The Business of Church: Stratgic Planning

SO I have been a major slacker with my writing this blog. Finding that balance point of writing and working full time has been a very interesting balance of time, especially since I am trying to get into grad school and trying to have a social life. I know, I thrive on stress, maybe a little too much so. But, I will try to be a bit more consistent with this.

Just and FYI: This was supposed to be Wednesday’s post.

A couple weeks ago, I wrote about marketing the church. As much fun as it is to market the church, or pain, there is something that is so vitally needed: STRATEGY.

The more I have started studying business in general, the more I have appreciated the strategy behind certain business move. The amount of thought that takes place to make the best move just fascinates me to no end.

Before I dive too deep into the topic of church and strategy, I want to pose a question: What is your initial reaction when you hear church and strategy? (I would love to hear your reaction in the comments if you would want to share)

My reaction: That's funny.

Maybe it this reaches my more cynical side of being on staff at a church or being the daughter of a pastor, but I have seen too many missed opportunities that churches meet because of lack of planning or thinking strategically. From my experience, they take strategic planning like this:

Just because you build a new building/complex or create new programming or this awesome Vacation Bible school does NOT mean that people will come. They may come initially but what is going to cause them to stay?

See, I have witnessed churches build family life centers or new buildings but have no vision connected with them and with no vision you cannot plan strategically. A building is just a building if you do not plan to use it for anything or have no programming connected with it.

Now I want to make one thing clear before I move on: just because you have a vision does not mean that you can create a strategic plan. I understand that 3 sentences ago I said that you need a vision to plan, but sometimes visions are just that. To explain a bit more, a staff parish committee can envision having a family life center because they currently do not have one and that's as deep as their thinking goes. There are a number of faults in thinking this way. One: this is a horrible vision plan; Two: how are you planning on using this; and Three: what is the purpose? This is actually thinking strategically because if you are unable to answer how this fits in the overall vision and mission of the church, how this will help achieve their overall goals and if this is fiscally responsible then you are not using knowledge but just emotion.

That last point I find is the most difficult item when trying to be strategic in the church. Emotional thinking, if you can even call it thinking, somehow overcomes intelligent people in the church and causes them to make these non-strategic plans that may randomly work by chance or completely blow-up in their face. Not a wise way to plan. 

So, how do churches overcome this? 

Honestly, I don't know. To say that they need these hard people who can make legitimate business decisions wouldn't be the answer, because they would not necessarily show the type of compassion that is needed for church strategic planning. On the other hand, if you just have people who just emotional based with too much compassion, they would not be able to make the hard choices that the other group would be able to use.

The simple solution is to say to have a mixture of both, but that's also difficult. I find that people who are asked to lead sometimes are like the Supreme Court Justices, you think you know how they will side but turn out to be completely opposite of what you originally thought. This isn't always the case but happens enough to make it a point.

I believe the best solution, which I will be the first to admit is an idealist view point, is to have the committees of the church to be on the same page as the pastor and be able to have an even mixture of business and compassion to make decisions. Now will this ever happen? No, but there will be times when certain decisions will be played out in this way.

The main thing to take away from this is: Don't strategically plan like Field of Dreams. Have some idea of what you are planning on doing and make sure it fits with your overall vision and mission.