Setting Direction Through Church Vision, Strategy and Action Plans

By Ken Godevenos, MBA, CCP, CHRP

How many times have you or someone you know sat in a church board meeting in which some of those present disagreed on the use of corporate-style approaches of managing church staff? Typically, some argue there is no place for it while others promote it as the only way to go.

Welcome to my new column, Staff Management, dealing with that very issue. My goal--and that of Church Business® as well--is to help senior church leaders (pastors, administrators and/or lay leaders) rid workplaces of discontent, low morale or poor productivity. Beginning with this article and continuing throughout the next year and beyond, I want to discuss various Human Resources (HR) issues and topics that could well apply to your group of employees--yes, right in your church.

I hope to cover among other things resource planning, job descriptions, recruitment and selection, compensation, benefits, orientation, HR policies, performance, motivation, delegation, difficult employees, absenteeism, and church boards. I hope you'll join me regularly and also provide your comments.

This current column addresses the foundation of all dealings with employees--the direction you have set in accordance with your church's vision, strategy and action plan. That's right, how you treat your employees in every aspect of the relationship should depend almost entirely on this vision, strategy and action plan. If it doesn't, you may face one of several unwanted results. First of all, you may not be getting the kind of results you are expecting from the various ministries led by the staff. Or, you may be rewarding or compensating the wrong staff behaviors. Third, you may not be hiring the right people for the job, even if you think they're the greatest associates you have ever had onboard. And last but certainly not least, your congregation may be misunderstanding what your team does, and/or undervaluing their contributions to the whole work of your church. All these things, and other negative outcomes, are costly to finances, productivity and morale perspective.

The terms "vision," "strategy" and "action plan" are not ones that all organizations agree on. Some combine the three categories into two. Others use different "handles." But what they are called is unimportant. What is important is to have a program that satisfies the criteria and gives you the direction you need for managing the affairs of the church, including the treatment of staff.

I've picked these categories because I believe these (or their equivalents) are all necessary, unique aspects of setting directions, and because they fit nicely into a three-category timing scheme necessary for an effective direction-setting process.

None of these documents are simply HR tools. In fact, they should come from your church board. They should outline in a very clear way why the church exists and what it hopes to "be" when it achieves its purpose for existence. Each should describe how it intends to achieve or actualize that desired image of itself. Finally, each specifies what needs to be done in the short-term to facilitate the achieving of the desired image in support of the church's raison-d'être.

If your church has not yet adopted such documents, the brief outlines below will help get you on your way.

Church Vision

This document is often referred to as a mission statement by most non-church organizations. Some call it the Organization's Mandate. For churches, I prefer the term "vision" simply because it distinguishes churches from secular entities. I believe that the term Mandate could be misinterpreted as a direction that is shorter in nature than what (I would hope) a vision or a mission statement implies.

Regardless what you call it, the vision statement (or its equivalent) should state the organization's purpose for existence. For corporations that produce products or offer services, for example, visions/mission statements are often very broad, usually along the lines of "We exist to improve quality of life." Without debating the honesty of this statement, we see there is no mention of what these corporations actually do. This statement references the ultimate--not immediate--reason for existing. Similarly, churches need to sit down and determine why their local congregations ultimately exist. It may not be as obvious as you think, and churches that have done it would agree.

All else being equal, and assuming that all local churches get their authority and power from the similar source (the Scriptures), then I suggest the Ultimate Vision Statement of nearly all churches would be almost identical. In its simplest form (though not finalized by any means), it would read as follows: "We exist to glorify God."

Now, how does that simple statement make any difference in our relationship with church staff? Isn't it more descriptive of what the church activities should be all about? Well, yes it is. But remember, those of us who have chosen to walk the road espousing the church's philosophy cannot do it in isolation of how we treat those that work for and with us. That is, we can't separate our activities depending on how we should worship with our activities from how we treat our employees (church or otherwise). So that very small vision statement makes a big difference as the foundational basis of employment treatment in the church. To put it bluntly, we could not take any action with our employees that didn't "glorify God" if the aforementioned was our vision statement. Every policy, every order, every evaluation and everything related to the working relationship would have to satisfy that vision.

