CCCC is in the midst of a major strategic review.  If you’d like to interact with us as the review progresses, please visit the Strategic Review Engagement website.  I want to open source the strategic review by having as many non-board, non-staff people engage with us as possible.  In this blog, I am writing about how to do a strategic review.  On the engagement website, I am posting in real-time about how we did it at CCCC as a way of helping you see how to apply these suggestions.  That website also has the results of our strategic review, and I am most interested in any comments you would like to make about them.

Strategic Statements

Here are a few considerations for developing the three major strategic statements I’ve previously described (values, mission, vision) and some suggestions for how you can discern them in a God-honouring way that is faithful to your Christian identity.  Our draft strategic statements are available on the Strategic Review Engagement website.

Values

Values should be assessed on two levels.  First there are the biblical values that should be present in every Christian ministry and then there are the other values held by the people called to serve together in one particular ministry.

As an example of biblical values that might apply to your ministry, in The Church At Work I developed four biblical values related to relationships between ministries (the book’s subject):

• Love – In John 13:34-35 Jesus commanded his followers to love one another and Paul affirms it in Romans 12:10;
• Order – From Genesis to Revelation, we see that God is a God of order, not confusion.  Paul’s instruction in 1 Corinthians 14:40 and 12:16 is that “Everything should be done in a fitting and orderly way….Live in harmony with one another;”
• Unity – Our God is one, and he is Lord of all.  Christ is not divided and neither should his church be divided (Ephesians 4:4-6 and 1 Corinthians 1:13); and
• Voluntary mutual submission – We see voluntary mutual submission modeled in the life of Jesus (who made himself a servant to his own followers) and made explicit by Paul (John 13:5-10 and Ephesians 5:21).

These values suggest a strategy of collaboration, consultation, and coordination with other ministries.  Your Bible study could lead to a different set of values that are significant to your ministry.  All biblical values apply to your ministry, but some are especially significant to your ministry’s work and should become your organizational values.  Whatever you do, don’t try to make every value an organizational value or you’ll just have a list of platitudes.  Every ministry is expected to be honest, so unless lack of honesty has been a problem for your ministry, don’t include it.

Values can also be developed by asking people associated with your ministry (past and present) what they think the corporate values are.  You might ask staff what would cause them to raise or lower their pride in being associated with your ministry as a way of discovering the ministry’s key values.  Here’s how I’ve asked about our CCCC values in the current survey:

We believe that before God has called CCCC to do something, he has called us first to be a Christian ministry. How we do our work is arguably more important in God’s eyes than the actual work we do. So before we get to God’s purpose for CCCC, we’re going to explore the Christian values that we live by.  As an example, I believe that we must demonstrate just as much care for the smallest ministry as we do for the largest.  Jesus paid attention to everyone, and so must we.

This is one question, but I will ask it several different ways to help you think about values from different angles:

- What values or aspects of CCCC would you NOT be willing to sacrifice for the sake of our mission and identity?

- What would you not give up regardless of what changes in society?

- What would you not give up even if we were penalized for holding those values, or were put at a disadvantage because of them?

- Which corporate values would you keep even if they produced no tangible benefit for CCCC?

 Here’s how we developed our values for CCCC in the current strategic review.

God’s Call

The starting place for discerning God’s purpose for your ministry is to ask how people came to be associated with your ministry, since God calls people, not organizations.  Ask them how your ministry fits their own personal call to ministry and their answers will provide clues to God’s intentions for the ministry.  This information provides insight and context as you develop the strategic statements.

But be careful how you ask about a personal call because not everyone has had that experience.  You don’t want them to feel devalued or second-class.   They are faithfully serving the Lord as much as someone who has experienced a specific call. Here’s how I asked it in the survey given to staff, directors and corporate members:

For most people, their association with CCCC began because they felt they had gifts to contribute to a Christian ministry that they cared about.  Some may have felt that their association fit well with a pre-existing call of God on their lives, or a call that was discerned when they discovered CCCC.  If you have a story to tell related to a sense of personal call to the ministry of CCCC, please share it.

I asked this question of the four senior leaders: myself (CEO since 2003), my predecessor Frank Luellau (the first employee and executive director from 1983 - 2003), Ken Dick, board chair from 1978 – 1985 (when it was mostly a working board), and our founder Ian Stanley (board chair 1972 – 1978).  I also asked all current staff, board and corporate members, and as many former board members as I could locate.

Here’s how we developed our  Statement of Call.

Mission

Which came first, the chicken or the egg?  Vision or mission?  Normally we expect to start with a goal (the vision) and then develop the mission that is the means of achieving the goal.  But when God calls people in the Bible, he calls them either to do a task (Paul to proclaim Christ to the gentiles – Acts 9:15) or to fulfill a role (eg. Jeremiah as a prophet Jer 1:5).  I can’t think of anyone called to fulfill a vision.

In practice, developing your mission and vision statements will likely be an iterative process.  You’ll start with mission and from that develop a vision for the future that will result.  But doing that future thinking will likely help you refine your mission.  Don’t get hung up on the order – just get it done!

I asked the mission question this way in our survey:

Here we get to the heart of what we are to do. To fulfill God’s vision and purpose for CCCC, what is our specific mission?  The following questions (from What to Ask the Person in the Mirror) will help us discern our mission:

- Why do you work or volunteer with CCCC? When you could invest your time elsewhere, why do you invest it here? What do you love about CCCC?

- What would you like to tell your grandchildren or extended family about why you served at CCCC for such a long period of your life?

- What would you like CCCC to look like in ten years? What would you hope to say that it accomplished?

- What are the distinctive competencies of CCCC? What would the world lose if it did not exist?

- Do you think God had any specific intentions for how we would operate, or any conditions that he has set as boundaries? If so, please let us know what you think they are.

- We would like to know what your hopes and dreams are for the future of CCCC.  What are your aspirations for CCCC? What hopes and dreams do you have for it?

Here’s how we developed the draft mission statement for CCCC.

Vision

A vision statement always propels us towards the ideal.  It does not settle for anything less than the way it should be, in terms of our mission.  It should be aspirational, evocative and highly emotional.  Upon reading it, people should be inspired to join your cause (or at least say “That’s a great mission!”).

The vision needs to align both with whatever Scripture says that relates to your mission and vision, and also to your core values.  It needs to align with the activity of the Holy Spirit in this world.

In our survey, we asked about vision this way:

We believe that the Lord led Ian Stanley and his six friends to found CCCC for God’s own purposes. That means that we exist as part of the Christian ministry community in Canada and that there is some particular way the Lord intends us to help the church fulfill its mission.

Given that we are a support to frontline ministries, can you describe the difference that you think God created us to make?  Another way to think about this is, What is God’s vision for the state of Christian ministries in Canada that we will help him achieve?

What are you seeing that God is up to that affects CCCC?  What shifts or trends do you see in Christian ministry that might affect our strategy?

Again, you can read about how we developed our vision statement.

Written in stone?

While your strategic statements should serve you well for many years at a time, your ministry is a like a living organism that responds to the continuing work and leadership of the Holy Spirit.  Over time, aspects of your mission may be accomplished, so you move on to something else.  Also over time, your staff and board gain more insight into the possibilities for what might be, and the vision could become more detailed or more expansive.  A new or revised vision could cause a review of the mission, and the mission might be redefined, tightened up, or expanded to better fit the vision.

So don’t change your strategic statements every year, but do be willing to change them as circumstances warrant.  Next I’ll get into some other secondary matters related to your strategic statements, such as your Value Proposition and the Key Success Indicators.

The Strategic Statements

Every organization has a core ideology (its vision, mission and values) that is the underpinning for everything that it does.  This ideology is the driving force that inspires and propels the organization forward.  Vision explains why the organization exists (what it wants to accomplish), mission is its overarching strategy for accomplishing the vision, and values are the rules it lives by.

