As previously announced in Program Evaluation 1: Selecting the program, I am blogging a program review in real time. So each post will bring you up-to-date with where we currently are at. By following along, you can see how to do a program evaluation. This post documents the theory of change and the logic model [...]
Strategic planning for Christian ministries
Here, in a nutshell, is the issue about strategic planning in a Christian ministry context: What sets the strategic limitations for your ministry – your circumstances or your mission? It can’t be clearer than that. Environmental scans and SWOT analysis, the traditional strategic planning tools, focus too much on your circumstances, the reality of the world [...]
Mission first, then program
A pastor surprised me recently with the deep insight he got while designing a review of his church’s youth ministry. I taught a group of pastors (including this pastor) a year ago how to do program evaluations, and he did a good job at his first attempt. This year, on his own he went far deeper, because as he laid [...]
Leaders – bridging the worlds of scholarship and the street
Here’s a not-so-obvious way to think about your leadership. If you grab and run with it, you will have a far more engaged support base that is better informed and equipped to be champions for your ministry. Tim Keller wrote in an essay, Creation, Evolution, and Christian Laypeople, that as pastors “we are to be a [...]
“So, what do you do?”
That was the opening question at my Harvard Business School course on Strategic Perspectives in Nonprofit Management. How many times a day do you get asked this question? I had already answered it at least 20 times today as I met the other students in the class. As part of the registration process we had [...]
Rev. John Pellowe, MBA, DMin
