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The Simplest Strategic Planning Process for Your Church

Some fancy terms that get thrown around in the world seem complicated — but really are more simple than you might think at first.  One is “strategic planning.”  It can sound scary.  It leads to lots of questions:

  • What if I don’t have any strategy?
  • What if our plan doesn’t work?
  • How do we know what is best to do?
  • What if we don’t have a mission?
  • How detailed are we supposed to go?

Entire books have been written on this subject.  And they’re great.  But I’m guessing most pastors on this list don’t feel that they have time to read an entire book on strategic planning… and don’t feel like you have the time to do a “deep dive” into a process even if you did.  One strategic planning resource says “… a good rule of thumb is to plan on spending 3-4 months developing a complete strategic plan.”

That might be nice in their world, but mine is too full of pre-marital counseling, training greeter volunteers, and preaching 3X per week.

But what if it doesn’t have to be scary for your first experience?  What if your first try could be rather simple, be accomplished in a few hours, and then you could learn and build on it the next time?

That’s what this post is about.

Strategic planning is basically 3 things:

  1. Recognizing and recommitting to your mission, vision and values.
  2. Creating a set of goals & actions you believe will help you fulfill the mission & vision.
  3. Creating measurements that will help you figure out whether you accomplished it.

So here’s the simplest process I’ve ever seen, just to get you started for 2016.

Step 1: Gather a few influencers, and lay out an agenda. (15 minutes)

Get the right people in the room.  You want

  • people with influence
  • people with ideas
  • people whose influence you want to grow.
  • people who are “yes, and…” people, not “yes, but…” people.

Step 2: Review your mission & vision. (15 minutes)

For the purpose of this post, I’ll assume you have a mission and vision.

Mission is why you exist.

Vision is what you will become, or the impact you will make.

Our mission: To help people Love God, Love Others, & Serve the World.

Our vision: By the year 2020, we will:

  • Grow to a total attendance of 1,000 at all sites.
  • See 500 people filled with the Spirit.
  • See 500 people in community groups.
  • Plant 5 churches in US cities.
  • Help plant 5 churches in other countries.
  • Help equip and support 10 international pastors.

Write your versions of mission and vision on a piece of posterboard, and post them visibly in the room where you’re meeting.  Ask them to rate their commitment to it, or if they think it should be changed.  Then pray over it and continue.

Step 3: Do a SWOT analysis. (1 hour)

SWOT stands for Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities & Threats.

Strengths & Weaknesses are internal (in your control)

  • – What do we do well?
  • – What do we not do well?

Opportunities & Threats are external (not in your control).

  • – What could really boost us if we took advantage of it? What’s going on in our location we should be involved in? What needs exist around us that we could meet?
  • – What could really hit us if we don’t watch out? What has the potential to limit our growth? What’s going on in our location that’s not good for us?

Don’t try to solve problems yet!  Just identify them and move on.  Just recognizing them will help you be clear as you go through the next few steps.

Step 4: Split up your mission.  (5 minutes)

In our example, it would be:

  • – Love God (worship & discipleship)
  • – Love Others (fellowship)
  • – Serve the World (ministry & outreach)

Step 5: Brainstorm lists of ideas for each area. (1 hour)

As fast as you can, list as many ideas as you can.  This is not the time to evaluate or judge, just write ideas.  Go until you have anywhere from 10-30 ideas for each area.

In the previous example, if it’s “Serve the World,” you might have 20 ideas:

  • * start a food pantry
  • * advertise on Facebook or with Google
  • * do street preaching
  • * prayer station ministry
  • * do an evangelism class
  • * teach people to invite others
  • * create better church invitation materials
  • * plan big outreach days like Friend Day
  • * invite a high-powered evangelist
  • * plan more outreach-oriented sermons
  • * go door-to-door calling
  • * do a prayer walk in the neighborhood
  • * Improve the church sign
  • * kindness outreach at the local skate park
  • * We Care Ministry

Step 6: Organize ideas into groups. (1 hour)

Some of the ideas you brainstormed will naturally group together.  List them together in boxes on your whiteboard.  Usually, you will see 3-4 groups begin to emerge.  For instance, in the above list you might group them into:

  • Marketing (church sign, materials, Facebook, door-to-door)
  • Training (evangelism class, inviting training)
  • Good Works (We Care, kindness outreach, food pantry)
  • Events (Friend Day, outreach sermons, invite evangelist)

You’ll want to phrase them as sentences, such as “Execute a church Marketing Plan” or “Provide quality training to our congregation.”  Any ideas that are by themselves and don’t fit into these groups, you can set aside for now.