A hypothetical example will show the difference between vision and mission.  Two ministries might have the same vision: Local churches thriving under excellent leadership, but have very different missions because they have different strategies to grow excellent leadership.  One mission might to be provide excellent seminary training while the other ministry might be to provide coaching services or to publish church leadership books.

Three other items should be part of the strategic statement package:  the Tagline, the Value Proposition and the Key Success Indicators.

The tagline is a three to five word phrase that clearly positions your ministry for your audience.  It is what you want to be known for and evokes the first thought or feeling you want people to have when they hear your ministry’s name.

The value proposition:

• defines what you believe your ministry’s contribution to the church’s mission is, and is one of the justifications for your ministry’s existence as a separate entity,
• can be a key component of your fundraising, marketing and recruiting literature, and
• provides focus for strategy development.

The value proposition for a local church might answer the question, “With so many churches in your town, why should there be another one?”  For an independent agency, it could answer the question, “Why not merge with another ministry and save the duplicated overhead costs?”  Perhaps your methodology is different, or you have a denominational distinctive in theology or culture you want to maintain.  Perhaps it is the mix of what you do that is valuable.

People writing about strategy and marketing use the term ‘unique value proposition,’ but I’m not keen on using unique in a ministry environment where every church has the same mission and every other ministry is working on some part of that same mission.  I do, however, think you should be very clear about your ministry’s contribution to the church’s mission.  What makes you stand out from the crowd?

The value proposition needs to be defined before the programs are designed because it should have a key influence in designing your strategic initiatives and programs.

The success indicators:

• provide evidence that your ministry is moving forward with its mission,
• build a compelling case for support for your fundraising program, and
• ensure board and staff stay focused on mission as the priority, and not programs.  (It’s easy to get so wrapped up in programs that the mission they serve becomes just an after-thought.)

The success indicators need to be defined early in the strategic review because they will be used later to assess the effectiveness of your current strategies and programs.  In this regard, be especially careful that success indicators are set based on the strategic statements alone, because only the strategic statements define organizational success. 

You must fight the tendency to define success in terms of your programs. 

Some people have pet strategies and programs they want to ensure will survive the strategic review, and if you give them the opportunity they will craft these statements accordingly!  That would be the tail wagging the dog!  Whether or not a program is successful can only be determined in light of what constitutes organizational success.  (A program could be highly successful on its own and yet not contribute to an organization’s mission success.)

A Christian perspective

The source of a Christian ministry’s core ideology is the revelation of God through Scripture and the guidance of the Holy Spirit.

The Bible provides the context for all Christian ministry, so you must know it very well.  At least a few senior leaders on your team should have some formal theological education.  Scripture lays out the ideal future that God is leading us towards, the values he wants us to have, and the character traits that should guide us in all our work and relationships.

Some aspects of the ideal kingdom life may have more relevance to your mission than others, just as some values and traits may be more central to your mission than others.  So feel free to highlight those and make them prominent in the life and work of your ministry.  For example, God’s love for all humanity, his concern for the poor, or what he views as proper worship could each have greater significance in a ministry devoted to one of those issues.  Perhaps you have been quite isolationist as a ministry and you want to take special care to be more relational in the future.  Highlight that.

As you go through your strategic planning process, keep asking, “What in Scripture relates to this?  What do we know about God and his work that should inform how we think about this?”  These questions need to permeate every aspect of the strategy review process.

You must pay close attention to the Holy Spirit because he is the one who:

• calls us to a particular part of the mission,
• gives us a vision for what we can accomplish through our part of the mission, and
• guides us as we make decisions so that we can work faithfully as God’s agents.

It is critical that you are willing to be led by the Spirit, and are not just bringing your plans to God for his blessing.  If you don’t give the Spirit time to lead you, all you have is what the human mind can conceive.  I learned years ago that my mind is no match for God’s.  Give God space by practising the Christian disciplines of silence and solitude.  A great book to help you do this is Space for God.

Strategy making in the 4th Dimension

God has a specific purpose for your ministry, and to discern what it is I suggest that you consult with the directors and staff whom God has called to serve in your ministry, not just in the present, but in the past as well.  Churches should also consult with their members.

Why should you pay any attention to people who are no longer active in your ministry?  Because God spoke to them, and their voices must be heard.  I love this quote from G.K. Chesterton in which he talks of a democracy that crosses time and death:

Tradition may be defined as an extension of the [voting] franchise. Tradition means giving votes to the most obscure of all classes, our ancestors. It is the democracy of the dead. Tradition refuses to submit to the small and arrogant oligarchy of those who merely happen to be walking about. All democrats object to men being disqualified by the accident of birth; tradition objects to their being disqualified by the accident of death. Democracy tells us not to neglect a good man’s opinion, even if he is our groom; tradition asks us not to neglect a good man’s opinion, even if he is our father. I, at any rate, cannot separate the two ideas of democracy and tradition; it seems evident to me that they are the same idea. We will have the dead at our councils.

While the present board and staff can make strategic changes, they are not free to do so without due respect to the past. Are the old strategies outdated? Has the mission been accomplished? Are there new aspects to the mission that didn’t exist before? By all means, make the necessary changes, but don’t just arbitrarily think that you know better than your predecessors. That would be chronological arrogance!

To fully understand God’s purpose for your ministry today, do a chronological review of the strategic statements to see if there is a trajectory that ties them together. Is there an overarching common vision? Talk with the people who led the ministry over the years (if they are still available to you) or read their plans and other documents.

If there is a trajectory, look carefully at what changed between the versions and look for underlying trends. Perhaps there is movement from crisis intervention (shelters, food banks, etc.) to advocacy for systemic change to prevent poverty in the first place. Maybe your congregation is expanding its view of what church is all about. Most ministries will show some development over the years.  Try extending the trajectory forward to see where your ministry is headed.  Is this where you want to be?

Special attention must be given to the people whom God has placed in senior leadership because they acted in the capacity of stewards of the ministry and its mission, and presumably were placed in the senior leadership role by God for a reason. Each may have contributed to a different understanding of the mission while also adhering to the core ideology.  At this point, keep your focus on the the strategic statements and leave their strategies and programs, which are secondary and tertiary matters, for later.

In part two of this post I will give you specific practices and questions to help you discern your strategic statements.

In a sermon I heard in Sunday School, Andy Stanley made the point that there is only one time in Scripture that it says Jesus was amazed, and it was the big faith of a Roman centurian of all people that amazed him!

When Jesus heard this, he was amazed and said to those following him, “Truly I tell you, I have not found anyone in Israel with such great faith.”
Matthew 8:10

A personal challenge

Stanley challenges us asking, “What would your life be like if you knew for sure there is a God who is all powerful, who knows you and has promised never to leave you nor forsake you?  What if you had perfect peace and no fears or anxiety about anything?”  What would we dare try for the sake of Christ?  What might we do that would demonstrate a faith that could amaze Jesus?

A ministry challenge

What would it look like if your ministry assumed no limitations that God couldn’t easily overcome?  What if we decided to trust God for the things that keep us from daring to do all that we can dream of?  If we believed God could provide the “if onlys” that we are wishing for?  Better yet, what if we prayed for them?  What if the exploits of our ministries demonstrated a faith that would amaze Jesus just like the centurion’s did?  What if…?

A planning challenge

What if our strategic plans required divine rather than human capacity?  What if our plans were so big, so bold, so far-reaching that we’d have to assign responsibility for executing parts of them to the Lord?

