As a young(er) church consultant around the turn of this century, one of the throw-away lines that I used to hear was that the days of long-range planning were over. The world was moving too fast, we were told. All of us had seen the long-range planning reports and posters of imagined facility development hidden away in old file cabinets and church closets - plans that never came to fruition. It was assumed that future-oriented planning was, therefore, no longer a valid enterprise. About that time, the congregation which I now belong to was creating future plans based on its recent past, assuming ever new generations of families with young children were its future. Now, we look at the renderings of the giant, 1000-seat sanctuary envisioned for the street corner and we thank God that that thing never got built.
