. I don’t mean that their vision and objectives were simple and easily achievable, but rather that the ‘route’ to achieve their vision was uncomplicated. In order to illustrate, I shall highlight a popular approach today that has perhaps complicated matters.

One of the biggest errors I have seen in the past few years within strategic planning has been from those that have ‘part adopted’ a concept from Saddleback Church in California, USA. This arose from Rick Warren’s excellent book, Purpose Driven Church, in which he describes the model that his church has used, by sub-dividing ministries into 5 big categories. Indeed, this has been a very helpful concept and many churches have either applied the same 5 categories in their planning, or have adapted the idea to better suit their context. However what has happened in some of the churches I have seen use this approach is that, in creating sub-categories, they have inadvertently invoked the ‘silo effect’ (Please see Patrick Lencioni’s excellent book, ‘Silos, Politics and Turf Wars’ for a really helpful insight into this problem).

A silo within a church can be anything from a ministry, an organisation, a ‘ministry category’, even down to individuals, who establish their own agendas. This is often not intentional, but the result very often is that each ministry area produces their own plans without any cross referencing with the other ministry areas and pursue their own agendas… hence the ‘silo effect’. Very often the demand for resources coming from a such a multi-directional approach can be overwhelming in terms of volunteers and finances. Some ministry areas resort to raising funding for their own projects and at times seem to operate virtually independently of the church to which they belong. I am very sure that this is not how it should be and perhaps nor was what Rick Warren had in mind in suggesting his sub-division of ministry concept.

So how can a church either avoid establishing silos in the first place, or go about ‘silo busting’ where it can identify that it may have unwittingly created such? The key is in the simplicity of establishing one ‘overarching’ theme for the whole church based upon God’s vision for the community (see my previous blog regarding vision for a fuller explanation). The theme creates a single pursuit for every ministry area and provides a clear focus for a church over a period of time, from 6 months to a year, or more, where the leadership determine that God would have the church continue on a theme until He says otherwise. The theme is broken up into objectives for each ministry area with various action steps and activities agreed upon for each, but under this approach the sense of unity gives a clarity to the church’s strategy which is hard to identify when operating in silos. There is one other important aspect to this and that is to stress that the theme is focussed on those beyond the walls of the church and is expressed in terms of the ‘impact’ or effect the church is to have on its neighbourhood by following through on the theme (this raises another larger topic, part of which I have touched upon under a blog concerning governance).

Finally, every 6 months or so, it is important to monitor the anticipated outcome of all of the church’s activities, to ensure that they are ‘on theme’ and producing results which have been considered in advance. If there are gaps appearing then adjustments should be made.

The power of a singular clear theme as opposed to a number of sub-agendas in strategic planning, is likened to the difference between pointing a laser and a torch at a wall…. one cuts through, the other merely reflects the light back. In wishing to see breakthroughs in our communities and neighbourhoods and God’s Kingdom advance, please do consider again the need for simplicity in your strategic planning.