Can Churches Benefit from Strategic Planning?

This post is directed to anyone who is in a position to influence the church and who is concerned about the success of the church. Many churches are in trouble because they lack a sense of direction that can mobilize their resources toward the future. A strategic plan can help us develop that sense of direction.

Without a strategic plan, we tend to engage solely in the perpetuation of our current state. We get into a rut and, as the saying goes, a rut is merely a grave with the ends knocked out. The most exciting thing for me about strategic planning is that it forces us to look outside ourselves and to focus on the audience that we are trying to reach.

Our past experiences determine our attitude about things and this is no less true for strategic planning. While involved in a consulting relationship with a church, I suggested that they need to do strategic planning. The immediate response of one of that church's elders was: "We tried that at work and it failed." If we have experienced a strategic planning effort that failed, we may conclude that the technique itself is flawed. However, if we discard something merely because it failed the first time we tried it, we lose the benefit of learning from that failed attempt. A better approach would be to learn from that experience, make corrections to the process, and try again. Consider how a child learns to walk. The first attempts usually end in failure, but children learn to make adjustments and improve. They get stronger and eventually walk. The same is true for strategic planning.

I believe that strategic planning is essential for the success of a local congregation. Apart from their spiritual and organic natures, Christian congregations are also organizations by definition because they represent a group of people trying to achieve a common goal. To accomplish that goal, they need to do strategic planning.

It takes work and commitment to engage in strategic planning. During the process, you will be tempted to glaze over the more thorny areas where individuals in the group differ regarding ultimate desired outcomes and values. But this is the very place where you need to work out a shared understanding.

Definition

First, let's define our terms. The following definitions emphasize different aspects of strategic planning:

It is "a systematic process through which an organization agrees on--and builds commitment among key stakeholders to--priorities which are essential to its mission and responsive to the operating environment" (Allison & Kaye, 1997, p. 1).

It is the process of delineating "the products or services to be provided, the markets to be served, and the value to be offered to the customer. It also specifies sources of competitive advantage and strives to provide superior value" (Galbraith, 2002, p. 10).

It involves the development of "a plan for interacting with the competitive environment to achieve organizational goals. . . . Goals define where the organization wants to go and strategies define how it will get there" (Daft, 2004, p. 59).

It is the process of making "explicit choices about markets, offerings, technology, and distinctive competence" (Nadler & Tushman, 1997, p. 30).

These definitions emphasize four key components of strategic planning:

Strategic planning is a dynamic process.

It involves people dialoguing with openness and sincerity about deeply rooted ideas that have been formed over many years of individual experience. The process of arriving at a unified understanding requires that all of these differences come to the surface and be discussed openly. That process itself provides the greatest benefit to the church, regardless of how the final strategic plan looks.

A process is like a flowing stream of water as opposed to a stagnate pool that has no outlet. Like a river, a process can take something from one point and deliver it at another point. The process of strategic planning involves a series of activities intended to move us toward a desired output. That output is an overall picture of where we are going and how we plan to get there.

Strategic Planning is both visionary and realistic.

It is visionary because it begins with a dream about who we want to be and how we want to change the world. It is also realistic in that it looks intently at the environment in which we function and how that environment constrains our options. Within the grand scheme of the church's universal purpose, it helps us define that particular piece of the scheme for which we feel called to accomplish.

Strategic Planning helps us develop an outward-focused perspective.

Jesus commanded us to make disciples of all the nations (Matthew 28:19). Through the process of strategic planning, we identify and define the particular segment of the "nations" that we feel called to disciple. It also helps us to consider carefully the realities outside the church that affect our success. When churches take their eyes off these external realities, they become ingrained and unproductive. The Apostle Paul described the Galatian church as biting and devouring one another and that they were in danger of being "consumed by one another" (Galatians 5:15). Perhaps this is the result of failing to focus on the church's outward mission and focusing entirely on perfecting one another internally.

Strategic planning forces us to ask ourselves: What adjustments can we make to create a better fit for the environment in which we function? It helps us to make choices about the kinds of services we will offer to the community, the audiences we feel called to target, the skills we plan to develop in order to accomplish our goals, and the technologies that we plan to employ. In other words, strategic planning is the process of making choices among many options.

If we don't plan to go somewhere else, then we are condemned to stay where we are. Of course, it's a lot easier to stay where we are. It takes less energy, less thought, and less commitment. This is why so many churches find themselves stuck in a perpetual retro mode. Their songs, their liturgy, and their outreach activities are the same as the ones used 30 or 40 years ago. They are literally saying to this generation: "The church is not for you." Strategic planning can help us break out of the retro mode and package God's eternal message of salvation in ways that fit today's environment.

Works Cited

Allison, Michael, and Jude Kaye. Strategic Planning for Nonprofit Organizations: A Practical Guide & Workbook. New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1997.

Galbraith, Jay R. Designing Organizations: An Executive Guide to Strategy, Structure and Process. Revised ed. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2002.

Nadler, David A., and Michael L. Tushman. Competing By Design: The Power of Organizational Architecture. New York: Oxford University Press, 1997.

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