If we can complete the plan ourselves, I’m sure God will allow us to do it ourselves.  But maybe he wants us to plan something so stupendous and awe-inspiring that it gives him a unique role to play.  The Bible is full of stories of how God worked through individuals to accomplish great things.  What if we inserted into our plans something that only God could do?  That means, of course, that by definition our plans will be unrealistic.  Would a staff be bold enough to recommend such a plan?  Would a board be daring enough to approve such a plan?  Just wondering!!

Are we:

• too cautious?
• too realistic?
• too self-reliant?

I admit that as I read these paragraphs, they scare me!  But I think they are also a healthy challenge to think about with the board and staff.

Living by faith

If we try to increase the faith component of our plans, we face the question of whether we should act first and depend on God to provide subsequently or let God act first and be ready to do what he has provided for.

In Acts 1, Jesus tells his followers not to do anything yet, but wait in Jerusalem until the Father sends his promised gift.

In Exodus 14, God told Moses to take the people of Israel to a specific place where they could be easily cornered by the Egyptians.  He basically told Moses to deliberately lead them into a trap!  Moses obeyed God and only then did the Lord part the waters and provide a way of escape.

I think there are some different approaches to the topic and each of them has a biblical basis.  I believe that which one we use will depend on how the board and staff together discern God’s will in a specific matter.

Pray and act with human wisdom

It might seem strange to start with human wisdom, but Scripture takes it seriously and so should we.  The book of Proverbs consists of the best of ‘worldly wisdom’ in that it sets out “the way things are” or “the way things work.”  God has given us great intellectual power to work out for ourselves some of the mystery behind God’s work, such as the hard and soft sciences.  Jesus commended the use of human wisdom in Luke 16:8.  French Arrington discusses the surprising position Jesus takes on human wisdom in his New Life Bible Commentary on Luke, saying:

…the sinful “people of this world” are favorably compared with the “people of the light.”  It is their resourcefulness and their dedication to the achievement of their intended goals that are held up as examples for emulation.  The implication is that the “people of the light,”  whose goal is infinitely more valuable, should be all the more resourceful and dedicated as they work toward their goal of a ‘treasure in heaven that will not be exhausted.”

Furthermore, Jesus’ advises in Luke 14:28 and 31: “Suppose one of you wants to build a tower. Won’t you first sit down and estimate the cost to see if you have enough money to complete it?…Or suppose a king is about to go to war against another king. Won’t he first sit down and consider whether he is able with ten thousand men to oppose the one coming against him with twenty thousand?”  It seems that Jesus believes that thinking ahead is just good common sense.  His point is, “Don’t become a disciple if you are not willing to go the whole way.”

Finally, Paul advises Timothy (1 Tim 5) to drink a little wine because of his stomach and many illnesses.  I’m sure Paul had already done the spiritual thing and prayed for his healing, but he also gave Timothy the best human wisdom he had to help him with his stomach problems.

My position is that, unless he has otherwise directed us, God expects us to use the best of human wisdom in leading our ministries.  Use your noggin!

Pray and wait for God to act

We can also think big, figure out what is humanly possible, pray for God to do the rest and then act when he has made it possible.  There is Scriptural support for this option.  Jesus’ instruction to wait for the gift of the Spirit is one example.  Paul raising the collection for the Jerusalem relief effort is another.  Paul committed to no specific amount, just that he would bring an offering.  The prayers of the saints for Peter in prison are yet another example.  They did not mount an attack on the prison to free him, but were waiting in prayer, and God acted and miraculously freed Peter.

This is also an approach recommended by Jesus: “Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you…If you, then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give good gifts to those who ask him!” Matthew 7:7, 11.  What Jesus is telling us is: ask, receive, proceed.

Pray and then act in anticipation of God’s action

This is the basis behind faith missions.  Sometimes we have to act first and then we will see God do something wonderful.

• Joshua had to march around Jericho seven times before he saw God bring down its walls.
• The disciples handed out the fish and bread not knowing what was going to happen, but God provided.
• Jesus had to go to the cross trusting that his Father would resurrect him.

Virtually all Christian ministries operate to some degree on faith because their revenue comes mostly from donations, and who knows what will come in next month?  They make long term commitments by hiring staff and acquiring property and trust that money will continue to come in.  But while some are very good at active fundraising, writing persuasive appeals and so forth, others will only do passive fundraising.  This group will pray but not tell anyone of their financial needs.  Hudson Taylor ran CIM this way, on the  assumption that “the Lord will provide.”  God has blessed this approach too.

Some advice

Any of the three strategies may be the appropriate one for you.  My comfort level is to operate the very best we can with the best knowledge we have (option 1) and to think big and wait for God to provide (option 2).

Which should you follow?  It all depends.  I think it comes down to group discernment.  I believe that God will lead the entire leadership team to one of the three options.  The board, the chief staff officer and the senior leadership team should all be in agreement about their position on faith and risk.  If one person feels the ministry should take on more risk with higher faith, then the whole group should enter into a discernment process to determine if they also feel the same.  This is what Paul did with his group.  He alone heard the call of God to go to Europe, but the whole team decided it was the right thing to do.  When Paul felt he had the answer to how to evangelise the gentiles, James and the apostles in Jerusalem discussed the issue and came to a collective decision.

If someone gave your ministry a million dollars, how would you use it?  If you don’t know, then maybe you aren’t ready to receive a million dollars!  If God said he would do anything you asked him to do to help with your ministry’s mission, what would you ask him to do?  If you don’t know, then maybe you aren’t ready to receive his miraculous help.  At the very least, have a list!!

Think BIG, pray HARD and follow the option that seems best to the team.  “It seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to us” (Acts 15:28) needs to be what you say when you announce your decisions.

What really happened in Fleming’s lab

Fleming's lab fills the tower bay. It is the middle level of the three vertical windows.

Wikipedia and other sites describe Fleming and his lab as untidy, messy, or cluttered, but if you visit the lab, which is set up exactly as it was in 1928, you will find out that what appears messy and cluttered is just another aspect of his experimental work.  (Sorry, no pictures are allowed inside the lab.)  The museum guide told me that when Fleming was done with an experiment (the experiment he intended to do), he always left samples of his experiment out for at least several days (as an experiment to find something unintended that he obviously wasn’t looking for).

Another practice was to combine things just to see what happens.  In 1921 he had a cold, and put some of his nasal mucous in a petri dish and saw that it dissolved the bacteria in the dish.  He discovered a natural human antiseptic, lysozyme, which would have guaranteed his place in history even if he had never discovered penicillin!

Practices such as these made it possible for Fleming to be surprised by the unexpected.  He was very intentional about creating opportunities for discoveries to be made.  If this made his lab untidy or cluttered, so be it.

Furthermore, it wasn’t an accident that he just happened to notice something unusual in a sample.  He always inspected the samples very carefully, and this time he noticed a clear spot on the slide where the bacteria that he was experimenting on should have been.  The organism had been killed by something on this one part of the slide, and the killer agent turned out to be a mould that he first called mould juice and (wisely) later called penicillin!

The real story is that the discovery of penicillin was not so accidental.  Fleming deliberately left the cultures out to allow time for something unexpected to happen.  He deliberately inspected the samples to see what, if anything, had developed.  He deliberately followed up an unexpected observation to find an explanation for it.  And he deliberately invested time to think about the implications of what he had discovered.  Anyone who does what Fleming did is likely to discover something sooner or later.

In summary, Fleming’s method was:

1. Create opportunity to be surprised
2. Be on the lookout for surprising things
3. Be curious about the surprises you find
4. Look for ways to take advantage of the surprises

My discovery using Fleming’s methods

Although I did not realize I was using Fleming’s methods at the time, I discovered the idea for this post following the same principles as Fleming.  It was no accident that I stumbled upon the lab that led to the story that inspired this post.  Here’s an example of Fleming’s method at work:

Create opportunity to be surprised

• I was on a layover in London while returning home from Zürich on the last leg of my round-the-world sabbatical trip.  I had not intended to visit the lab, but I had made the decision to make the most of my time on this once-in-a-lifetime trip by taking every opportunity to explore.  So when I had two extra hours available before I needed to leave for Heathrow airport, instead of killing time at the airport or the hotel I got out my GPS and looked to see what tourist attractions were nearby.  Fleming’s lab was the closest attraction and it was only a mile a way.  Using the GPS as my guide, I walked to St. Mary’s Hospital and found the museum.