Step 7: Trim your ideas into a list of GOALS. (1 hour)

Decide which ideas under each group are achievable & worth your time and money.

These ideas you commit to will become your GOALS.

Step 8: Under each GOAL, write out 5-10 ACTIONS you can take. (1 hour)

These ACTION STEPS should be phrased as completely as possible, in SMART Language.  That stands for:

  • * Specific
  • * Measureable
  • * Action-oriented
  • * Realistic
  • * Time-based (deadline)

“Improve church materials ASAP” will not cut it.  “Dan will submit design for a new church invitation materials by April 9th” is far better.

Step 9: Ask influencers to team up and adopt one of the GOALS to champion.

Teaming up builds in accountability & assures more gets done.  Adopting a goal builds in ownership and increases buy-in.

Step 10: Print copies for everyone, ask them to highlight ACTIONS they’re responsible for.

This is why step 8 is so important.  Action steps are necessary to make sure people know EXACTLY what needs to be done, and when it will be expected.

Step 11: Schedule your next follow-up meeting in 30 days to measure where you stand, and see what’s next.

For a bonus, text people at the 15 day mark and tell them you’re praying for them, and ask how it’s going.  If you use Mighty Text, you can schedule this text early, of course — from your computer.

There you go.  Now, share this article with 3-4 people in your church and tell them, “I’d like you to be in the room when this happens!”

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9 Action Steps for Burned Out Pastors

Surveys say that most pastors have felt like quitting in the past 12 months. If you feel like you’re about to crack wide open, drop in your tracks, or get a Pez dispenser full of Tums to keep your stomach calm…You may be feeling as though God is angry with you, and would push you to keep going, do more, try harder… and you’re dead wrong.

Pastor burnout - 9 action steps you can take to recover and heal

Give me a chance to prove it: Check out how God responded to an exhausted prophet.

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Always Learning: What I Learned About Church From Walmart

In John Maxwell’s book How Successful People Think, the story is told of Sam Walton, founder of Walmart, when the store chain was just taking off.  Sam took a couple of his colleagues, regional store managers to visit some of the competition in Huntsville, AL.  Don Soderquist (later, CEO of Walmart) related the story:

“We went into one [store], and I have to tell you that it was the worst store I’ve ever seen in my life. It was terrible. There were no customers. There was no help on the floor. The aisles were cluttered with merchandise, empty shelves, dirty, it was absolutely terrible. He [Walton] walked one way and I’d walk the other way and we’d kinda meet out on the sidewalk. He said “What’d you think, Don?”

I said, “Sam, that is the absolutely worst store I’ve ever seen in my life. I mean, did you see the aisles?”

He said, “Don, did you see the pantyhose rack?”

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Can We Stop Talking About Technology Like It’s An Enemy?

One of the questions I get asked frequently is about technology… about what tools I’m using, what new things I’m trying.  This week, I’m launching my first e-book: “The Top 9 Tech Tools and Apps I’m Using to Get More Done!”  In it, I share my favorite tools, and how I’m using each one.

Before you download and read it, a few words on the role of technology in your life:

Technology is not a savior or an enemy.  It’s a magnifier.

It’s kind of popular to talk about tech as a savior (“This app is the greatest thing ever…”) or enemy (“it will make you ADHD and you’ll forget how to talk.”)  But the truth is that it’s neither.  The iPhone, the laptop… they didn’t cause your issues.  They are only “magnifiers.”  They simply magnify your strengths or weaknesses.

If you were easily distracted, not disciplined, lustful & have little self-control:

  • …just wait until you meet Facebook & Youtube!  Your problem is about to be magnified.
  • …just wait until you meet the 12% of the internet that is porn.
  • …wait until you have a video game permanently implanted in your life.

On the other hand, if you are growing in focus, discipline, spiritual desire and maturity:

  • …just wait until you have an audio & text version of the Bible permanently implanted in your life!
  • …just wait until you have tools that let you capture great ideas.
  • …just wait until you have tools that allow you to keep commitments, track time, and manage details.

In other words:

…wait until you see what happens when you meet the tools & apps I talk about in this e-book!

  • Evernote
  • MightyText
  • Todoist
  • SmartReceipts
  • If This, Then That
  • Google Drive
  • Google Calendar (& Business Calendar)
  • Morning Routine Alarm Clock
  • StayFocusd Chrome Extension

And every one is free!  Or at least they all have a free level or option.