Checkpoint: Does your church have a vision statement? If so, this forms the basis for proceeding along this process. If not, take some time to establish one that reflects not only your reason-d'être and your key activities but also your main operational philosophy.

Church Strategy

The next step of the process takes the vision and begins to build a picture of what achieving it will look like. Some organizations approach this stage by asking themselves the following question: How will we know we have achieved our vision? To answer the question, they might say, Here's what we'll look like when that is achieved, adding clear, unanimously recognizable signs of success. This is called operationalizing the vision. In essence, this is the church's "long-range plan," and it might span two or many, many years. It does not change regularly or easily. These signs of success might include having a certain size of congregation; introducing an increasing number of people to Christianity each year; spending more for missions than for local church needs; being effective in providing seniors' services in a specific territory; and so on. (While some of these may seem more applicable in a business setting, the principles inherent in establishing goals and pursuing them are also applicable to a local church. Remember that these are just long-term goals. I'll be the first to admit that our success or worth as a church is not contingent on actually achieving these goals, but we stand a much better chance of doing so if we have them in front of us, generally guiding our focus and activities.)

Again, this strategy might be defined as what your church will be doing--in fairly specific terms--but not how you’ll be doing it. The "how" part is determined in the third stage of the process. Strategy is your mid-term document and its contents may change from stage to stage in the church's or the congregation's lifecycle or circumstances.

Church Action Plan

Action plans are a church's "short-term" or "annual" plans for action and deliverables. Do not confuse this document with an annual church budget. Your church budget only indicates that you have the funds needed to do what your action plan says you will do. Ideally, yes, your annual action plan will reflect your annual budget. In reality, however, the two just shove each other around (lovingly, of course) until the stamina of one clearly beats the other and you agree to go along with it.

The annual action plan document, however, is the very thing that most churches lack today. Most set a budget and approve it. They set the money aside and then somehow expect things to happen. Most simply allow their staff to do their own thing, staying within budget, or sometimes scrambling to spend it for fear they don't get it again next year. When money is over-spent in one area, then everyone is told to tighten their belts, which they do easily since there's no approved "action plan," only an approved "budget" on paper.

On the other hand, most large and successful organizations work according to action plans that describe the actual "deliverables" expected from each area or function of the church. These are prioritized and assigned to specific employees as their responsibility to oversee and deliver while allowing others to participate in the project or function as necessary. The agreed-to deliverables then become the yardstick of each employee's performance as they form part of a performance contract (formal or otherwise) for the year.

If money gets tight, specific action plans are revised or even dropped altogether. The remaining deliverables are still expected. There is no "do what you think is best" philosophy, and no leaving to chance what will or will not get done before the word gets out regarding expenditures and the year-end.

Checkpoint: Action plans are usually developed by each staff person entailing his/her area of responsibilities, based on what the church strategy has identified as the desired goals or images in that particular area (e.g., youth, music, sermons, recreation, missions, seniors, outreach and more).

We believe strategic local church documents very much impact the treatment of church staff. The contents of a church vision, strategy and action plan form the crux of how you develop your Human Resources--specifically, reward and compensation programs for your staff. Lack of these as foundational tools not only makes it difficult to achieve the church's desired results, it also makes it tougher to determine each staff member’s accountability, responsibility and contribution toward achieving the goals.

The basic thinking is this: a staff member's activities should focus on and support one or more of the church's identified deliverables in their annual integrated action plan. Secondly, that action plan should support one or more of the strategies the church will pursue with respect to its activities in accordance with its strategy document. Finally, the strategies to be pursued will support the church's vision.

If your church lacks one or more of these documents (or their equivalent), you should consider developing them. In our next column, we will discuss identifying the need for additional staff resources. I'll also show you how the existence of the documents I've discussed here will be a key tool in determining this need.

Ken Godevenos is the president of Accord Resolution Services Inc. He has more than 26 years of experience in Human Resources and has served on and/or chaired several church boards. The author, an independent HR consultant specializing in compensation, can be contacted at (416) 449-7282, by fax at (416) 449-2922, or by e-mail at kgod@accordconsulting.com. Visit Accord's Web site at www.accordconsulting.com.

Commentary or opinions submitted by readers may be included in future columns of Staff Management with their permission.