Be on the lookout for surprising things

• As the guide told the story of Fleming’s discovery, he made it clear that Fleming had deliberately left the cultures out after he finished his experiments with them.  He said it was not a case of being messy, but that this was his usual practice.  That I found surprising.

Be curious about the surprises you find

• I had never heard this aspect of the story before, so I asked why he would do that.  That’s when I heard about his looking for the unexpected.  This was a surprising idea because I thought scientists always had some concept of what they were looking for, an hypothesis to prove or disprove.  Simply putting something ‘out there’ to see what happens is quite different from the scientific method I learned in high school.

Look for ways to take advantage of the surprises

• I was not expecting to find something to blog about in that two extra hours I had, but as I heard the true story behind the discovery of penicillin I realized I had accidentally discovered a great leadership practice just as Fleming accidently discovered penicillin and I should share it on this blog.

My ‘accidents’ at CCCC

When I arrived at CCCC in September 2003 I decided to provide leadership that was open to opportunity.  In fact, we would search it out.  I decided that we would be willing to shift priorities based on comparing new opportunities with our current action plan.  To make this happen, the board and staff were told our action plans were simply default plans that we would follow as long as nothing better came up.  Then staff performance review criteria were set based on exhibiting our team values rather than reaching pre-set goals.  That way we could be flexible and nimble.  Here are a few examples of how that has worked out:

• CCCC sponsors the Best Christian Workplace survey in Canada, and it all started because I just ‘happened’ to be attending a conference in the States where I saw the second annual presentation of awards for the American Best Christian Workplace survey.  But I was at the conference because I was looking to see what’s new and different, so I set the stage for opportunity.  I immediately connected what I saw with what I thought Canadian ministries needed because I was already on the alert for new ideas.  Within a couple of weeks, we had an agreement to do it in Canada.  I took action on an idea instead of just thinking, “That was interesting.”
• CCCC was a partner in the 35<35 program that recognized young Christian leaders because I just ‘happened’ to run into Carson Pue in a hotel hallway.  But I attend EFC’s Presidents Day each year because it is the best place for me to meet a lot of ministry leaders at one time when I have no responsibilities of my own to attend to.  I was open to some collaborative work and wanted to talk with as many people as I could about what they are doing.  When Carson Pue and I crossed paths, we chatted a bit and when he asked what was on my mind, I told him we wanted to do something to recognize and encourage young Christian leaders at our next conference.  Wouldn’t you know it, he was wanting to find some partners to promote young leaders too and he had the idea for the 35<35 recognition program.  That turned out to be a great success for both of us (and Bridgeway Foundation and Christian Week – our other partners in that program).
• Jerry White, International President Emeritus of The Navigators, is probably the highest ranked speaker we’ve ever had at our conference.  I ‘happened’ to have a personal connection with him that made me think of him as a speaker.  But I didn’t just ‘happen’ to meet him.  While writing my first doctoral research project in 2005 I was critiquing his 1983 book on my topic and I wondered if this author were still alive.  I tracked him down, and since then we’ve met a couple of times and had some phone calls, and he ended up not only speaking at the CCCC conference but also writing the foreword for my new book, The Church at Work.  Lots of good has come about because I didn’t just read and critique a book but took the additional step of contacting the author, not knowing at the time what was going to come of it.  I had no expectations at the beginning that anything would develop.  I just thought Jerry would be an interesting person to talk with and get to know.  But that created the environment in which other good things could develop.
• Our horizons at CCCC are rapidly expanding as other staff members are also creating intential opportunities for ‘accidental’ discoveries!

Creating intentional accidents at your ministry

How much do you leave out to see “what might happen”?  In what ways do you create opportunity to be surprised?  To find opportunity you did not know existed?  Do you have an intentional plan to find the unexpected?  Some things you could do are:

• Talk with people outside of your usual circles who might introduce a new idea from their sphere into your sphere.
• Investigate what beneficiaries or clients do outside of your programs that might affect your program design.
• Read a good book like The Eureka Effect, to stimulate your creativity.
• Encourage your team to experiment on their own and be willing to try a small-scale pilot project.
• Visit unrelated ministries doing a different part of the Christian mission and find out what’s new with them.
• Just tell everyone you meet what your ministry does.  The more people who know about you, the more you are likely to hear about opportunities.
• If you have field staff, pay close attention to what they are actually doing.  You’ll probably find a lot of good creativity on the front lines!
• And of course, pray hard that God would bring unexpected opportunities your way!

You can never know in advance, of course, what will be discovered by following a strategy of intentional accidental discoveries, but that’s the fun and amazing part of it!  All you know at the start is that discoveries will be more likely because you have put yourself in a place that is conducive to discovery.  You won’t believe what good things will happen once you set the ball in motion by stepping outside of your zone.  Just watch what develops!

I’m sure I’ve only scratched the surface of how to make accidental discoveries more likely.  Please add your own ideas by making a comment.

How many consultants does it take to change a lightbulb?  No one knows, because they never get past the feasibility study.

I’ve had good and bad experiences with consultants and can share with you some suggestions as to when to use them and when to avoid them.  The term ‘consultant’ captures a wide range of services, a wide range of paradigms that influence their output, and like lawyers and accountants they can be solo practitioners or members of a global firm.

Types of consultants

It is helpful to distinguish between the various types:

• Pure consulting is limited to investigation of a topic or issue, reporting and perhaps recommendation.  However, many consultants do much more by performing work that ranges from interviewing customers for market research or doing ongoing work such as HR or IT as part of an outsourcing strategy.
• Every consultant has a paradigm or model on which they base their work.  You need to understand what their model is to be sure you buy into it.  Based on the assignment, the consultant should be able to tell you which model(s) they will use to develop their recommendations.  Many large consulting firms are famous for developing particular models (such as the Boston Consulting Group’s Growth-Share Matrix), so you know these models will loom large in their approach to your issue.  Ask consultants which books have influenced them.  If you’ve done any preparatory research on the issue (if you haven’t done it, do it now!), you should be familiar with the various approaches and issues and will likely have an opinion as to which approach fits best with your situation.  At the very least, you will know the questions to ask.
• Whether you go with a large firm or an independent consultant depends on your needs and, most of all, your budget.  A large firm will likely cost more, but you get the advantage of a consultant with access to a large knowledge bank and associates who can provide specialized expertise if needed.  An independent consultant may be less expensive and less committed to a particular model, and therefore be more versatile.  For most charities, cost will be the deciding factor in favour of smaller firms or solo practitioners.  Just be sure you agree with their basic approach.

To use or not to use?

Some leaders use consultants a lot and others won’t have anything to do with them.  Professional advisors have told me that Americans use consultants with great enthusiasm and Canadians tend to accept them as a necessary evil.  I’ve heard horror stories of consultants really messing things up badly and I’ve also heard of consultants who helped a group achieve a significant breakthrough.

When should you use a consultant?  I googled this question and found lots and lots of advice…from consultants trying to sell their services!  Hardly unbiased advice.  I didn’t find a single buyer of consulting services who wrote about it from their perspective.

I did however find a really great book, Extract Value from Consultants: How to Hire, Control, and Fire Them, written by two consultants that reads like an exposé from the inside.  Since both have worked for global consulting firms, I gues that’s what it is!  They detail all the tricks of the trade that consultants use to hook a client and then squeeze them for more cash as the work progresses.  Then they tell you how to reverse the tables, fight back and extract value from them.  If you use consultants, read it!