So cut out the dramatic language about technology, and just go get busy magnifying what you do best.  If you like the ebook, share this post with someone who might find that it can take their productivity up a notch!

Get the Free E-book!

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Four Starter Steps to Fight Porn In Your Home

Pornography is big business in America.  Approximately $12 billion annually is spent on pornography.  To put that in perspective, the 100 largest missions organizations in America received 3 billion in a recent year.  Porn is about equal to the energy drink market in the US.  Close your eyes and visualize all the energy drinks in all the gas stations, grocery stores & Walmarts in America… there you go.  (If you haven’t read my last post on porn, and how pervasive it is in our culture, there are more stats there.)

In the last few weeks, a study on pornography among young people by the Barna Group commissioned by Josh McDowell was completed.  The results were startling.  76% of young people who identified as Christians sought out porn regularly.   Perhaps even more shocking were their views on it.  To quote the news story: “…while 52 percent of young Christian adults ‘would say that not recycling is morally wrong, only 32 percent would say watching pornography is morally wrong.'”

In that kind of world, how do we protect our families, our hearts, our churches?

Here are four beginning suggestions:

1. Build technological walls between your family and sin.

No one in today’s world — NO. ONE. — should have an unsecured, unfiltered internet connection. There are multiple tools available to do this, at reasonable cost (or no cost!). Invest the time. Get them. Learn them. Use them. Here are my favorites:

  •  OpenDNS – this software lives on your wireless router (not the computer), so it filters every device connected to your network. Invaluable, and free. Slightly more complicated to install than other programs. Very dependable in blocking. Not as powerful in monitoring and reporting.
  • Covenant Eyes. Filtering program for computers and phones. No child should have a smartphone or tablet without it. Not free, but excellent.
  • K9 Web Protection – Good, and free.  Custom lists, forced SafeSearch, time restrictions, reports… I’m impressed they can provide this much horsepower for free.  Multiple platforms available.
  • X3Watch – Free phone reporting app, sends your browsing history to an accountability partner. Somewhat weak on what it catches, but free. Barebones option. Also has a paid version of filtering software for computers.
  • Purify – this web service (and Chrome extension) shows Youtube videos, and strips away all the sidebars, comments, suggested videos, etc. Excellent idea for those who need to use Youtube, but dislike the abundance of sensuality & vulgarity in the suggested video thumbnails.
  • Mobicip – A free version & paid version.  Mobicip has apps & filters for all platforms.  I’m currently test driving this one on my Android phone and my PC.

2. Pray like crazy.

While we may fight with digital means, the protection of our homes is fundamentally a spiritual battle. Fasting and prayer for your family simply can’t be replaced.

3. Communicate often.

Cultivate honesty & willingness to share about these things by starting early. Talk about it with your children.

Discuss it with your spouse.  Men, share this parable with your wives:
Imagine that the Scripture condemns eating chocolate. Not only does it condemn it, but it condemns looking at it, and wanting to eat it. Then imagine that everyone ate chocolate. There were books about it. 12% of all websites were about chocolate. TV shows featured it, celebrities discussed their chocolate lives on talk shows.  Popular songs discussed chocolate openly.  Magazines and billboards featured half-unwrapped chocolate bars. Now, how hard is it not to think about chocolate?

Ladies, “Is it really like that?” is a question you need to ask of your husbands. If he’s honest, he’ll say yes.  But the conversation you have after he does will be important.

And you’ll need plenty of this next principle:

4. Create an atmosphere of grace.

I’ll be honest. You can’t build walls high enough to completely solve the problem. You can’t have enough tech tools. You can’t check up enough to prevent the possibility.  Odds are extremely high that your husband, your child, will see something impure.  Perhaps even intentionally.  What then?

Be very careful how you respond.  You have two choices: Law and Grace.

Paul says the law is clear that “the person who DOES these things shall live by them.” (Romans 10:5, NKJV). But the opposite is also true. The person who doesn’t — will die by them. And if the atmosphere of your home is one of law; if you’ve created an atmosphere of law, fear, condemnation, ultimatums… then the threat of condemnation will add to the guilt of their conscience and keep them from coming to you.  They may try to repent & seek forgiveness from Christ, but they won’t seek you out.

Please take it from me as a man who has struggled deeply in this area, received grace from others, & come thru to victory: Grace is more powerful than sin. Law is not… but grace is.

Someday I’ll share my story.  For now — grace, my friends.  Grace.

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The Porn Pandemic: Is Purity Possible?

