Making a Case for Planning
Have You Already Been Where You Are Now?

By Howard Olsen, Ph.D., CPA

No one can predict the future except for God. We live in a world of change — mega-change. If your church isn’t proactive in this evolving environment, will the future be any different than the past?

A recent study by the Institute for Social Research at the University of Michigan offers a few helpful statistics for devising a “game plan”:

• The number of people who’ve never attended church nearly tripled from 1970 to 2000 (12% to 33%, respectively).
• Three times as many people ages 60 to 69 attend church regularly vs. those who are 20 to 29.
• People attending church weekly dropped from 38% to 25% over a 30-year period.

It isn’t a matter of whether or not your church has a strategy to manage these trends — it does. It might not, however, be formalized. One surefire way to impact your church’s future and mission is to dust off a time-tested tool: the strategic plan. Consider these questions: Could your church be more focused? Could it be more effective? Could the staff and volunteers be more efficient?

Vision brings focus. You get what you focus on. Everyone knows this, but most churches are busy tending daily to urgent problems, not focusing on long-term important issues. Unless your staff and volunteers focus on a common vision, the church will go nowhere. A strategic plan helps direct energy and guides them toward shared goals in an ever-changing world.

Mission, goals and objectives empower staff. A long way from being just a paragraph on the wall or in the bulletin, these are the primary guidelines for leading the church to transform more lives: They provide the framework for independent decisions and actions to be coordinated into a church-wide game plan.

Strategy saves time and energy. Once the mission, goals and objectives are clear, you can establish how you’re going to achieve them. A strategy provides the vehicle and answers the question, How are we going to proactively respond to trends in the community given the available resources?

Execution and evaluation ensures success. All the best mission statements and strategies in the world are a waste of time if they’re not implemented. Know what your end result looks like and where your milestones should be. Plan your near-term actions, and reevaluate them every quarter.

When your church has a clear plan and takes appropriate action, you get “traction” to take it from where it is to where you want it to go — not where it’s already been.

Howard Olsen Ph.D., CPA is the president of M3Planning, Inc., a business-development firm that powers www.mychurchplan.com. Contact Olsen by e-mail at howard@m3planning.com.