Strategic Planning
Our final session at the Young Pastors Network gathering was led by Rev. Adam Hamilton and was titled, “Strategic Planning.” These are the notes I took from this final session.
Mike Slaughter, Brian McLaren, and Adam Hamilton each gave one of these three ideals in response to the question, what are the most important ideals needed in staff?
- Integrity [Adam]
- Courage [Mike]
- Patience [Brian]
I liked Brian’s quote that he shared in relationship to his ideal. He said, “Loving truth takes courage, loving people takes patience.”
Adam’s follow to that thought was, “You may have a prophetic word, but you are always a pastor.”
Adam talked about two different kinds of leaders. The first he described as downward spiraling leaders which are those who look at the work ahead and can only seem to consistently repeat how difficult things are going to be or how unlikely it will be that success is achieved. The second type of leader that Adam described was a leader that “radiated possibility.” These types of leaders are champions of the positives and tend to make everyone around them feel a great sense of energy and passion around a particular task. Adam shared some visuals which I copied into my notes.
In talking about mission statements for the church, Adam said, that these guiding ideas need to be either written by the leader or meet the standard of something that the leader is deeply passionate about. If this standard is not met, the leader will not be faithful to keep that vision before the people. In the case of the local church, the preacher won’t preach on it, and it won’t become a part of your church DNA.
Further, Adam said, “never allow a committee to write your mission statement. It’s the best way to kill your mission.”
Also he said, “the mission has to be compelling to the leader first and then it has to be compelling to your people.”
In developing strategic objectives for your local congregation, Adam shared the following ideas of what makes something a “smart” objective.
- Specific
- Measurablle
- Aggressive
- Realistic
- Time-Specific
Adam said that for an objective to not only build a sense of energy and purpose but also get completed by the end of the year, the objective has to meet all of the above criteria.
For 2008, Resurrection set the following three strategic objectives.
- Double the number of people who were incorporating prayer and Bible study into their daily lives.
- Increase by 20% the number of people in the Resurrection family who were participating in efforts to alleviate poverty in the greater Kansas City area.
- Develop plans for future campuses for Church of the Resurrection.
This post is from a series written following the first gathering of the Young Pastors Network at Ginghamsburg United Methodist Church in October of 2008. The rest of the series is available below.
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