I admit it — I love the Internet.  I liked it from the first time I heard the beep beep boooop of our first dial-up modem, and saw how information came streaming into our home.  Anything I needed to know, type it in… and there it was.

Today, it’s better, smarter, and way, way faster.  My smartphone is always connected.  Google Now learns what I like and search for, and automatically shows me news stories connected to my interests.  Google Drive syncs all my files, so I can retrieve any picture or document from anywhere and send it instantly to anyone.  Amazon lets me order & ship things directly to my door.  My sermons on Youtube have been viewed 5,000 times as of this writing.  I can find the lyrics to almost any song in seconds.

A friend told me once (and I’ve repeated it many times) “Without the internet, I am like any other mortal.”

So you know I’m pro-internet.

But… I have to say this:  Be cautious, friends.  The internet is like nuclear power.  Harnessed, it’s great.  Without proper controls, it’s deadly.

No phenomenon shows this more, or is more pervasive in our culture than internet pornography.

Consider the following statistics:

  • Porn is a $60 billion industry per year worldwide – $12 billion in the USA. ($32.8 million per day!)
  • Pornography brings in more than pro baseball, basketball, football & hockey combined… more than the combined revenues of ABC, CBS & NBC.  Statistically, sports is not “America’s favorite pastime.”
  • Porn sites comprise 12% of ALL sites on the internet.
  • 25% of all search engine requests are porn-related.
  • 28000 people view porn per second.
  • 372 users every second type words to search for porn.
  • In the year 2014, one of the largest pornography video sites reported 78.9 billion video views — 11 for every person on the earth.
  • 90% of kids by age 18 have seen porn on the internet.
  • Average age of first exposure for a child is 11 yrs, usually inadvertently.
  • #1 consumer of porn: boys 12-17.

Now, after you pick your jaw up off the floor, let me hit you with one more: A university attempting to study the effects of pornography, attempted to locate a control group of men who had not been exposed to it, so they could compare them with men who had.  They cancelled the study; they were unable to find men who had not.

In that kind of world, is it even possible to be pure? 

I imagine there were those who felt the same way when Paul wrote to the Corinthians, “To the church of God which is at Corinth, to those who are sanctified in Christ Jesus, called to be saints…” (1 Cor. 1:2, NKJV)  I imagine they stopped, shook their head, and looked out the window at the towering mountain fortress of Acro-Corinth above their city.  The ancient writers say 1,000 temple prostitutes engaged in “worship” at the temple of Aphrodite.

How does anyone follow Christ and be holy in the shadow of the 1,000 prostitute temple?

But while it may seem challenging, He calls us to holiness nonetheless.

How do we protect our homes? Our children?  Our own hearts?

Filters?  Rules?  Make sure our kids never have computers?  Or visit anyone with computers?  Get rid of the internet?  (What?! How would you read my blog?!)

In my next post, I’ll be sharing 4 starter steps to protecting the atmosphere of your home against the rampant spread of pornography.

For now, I’d like to hear from you in the comments below, or on my Facebook: What are you doing to protect your home from the pornography epidemic?

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What to Do When Life Punches Your Goals in the Nose

My morning routine, which I wrote about recently, was going so well.  Life was starting to hum along again, after the birth of our sixth child.  He was sleeping through the night, I was able to get some sleep & get up and rock my to-do list before dawn.

Then, the baby got a cold.  And started waking up every night.  Twice.  And my 4th child spent the night throwing up. And… you get the picture.

My morning routine for the last week (plus!) has been completely nuked.  I’m sleeping later than I want to.  I shut my alarm off and almost missed an appointment this week.  I’ve accomplished less than half of what I want to on an average morning.

Not cool.

Holding high ideals while still allowing yourself permission to fail is not an easy thing.  Some people have a hard time doing both, so they get rid of ideals.  Or they get a case of perfectionism and make everyone around them miserable.  I’ve done some of both.

I spent years beating myself up for not being better about this or that.

But I’ve adjusted my attitude.  Here are the three things I tell myself.  Hope it’s an encouragement to you, if you’re in a tough season:

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Keeping Sunday Nights From Being a Drag

“I am so frustrated with my Sunday night service!” the pastor wrote in a message to me.  “It’s like 30% of the attendance of my Sunday morning worship service — even every time I pray about it I feel frustrated & discouraged!”  What to say to that guy?

First: Don’t freak out.  Don’t live and die by the attendance measure.  Think leadership, not outreach.  And, decide what your Sunday PM service is about.  (Read my last post on Sunday night services for more on that.)