How to decide

We’ve used several consultants over the years at CCCC, so I’m open to using them, but I am very judicious as to when.  As a buyer of consulting services, here are my thoughts about when they are appropriate:

• A consultant might be handy if you and your staff are stumped about a problem and you need a breakthrough.  They can draw on what they have learned from numerous clients, they have a fresh perspective, and they have no commitments to the status quo.
• Generally you would hire staff for core competency areas or where there is a long term need.  Consultants are useful for non-core areas that you do not have in-house expertise for, and a consultant-contractor could be useful for boosting your staff levels on a short term basis.
• Consultants provide an independent, objective assessment of a situation and can confirm or disprove your assumptions.  They can illuminate any blind spots you might have.  On the upside, I hired a consultant who is an expert on Canadian associations.  We wanted to know how CCCC is doing from an association perspective and this person had done detailed analysis of more than one hundred associations.  He brought a perspective that we could never have ourselves.  He said, based on performance metrics, that we are a top-performing association.  That’s good to know.  We don’t have problems that need fixing, just opportunities to exploit.  We know where to focus.  On the downside, especially for ‘quick looks,’ consultants might only get a superficial understanding of your operations and environment.  I’ve seen reports that are simplistic because the authors simply didn’t get a deep understanding of the nuances and contexts.
• Outsiders can say things you want said but don’t want to say yourself.  They don’t have to live with the consequences!
• If you face a steep, long or expensive learning curve, you can use a consultant who has done it before and who has spread the cost of the learning curve over multiple clients.  Just be sure that there is a transfer of knowledge so that when you engage a consultant your own staff learns something.  Don’t simply accept their recommendations.  Ask how they arrived at the recommendation.  Those are the processes you want to learn.
• The work might be something your team could do, but there are higher priorities taking the team’s time.  The work needs to be done, but you just don’t have the time.

Your leadership responsibility

As a leader, you are always responsible for your decisions.  You can’t delegate decisions to a consultant.  It is always up to you to make a decision.  Check how they came to make their recommendation and be sure it is based on reasonable assumptions and complete data.  Watch out for ”me too” recommendations.  If the consultant is simply following what everyone else is doing, then that is all that you will be doing too.  That’s no way to get ahead!  All you’ll do is catch up to the crowd.  You’ll also have to check their recommendations for feasability.  It’s easy to make expensive recommendations when it will be paid for by someone else.

I think the main message is that consultants are not a magic bullet.  Don’t count on them fixing everything that you haven’t been able to fix.  A consultant simply provides another viewpoint, another option.  They are not always right.  The real value of a consultant is the new idea or perspective they are able to contribute from their specialized knowledge and experience.  They can broaden your horizons and make you aware of new possiblities beyond what you are capable of thinking of.  You just have to take what they suggest and assess it for yourself to see if it really fits your ministry.

Now, I’d like to learn from you.  Any ideas to add?  Please comment.

Eleven years ago Andy wrote a thesis to complete his MA in Evangelism Studes and the purpose of the thesis was to find the best methods for evangelism for GVYFC.  The situation and results that he describes at the ministry are quite out of date today, so please keep that in mind.  After completing the thesis, he used it to refresh and renew the ministry at GVYFC and the results have been great.  By taking a hard look at their practices and results his team built a much more fruitful ministry!

You can download Harrington’s thesis and use it to stimulate ideas for how you could review your own ministry.  While the content will be helpful to anyone with a youth ministry, the process he used is applicable to any ministry.  Here’s what he’s done so well in this 90 page thesis:

• He documented the program rationale that governed the design of their many programs.  I don’t think that had been done before so he had to look at what they were doing and then reverse-engineer the theoretical foundation that justified their programs.  That meant he had to create both a theory of change and a logic model.  Although he doesn’t use those terms or build a diagram, he does document them in narrative form.  I wrote about how to do this at a the program level, so this is a good example at the organizational level.  You should have a theory of change and logic model at both the organizational and program levels.
• Andy does a great literature review to ensure he is right up-to-date on the latest thinking in youth evangelism.  He researched general shifts in culture, particularly from modern to post-modern world-views, and the agents that are driving youth culture.  Again, I wrote about doing literature reviews at the program level, and Andy has shown how to do for the organization.  You should do both.
• He addresses the issue of how to define success for their ministry and then found a way to measure it.  I’ll be writing about this topic later in the CCCC strategic review that is currently underway.
• After doing all the analysis, Andy then addresses the “So what?” question and develops several strategies that will take GVYFC to a new level of effectiveness.  He suggests that YFC and other movements adopt a new embodied apologetic, rather than relying on a programmatic approach. This apologetic incorporates five factors; the cultural desire among young people for authentic relationship, their openness to spirituality, the importance of story, the concept of journeying together and the formation of community.

Thank you Andy for sharing your thesis!  May we all learn how to look hard at our own ministries and enjoy benefits similar to what you have experienced.

“Do not fear, for those who are with us are more than those who are with them.”  Then Elisha prayed and said, “O LORD, I pray, open his eyes that he may see.”  And the LORD opened the servant’s eyes and he saw; and behold, the mountain was full of horses and chariots of fire all around Elisha.
2 Kings 6:16-17

It should be obvious – traditional strategic planning tools do not allow for kingdom insight.  If those tools are all we use, then we will not see what God wants us to see.  This was the point Jesus made when he challenged his followers:

Jesus said to them, “My food is to do the will of Him who sent Me and to accomplish His work.  Do you not say, ‘There are yet four months, and then comes the harvest’?  Behold, I say to you, lift up your eyes and look on the fields, that they are white for harvest.  Already he who reaps is receiving wages and is gathering fruit for life eternal; so that he who sows and he who reaps may rejoice together.”
John 4:34-36

The deficiencies of traditional strategic planning

From a Christian perspective, traditional planning tools are out of alignment with the way God works.  A plan for harvesting would have waited four more months, but Jesus, who knows the true situation, says “Look up!!”  His urgent message is that the fields are ripe for harvesting at this very moment!  And while you are waiting for circumstances to dictate the right time to get to work, others are already earning their wages, like – right now!  Get a move on!

What strategic plan would ever have dared lead the Israelites out of Egypt only to corner them against a sea?  What strategic plan would have ever conceived of conquering Jericho as God intended to conquer it?  What strategic plan would have brought salvation to the world through a peasant born in a cave in what most people at the time thought was a backwater, no-account country?

The Bible declares that God is on a mission and is unstoppable as he works to fulfill it.  His strategic options are bounded only by his mission.  Circumstances are acknowledged and then blown away by a God who can do miracles.  As his earthly representatives, as God’s agents in mission, we can do no less than Paul who steadfastly pursued his call and relied on God to work things out however he would.  As I’ve written before, the world would be a different place today if the apostles had tried to write a strategic plan.

I love Paul’s attitude, his fixation on what God had called him to do.  While he’s writing about his personal growth here, I think we should all emulate his attitude when it comes to planning for our ministries:

Not that I have already obtained it or have already become perfect, but I press on so that I may lay hold of that for which also I was laid hold of by Christ Jesus.  Brethren, I do not regard myself as having laid hold of it yet; but one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and reaching forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus.
Philippians 3:12-14

The primacy of our call

Traditional planning tools can be helpful, but they should not be the primary drivers of Christian ministry strategy.  While a business may look at its strengths and its environment, and decide to enter a new line of business that presents more opportunity and a greater financial return, a Christian ministry has a fixed mission that it cannot change until it has been accomplished.  Ministries can take account of their strengths and environments, but they don’t change their mission because of them.  Which comes first – the  limitations or the mission?  The mission, of course!

