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.
But it would be a gross overstatement to say that church planning is dead - it is just significantly changed.
1. It used to be largely focused on campus development, on the next buildings we would build. Today, construction costs have sky-rocketed even as the most vital churches have become highly adaptive of ever-shifting demographics. Assuming that a church’s successful future would simply mean the patterns of the past on a larger scale - that has led to a lot of wasted resources. Today church planning, while considering the question of how we house ministry, is not primarily focused on long-term facility development. But, this is not the biggest shift.
2. It used to be heavily focused on staff development, on the next professionals we would seek to hire. Today, health insurance costs have sky-rocketed, even as the most vital churches have shifted to a very different priority of staff skills and portfolios. Assuming that a church’s successful future would entail a larger staff has led to churches over-invested in staff positions that do not steward well the church’s limited financial resources towards new challenges, leaving the church with insufficient investments in communications and new ministry development. But this is not the biggest shift.
3. The biggest shift is the move away from planning the what, to getting more deeply in touch with the why. It is not what we will do as a church in five years…. Something which we really have no idea about. It is what do we need to know clearly in order to make good decisions about new initiatives even as we put ineffective ministries to rest. It is more than ever about clarity of values. It is about how we keep in touch with our changing community contexts, and interface with the new people all around us. We will figure out the how on the journey. But in order to do this, we need to know our why - more than ever before!
My congregation, The United Methodist Church of Palm Springs has doubled in its participation numbers in the last three or four years. Though we are constantly thinking about how best to utilize limited facilities and land resources, we are not burdened with excessive space to heat and maintain. And as we see our two services getting fuller, we can much more easily adapt to a three-service scenario than we can build a larger sanctuary. The excellent ministry planning work our church undertook six years ago has paid off because it helped us to get clear about the kind of church we wanted to be, and the sorts of people we wanted to bless in this new era. Most importantly, it helped us get crystal clear on our values - without locking us into long-term commitments to any of our ministry strategies. This had made for nimbleness and holy improvisation, as our members come up with fresh ministry ideas.
Our church is thriving in this century because of good planning and visioning that enables us to pivot, innovate and adapt faster than most churches. This kind of planning is different than the sort of work I did with churches in the 1990s. But church planning did not die. It simply morphed. To paraphrase Mark Twain, “rumors of the death of church planning are greatly exaggerated.”
Epicenter Group exists to help church leaders lead thriving faith communities in the twenty-first century. We would love to explore what dynamic ministry might look like for your church! Reach out to us in the new year! Exploring possibilities of consultation will cost you nothing! You can email us at epicentergroup.dc@gmail.com to learn more.
Happy New Year, everyone!
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