OK, I’m not saying I’ve got this down.  (Who knows, maybe some of my people secretly think it’s a drag!?)  But since we’re all in this together, let me throw out some ideas for keeping Sunday night from being a bore:

1. Bring some variety in worship.

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Why We Still Do Sunday Night Services

Sunday night services have fallen on hard times.  I can understand why.  Attendance is low.  It’s tiring for pastors & their families, especially for those who have 6 children.

People are busy.  They feel overworked, overcommitted, tired and stressed.  Family time is drained by a million things.  (I know, I know — family time is mostly drained by TV & the internet.  And it’s not like people who stay home from Sunday night are using that time to sit and have quality conversation & fun with their kids.)

Pastors are also tired.  Administration and stresses drain the creativity and energy it takes to draw out Biblical content and present it in fresh, memorable way.  Pastors also complain of not enough family time.  (TV & internet? Hmm.)

People used to “go to church every time the doors were open.”  But that assumption isn’t there any longer, unfortunately even among Christians.

But we still do them at our church.  I’ve had people ask me why, even suggest that we cancel it.  But I haven’t, and I don’t plan to.

Here are 4 reasons why we still do Sunday nights:

1. It gives me freedom to focus on non-core people on Sunday AM.

I have two different audiences with two different needs.  While you don’t have to “dumb down” the Gospel, or the Bible, preaching to an audience of young Christians & biblically illiterate people does require changes in preaching.  You have to think about assumptions, different cultural connection points, different levels of biblical literacy.

2. It gives me a chance to encourage the leadership of the church.

I often talk with pastors frustrated because EVERYONE doesn’t attend on Sunday PM.  I’ll be honest… that’s not the end of the world to me.

It’s no secret that those who come to Sunday PM service are the most committed people you’ve got, at least in terms of faithful attendance.  Board members, musicians, children’s workers, nursery attendants, and more get up from their Sunday afternoon time and have given years to serving faithfully.  What an opportunity to encouage those who make the place run!  As a leader, honestly, if I didn’t have Sunday night to do that, I’d have to create a new venue to do it.

Even though they were present for your Sunday morning service, they were probably serving anyway.  They gave out.  They come into Sunday evening with deflated tires — you are the air compressor.  Pump ’em up.

3. It gives me a chance to develop systematic Bible study content.

Preaching is a lot of work.  It makes sense to figure out how to make some of your work do double duty.

Sometimes, I’ll develop the material, and teach it Sunday nights.  It lets me outline the book, develop the flow of thought and application, locate illustrations, do the background and language studies. Then when I re-preach it on Sunday mornings, I can develop it further, develop graphics, artwork & Powerpoint slides, add another layer of communication smoothness on it.

I don’t feel badly about doing that, and you shouldn’t either, as long as it’s not all the time.  I’ve probably only done it with 5-6 series over the years.  Your core people will not mind, as long as you are serving them well.  They might even enjoy hearing it again, with another layer of polish on it.  Learn this from Top 40 Radio & Christmas music: If the song is good, it’s worth playing again.

4. It gives me a chance to cast vision to the core.

When you’re doing church in a way that people are not used to, communication is crucial.  John Maxwell was right when he said, “People are down on what they’re not up on.”

I realized the potential value of this when I taught a series on the purpose of the church on Sunday nights early on in my ministry.  One of my core people said, after going through a few weeks of inductive study on the purpose of the church, “You know, I am realizing that the church is here for more than just to keep it going and keep the doors open.”

Exactly!  From a leadership standpoint, you can’t put a price tag on that.  And I realized that this was a chance I had to keep communication lines open with people who needed to hear from me outside of the Sunday AM context… to hear that it was going to be OK.  Even though there were people coming that were new, and didn’t hold our values, and didn’t look or talk or smell the same… it was going to be OK!

Crucial for church revitalization.

In my next post, I’m going to talk about ways you can keep Sunday night from being a drag.

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What I Learned from Raising Cane’s

A few months ago, a new chicken place came into our neighborhood.  It was named Raising Cane’s.  Liz and I decided to try it.

In short, we loved it.  It hasn’t replaced Chick-Fil-A, but they are really good at what they do.  And I’m not the only one.  Raising Cane’s was the 4th fastest growing restaurant chain in America in 2015.

I was there some time back for lunch, and got to thinking about what they do right, and why I enjoy it.  I started mulling it over.  Here’s what I learned:

1. Keep it simple.

Cane’s philosophy is clear from the moment you walk in.  “One Love” is their motto.  The One lLve is fresh (never, ever frozen) chicken strips.  They only do one thing.