God has called churches to the full mission of the church and he has called specialized ministries to particular parts of the church’s mission.  A ministry does not have the freedom to do anything that circumstances allow, it must work on its assigned mission.  We are not free to say, as a business can, “What can we do with our people, our experience and our resources?”  We might clarify the mission from time to time and find fresh ways to state it, but the underlying mission remains the same.

At CCCC, our strength is in our staff and if we look at opportunities and strengths we might discover that we could do more good by serving the poor and funding it with grants.  Maybe there’s a lot of government funding for that activity.  I don’t know.  What I do know is that as worthy as that cause would be, it’s not the cause God has called us to.  We have been called to serve the church in Canada by providing our expertise to churches and agencies.

A ministry’s strategic planning is not based on leveraging assets but on solving a problem.  The problem is that people need to know God and experience his love.  How do we bring people to Christ?  How do we create more justice in the world?  These are problems that Christian ministries are called to solve.  The appropriate strategic planning model for Christian ministry is the same model used by many relief and development ministries, the theory of change/logic model.

A suggested strategic planning process for Christian ministries

I mentioned in a previous post, Is your ministry near its “Best before” date?, that CCCC is beginning a comprehensive strategic review.  I’ll be blogging that experience in real time, so as we complete major sections I’ll be reporting what we’ve done so you can see what I think a good Christian strategic planning process should look like.  The major structure will be:

• A group discernment process to be clear on what we understand God’s call to CCCC to be.  The output will be a set of strategic statements.
• The mission statement (or End statement in Carver policy governance terms) can be considered the statement of the problem that CCCC has been called to solve.
• A theory of change will be developed which makes explicit what we believe about how we can solve the problem.  For example, our implied theory of change to-date is that most of the problem can be fixed by education and awareness, which is why we have the conference, the Bulletin, regional seminars and so on.  Is that a valid theory of change?  The strategic review will probe that question.
• Once you have a theory of change, then you can build a logic model to show what you are going to do to solve the problem, what you need in order to do that, what you expect to happen as a result of your work and then what you think the consequences will be further down the road (hopefully the problem is solved!).
• Once you have the logic model you can develop the strategic initiatives that will ultimately be incorporated into your annual action plans.
• Next you can address the business model that will deliver on your plans.  This includes organizational structure, revenue model, and other operational aspects of making the core ministry happen.
• Lastly, you compare what you have designed for the future with what you have today.  You check to see if the organization is ready to move forward as is, or if some changes need to be made to align today’s organization with the one that will take you into the future.

Where do the traditional planning tools fit in?  The environmental scan can be helpful in gaining understanding of the problem and ensuring that the theory of change is comprehensive.  It can also help with the development of the strategic initiatives.   But all of this is only in a supporting role.

The scan may say the problem solving task will be more or less difficult, but it shouldn’t change the task itself.  It will likely surface a list of things you should be praying about and asking God to intervene in the situation on your behalf.

The SWOT analysis can be helpful at two places: 1) the SW part (strengths/weaknesses) is useful when you are checking organizational readiness and the OT part (Opportunities/Threats) is helpful when developing the strategic initiatives.

Remember though, that God works through our weaknesses and God is our defender, so weaknesses and threats should not be deterrents!

Be wise

Jesus did commend people who used their brains and the best of human wisdom (for example, the unrighteous steward in Luke 16) and he challenged his followers to do for him what they would do for themselves (eg., think ahead and count the cost before following him just as they would when building a tower or going to war – Luke 14:27-33) , so we shouldn’t be derelict and switch off our minds when planning for our ministries.

But if you reduce your plans to what you think you can do with human wisdom and strength, you’ve left no room for God to do what only he can do, and I suspect that when you can do it yourself, God lets you do it yourself!  But if you want to partner with God, then make a plan big enough that God has room to manoeuvre and do his thing.

I think this is a rather contrarian view of strategic planning, although there is support for it in the literature, so it may have challenged you.  I invite you to interact with this post in the comments.

It Couldn’t Be Done by Edgar A.  Guest

Somebody said that it couldn’t be done,
But he with a chuckle replied
That “maybe it couldn’t,” but he would be one
Who wouldn’t say so until he’d tried.
So he buckled right in with the trace of a grin
On his face.  If he worried he hid it.
He started to sing as he tackled the thing
That couldn’t be done, and he did it.

Somebody scoffed: “Oh, you’ll never do that;
At least no one ever has done it.”
But he took off his coat and he took off his hat,
And the first thing we knew he’d begun it.
With a lift of his chin and a bit of a grin,
Without any doubting or quiddit,
He started to sing as he tackled the thing
That couldn’t be done, and he did it.

There are thousands to tell you it cannot be done,
There are thousands to prophesy failure;
There are thousands to point out to you, one by one,
The dangers that wait to assail you.
But just buckle in with a bit of a grin,
Just take off your coat and go to it;
Just start to sing as you tackle the thing
That “cannot be done,” and you’ll do it.

Now, I must say I am no Pollyanna looking through rose-coloured glasses, but research does show that people often give up too soon and don’t press hard enough to find a solution.  I do recognize that there are things that, in reality, are impossible to do.  However, and it is a huge ‘however’, when pessimists try to stop me or when the challenge seems too big to overcome, if it is truly a worthy goal, I will:

• challenge my view of what ‘reality’ really is, because I know that most of my own assumptions are so deeply held that I’m not even aware of them.  The same goes for you too of course.  If something is desirable but not possible (in your estimation), go and talk with others.  Seek out people who have lots of knowledge or lots of contacts, because the more people you ask the more complete the information you will receive.  I have been very pleasantly surprised over the years when I’ve told someone about a difficulty and they’ve introduced me to someone for whom the difficulty was readily solvable.  Life is most difficult when you live it alone.  Let others expand your understanding of what is possible.
• recognize that no one can truly know their personal or organizational limits until they give it their best.  This doesn’t mean that you have to try to do everything.  It just means that you are honest about why you are not trying.  Perhaps when you say it is impossible, what you really mean is it isn’t a high enough priority, or you are too scared or intimidated to try, or you just simply don’t want to do it for any number of hidden reasons.  Saying it is impossible is the easy route that lets you avoid dealing honestly with your reasons for not proceeding.  It does feel better to say “It isn’t possible” than it is to say “I didn’t want to make the effort.”  You don’t really know what you are capable of until you try.  By the way, the reverse is also true: until you try, you don’t know what you are capable of.  The difference is, until I try I can always imagine in my mind that I could do it if I tried.  That’s the definition of an armchair critic!
• expect that my limits will change over time as I develop myself.  Ryan Kennelly bench pressed 1,075 lbs on November 8th, 2008.  I guarantee he didn’t lift that weight on his first ever bench press!  That would have been impossible.  But as he trained and developed his muscles, what once was impossible became possible.  Likewise, if I am not the leader today who can accomplish my vision, then I must set out to become that leader.  That means self-development.  That means life-long learning, life-long reflection, life-long practicing to become what you believe you need to be.  That is why I write so much about challenging yourself, about actively searching to discover what you don’t know you don’t know.  I owe it to my employer to push my limits as far out as possible.  (This is also a key component to your job security strategy!)
• remember that sometimes, when the goal is really important and there seems to be no way, it just takes pure courage and boldness to move ahead.  If the worst that can happen is an acceptable risk, then go for it.

In The Opposable Mind: Winning Through Integrative Thinking, Roger Martin shows how a number of business leaders (mostly Canadians for once!) tackled challenges that conventional wisdom said were impossible to solve and created great companies such as Four Seasons Hotels and Resorts, Red Hat and the Toronto International Film Festival as a result.  They were successful because they assumed there must be a way to do what they wanted to do and they didn’t stop until they found it.  Every one else gave up too soon and picked the lesser of two evils, a solution that was less than what they desired.

We are beginning a complete, comprehensive strategic review of CCCC, and I will be applying this advice to myself and the ministry.  We will be looking for the ideal way to achieve our mission and will challenge everything that holds us back from complete mission fulfillment.  We will exhaust all sources of help before settling for anything less than the ideal solution.

Have you got any favourite stories, slogans, truisms or anything else that encourages you to try to do “the impossible“?

Paul’s Example

Paul’s first missionary trip was very fruitful due to the many churches he planted in Asia.  Good leadership and strategic planning would dictate a return trip to ensure the churches were growing as they should and to further strengthen them, and that is what Paul intended to do (Acts 15:36).  He left Antioch after his church commended him to God with this mission in mind (v40).

Significantly, although the Holy Spirit gave specific instructions for the first trip, there is no mention that Paul received any direction from the Holy Spirit at all for this trip.  The way Luke tells the story, any reader would think that Paul’s plans are plain good sense and are just what they would have done if they had been in his sandals.  There is no foreshadowing of trouble at all.  Luke could have written, “But he failed to consult the Lord” to alert his readers to what was to come, but he didn’t.  Luke wanted us to experience the Holy Spirit pretty much as Paul did, so that the lesson would be all the more forceful for us today.  After visiting the churches Paul tries to venture further into Asia, but each time discerns the Spirit withholding his permission.  The frustration of Paul’s Asian plans mounts until finally, in a dramatic vision, the Spirit reveals to Paul what his mission trip is really about and calls him to Macedonia in Europe.  By blocking Paul from going deeper into Asia, the Holy Spirit was gradually corralling him into a port city from which he could easily embark on a ship to the place he wanted Paul to go.  At least this time God used a ship to transport Paul’s team and not, as he did with Jonah, a  great fish!  But then, Paul didn’t run from his call.

Robert Tannehill wrote a brilliant narrative analysis of Luke-Acts and in Volume Two: The Acts Of The Apostles writes that:

The narrator shows a keen interest in the dialogue between human purpose and divine purpose, indicating that Jesus’ witnesses, too, must patiently endure the frustration of their own plans in order to discover the opportunity that God holds open.  This opportunity may not be the next logical step by human calculation.

The Gospel of Luke shows the Holy Spirit guiding Jesus at every step of the way and he continues to guide the church in Acts.  God interrupting human plans is a central theme in Acts.  Just as the Spirit interrupted Paul’s planned visits to Asia, so he interrupted Peter’s planned visits to the Jewish church in diaspora (Acts 10:10-20) and directed and even moved Philip to the places he needed him (Acts 8:26-40).  God’s plans were not what the apostles had in mind.  But to the benefit of the entire church throughout the ages since, the apostles trashed their own plans and and followed God.  Later the other apostles supported the new dimensions of mission introduced by Peter and Paul as they deviated from their own plans and accepted God’s plans (Acts  11 and 15).

God’s Leadership

From a planning standpoint, the essential point Luke makes is that it is the Lord who directs Christian missions.  The book should really be called “Acts of the Holy Spirit,” not “Acts of the Apostles“ because the book tells the continuing story of what Jesus only began to do and teach in the Gospel of Luke.  (I think it was Dr. Roger Stronstad who said this in a seminary class.)  Luke wants his readers to know that when the Spirit gave clear direction to Paul to start out on an entirely new mission, the conversion of Europe (a mission that was not at all contemplated in Antioch and that was completely outside the scope of his intended journey), Paul immediately followed the Spirit’s direction, just as we should today.  Many people regard Acts simply as a history book.  It does tell the history of the early church, and Luke did intend to bolster our faith by informing us of its origins (Luke 1:1), but that’s not the only reason why Luke wrote it.  Luke tells of the origin of our faith, and Acts is a manual for how the church should faithfully go about its work as a Spirit-led church.  Its purpose is to encourage and inspire us as we continue to fulfill the church’s mission today.  Paul’s team wasted no time in getting on board with the new mission.  Luke records in 16:10 that ”After Paul had seen the vision, we got ready at once to leave for Macedonia, concluding that God had called us to preach the gospel to them.”  And thus the Western church was born!  We need to follow God and not a plan.

My Experience

I have had to learn this lesson in my own life.  As a corporate leadership trainer, I was an enthusiastic supporter of strategic planning, goal setting and performance reviews based on measurable objectives.  My enthusiasm for planning changed, however, when I received my own very unexpected call ‘out of the blue’ from God to prepare for something new.  Believe, me, no plan of mine had that call from God in it!!  The Spirit did not reveal what the preparation was for, and I was challenged to trust God, give up my work and become a full-time student again in mid-life without knowing what the goal was, where I was headed, or what God had in mind.  All I knew was I had to go to seminary.

Half-way through my second year I felt abandoned by God and, at my age, despaired of ever having gainful employment again.  I dropped back into planning mode and ‘helped’ God by putting my resume out for work as an administrator at various Christian ministries.  In the midst of one interview, the Holy Spirit let me know that, “This is not what this is all about.  Withdraw your applications.”

The Spirit reminded me that,  “If my ways are not your ways, and if my thoughts are so much higher than yours that you can’t even conceive the depth and breadth of my thoughts, then the best your puny little plans can do is frustrate what I want to do through you.  Stop planning and let me lead!”  (I was, shall we say, overly-planful at the time!)  The image of me being blindfolded and holding on to God’s shirtsleeve was very vivid and God’s intent was quite clear: “When I take a step, you take a step.”  And that is how I have lived my life ever since.

Strategic Planning in Christian Ministry

So back to strategic planning.  I’m documenting in real time the strategic review I’m doing of CCCC, and you can follow that on this blog.  The key point about strategic planning for Christian ministry is that you can’t plan your way into the great and marvelous things God wants to do through you or your ministry.  (I wrote a tongue-in-cheek post asking “What if the apostles had tried to write a strategic plan?”)  I do not want my commitment to any plan to limit what God might want to do.  The logic of a plan may say to do one thing but the great deeds of history were often not very logical, they were daring.  We as Christian leaders need to leave room for God to do what only he, in his power, can do.

I agree that planning is useful and much good can come from it.  Paul’s planned second missionary journey led him to Timothy as an addition to his team, strengthened the churches that had been planted and added many converts in those areas (Acts 16:1-5).  Strategic planning does get results.  It just can’t, on its own, get all the results that God desires to give.  Any planning process used in Christian ministry must honour the leadership of the Holy Spirit.  Commit first to the mission God gave your ministry.  When God leads you in a different way than your plan lays out, follow God, not the plan.

I know firsthand God’s ability to orchestrate things so you end up doing something far more significant than you ever could have planned for on your own.   Just before God told me to withdraw my job applications, I had submitted my resume to CCCC.  Both my wife and my pastor saw the job ad and encouraged me to apply because they thought I was  a perfect fit for the job.  When I was told to withdraw my applications, I had not yet had any response from CCCC.  The Spirit let me know that I should leave this one application alone, and simply respond if they should call (which, obviously, they did).  The Spirit said, “Just sit back and watch what I can do.”  The rest is history.

I do plan, but I only ever regard my plans as default plans.  Plans that I will follow should nothing better come up.  I do my best to stay sensitive and receptive to the Spirit’s guidance each and every day.

For we are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.
Ephesians 2:10

• before you need to,
• before you are desperate,
• while you are still strong,
• when there is still time for a new strategy to mature enough to carry the organization.

I’ve wondered why ministries sometimes die, since the mission of the church continues until Jesus returns and there is still lots to do!  Once a ministry has been established for a while, I think death must result for one of two reasons:

1. A ministry’s programs and methods are simply no longer relevant, or
2. Its leadership does not grow with the ministry and becomes increasingly not up to the task as the ministry outgrows them.

The good news is that both of these scenarios are avoidable.  If leadership is on the ball, there is no reason why a ministry should die.  But they probably will continue to die because we think we are so much smarter than the leaders in the case studies of organizations that have failed.  I’ve read How The Mighty Fall, and as I read about all the failures I thought to myself, “Okay, so I won’t do that” or “I’ll watch out for that!”  But I shouldn’t be so sure about not repeating their mistakes.  In Not for Free: Revenue Strategies for a New World, Saul Berman outlines the failures of many companies but then warns his readers:

Do not think that you and your colleagues won’t make some of the same mistakes as the media industry has.  Do not think that you are invulnerable to being blindsided by technology change, market change, or new competitors.  Do not think that it will not be difficult to innovate your revenue model as rapidly and as thoroughly as you need to.  Do not think that you have “plenty of time” to work things out.  Those are exactly the same mistakes that media made.  Too many of the executives thought they had more time, thought they had a good read of the market, thought they could wait for “better” ideas and options to come along.  They neglected opportunities, failed to invest in revenue innovation, stuck to their segmentations, pricing, payers, and packaging not because they were dumb or blind but because they were normal.  The easy path, the normal path, is to find all the reasons not to innovate your revenue models rather than seizing opportunities for revenue innovation.  Don’t be normal.  Don’t take the easy way out.  There are no second chances and the clock is ticking.

Berman was writing about the particular problem of consumers expecting services or knowledge for free.  What’s the issue in your ministry sector that has the potential to be a seismic shift?  Donors will support the ministry that does what they care about the way they think it should be done.  If you are still doing things the way the founder did them forty years ago, you are likely finding it harder and harder to raise donations because donors expect your methods to adapt to today’s methods and situations. Some anonymous person said, ““Even if you are on the right road, you will eventually get run over if you just sit there.”  You never arrive at a place in your lifecycle where you can camp for the duration.  You’ve got to keep moving!

Do you want to know how long your ministry will last? One clue is what your expectations are.  Ichak Adizes says in Managing Corporate Lifecycles that organizations will remain young as long as the leaders expect more than the results they are currently getting.  When leaders accept current results as the expected results, then the organization starts to age.

Determining where your ministry is in its lifecycle is important, because once you start on the downward trend it is very difficult to revive the organization.  In Stall Points, the authors say that once you have a significant downturn, research shows only a 7% chance of ever recovering to see moderate or high growth again.  If you wait until you plateau, it is too late to do very much.  The problem is that long before you hit your revenue peak the basis on which you were viable has already expired.  You’ve already used up much of the grace period to get something new going.  Are you still growing?  Well, sheer momentum will carry even a dead organization forward for a number of years before it finally expires and collapses!  There is no reason to delay jumping to a new lifecycle once you are solidly on the growth track of the first one.  You keep the first one going as long as it continues to grow, but when it is done, you have something else to go forward with.

Ichak Adizes has a free online assessment and a diagram of a corporate lifecycle to help you determine where you are in your organizational lifecycle.  It takes about five minutes to answer some questions and generate a graph showing where you are.  You want to be on the left side of the bell curve.  That side, because of its shape, is called the S-curve because it is the shape of an “S”.  There is a slow period of growth at the beginning of an organization’s life, then rapid growth as its products and services catch on, and then the growth flattens out as the organization matures.

There are also some leading indicators that can help you find where you are.  In Jumping the S-Curve: How to Beat the Growth Cycle, Get on Top, and Stay There, Nunes and Breene say there are three hidden S-curves that will flatten out well before the revenue curve does.  If you watch those, they will tell you when you are approaching the top of your revenue curve.  The three hidden S-curves are:

1. Relevance – over time you can lose your relevance either to your donors or your beneficiaries
2. Distinctive capabilities – over time you can lose your distinctiveness and become just another ministry
3. Talent attraction – people sense when an organization is past its prime and it becomes harder to attract and retain good staff

If you have reason to wonder about your ministry’s relevance, distinctiveness or ability to attract people, you need to take action!

Some leaders can only see one S-curve, and can’t conceive how to start something new (anything that is really new will always appear radical).  But if you only exist on one S-curve, you will end up simply trying to outdo other charities doing what you do, attracting donations solely on the basis of incremental improvements in cost or quality or both.  Perhaps who has the lowest overhead percentage!  This is not a long term solution.  It often ends up as though you are rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic.  Nunes and Breene say when you compete like this, the future is bleak and can only end in organizational death.

A healthy way to think about your ministry’s future is to imagine that it has a shelf life and will expire unless it is renewed prior to its ‘best before’ date.  The key word here is ‘renewed.’  You can’t plan on the same old, same old taking you into the future.  The same mission, yes.  The same values, yes.  The same methods and assumptions?  No!!

An expiry date is stamped on everything you do. If you don’t watch the dates, there will come a day when your entire ministry will expire. Organizational longevity is dependent on keeping those expiry dates as far out as possible.  I wrote the following points in 1997 for a business column, and I think they have stood the test of time (I’ve adjusted them to suit charities):

• A truism I’ve used often is “Success breeds success.” We learn from our successes and each success generally opens the door to more opportunity. However, success also breeds potentially harmful attitudes, such as the feeling of invincibility.  You think success is a ‘right’ you’ve earned. You may even believe what reporters write about you.  The issue is that since you have been successful at a particular period and in a particular set of circumstances, you may now believe that success is an automatic, ongoing condition. When you enjoy success, make sure you understand what conditions and decisions led to success. If you don’t understand why you were successful, you won’t recognize when those conditions change and you will take a hit.
• Some leaders know what led to success and elevate that causal factor (a strategy or a program) to the status of a ‘sacred cow’. This is equally dangerous because it reduces your thinking to a set of limited options. The antidote is to recognize that for a particular set of conditions, the ‘sacred cow’ is the appropriate means to success but it may not be appropriate tomorrow. Identify your ‘sacred cows,’ let people know they are no longer ‘sacred’ and get your team to challenge their continuing effectiveness.
• Examine your strengths as well. Often the areas in which we feel strongest are the breeding grounds for our downfall.  Our strengths are assumed to be safe areas and therefore aren’t examined as carefully as they should be.
• Your ministry must maximize the fundraising value of its existing programs while developing their replacements that will attract future donations and grants.  Tomorrow doesn’t just happen, yet many organizations rest on their current successes without realizing it is only a matter of time until their current programs are obsolete.  Get people thinking both for today and tomorrow.
• Make room for new initiatives by abandoning old initiatives that have served their time.  Stay fresh.  Keep the real winners, but let go of anything limping along.  Treat the continuation of every strategy or program as a fresh investment decision.  No matter how good they’ve been, which ones will provide the best results for the future?  Support those.  Extend the shelf life of your ministry by developing the next generation of programs now while you still have cashflow.
• Re-examine current operations for potential improvement.  Over time you always lose efficiency.  Either people get sloppy or performance improvements elsewhere surpass you.  Keep your head up and look for ways to improve.  Always assume you can do better.  Make your equipment work harder and help your people work smarter!
• The easiest place to extend your shelf-life is to adapt to new opportunities in two areas: look for unmet needs your beneficiaries have and fill those; and find out why some people choose not to support your programs (so look for donors who have never given to you but who do give to similar ministries).

At CCCC we are checking our own “best before” date and beginning a process to find the next S-curve for us.  I’ll keep you posted as we progress.  I don’t know what the future holds for CCCC, but I really like what Peter Drucker said: “The best way to predict the future is to create it.”  Rather than waiting for external forces to act on CCCC, we are choosing to ask Drucker’s question, “If we were starting today, knowing what we now know, would we do it the same way?” to re-design our ministry and, in turn, our future.  How about you?