Change Your Church . . . everyday!
Vibrant, fruitful, growing congregations create a cycle of ongoing innovation and reinvention. It's a Spirit-driven process that involves:
This training address reinvention from the mindset of discerning and developing a strategic vision and as a process embed reinvention into our daily lives and routines. Join the conversation, share your wisdom, and learn from others.
- Asking powerful questions - during worship, among our members, with our neighbors, and through our online platforms.
- Observing our actions, assumptions, attitudes, approaches, messaging, schedules - along with what we measure and celebrate
- Experimenting with new concepts, prototyping new approaches, and asking "What would happen if" more often.
- Inspecting our results by listing what's working, what's not working, what we should stop, start, or keep doing.
- Repeating the cycle of innovation as an unending feedback loop that pushes us to make reinvention an everyday occasion.
This training address reinvention from the mindset of discerning and developing a strategic vision and as a process embed reinvention into our daily lives and routines. Join the conversation, share your wisdom, and learn from others.
DISCUSSION THEMES
SESSION 1 | KEY POINTS
- Indicators of a thriving congregation
- Measure what matters (impact/reach)
- List strengths, challenges & opportunitie
- Listen to your members & neighbors
- Create a ministry scorecard
- 5 "flourishing" practices.
- 4 skills leaders need to continually anticipate & adapt
- 3 focus areas of ministry that need attention and a plan.
- Developing bifocal leaders and teams.
- List your non-negotiables. Avoid mission drift.
- All leaders need a roadmap.
SESSION 1 | QUESTIONS
- Who articulates your church's purpose?
- Who should be articulating it's purpose?
- Why is our purpose so "fuzzy" to people?
- What does our purpose help us say no to?
- If your mission is clear, what models need to change?
SESSION 1 | NEXT STEPS
- Read your mission. Is it clear and compelling?
- Find out who knows and can recite your mission statement.
- Consider Shorten it the mission statement.
- Create a tagline to capture your church's uniqueness.
- Complete the sentence: "We help people . . ."
- Get clear about purpose, personally.
- List all the places mission is shared.
- Clarify your values; rank your priorities.
- List what your church is passionate about.
- Track your trajectory.
SESSION 2 | KEY POINTS
- Paint a picture of a preferred future
- Design a road map; list quarterly sprints
- Focus on big rocks & small shifts
- Align leadership agendas with key goals
- Review your results & celebrate your wins
- Design a road map; list quarterly sprints
- Focus on big rocks & small shifts
- Align leadership agendas with key goals
- Review your results & celebrate your wins
SESSION 2 | QUESTIONS
- Do you currently have a strategic plan?
- How have plans worked out four you in the past?
- What shifts in ministry do you need to emphasize?
- Who tracks and updates your plans?
- How have plans worked out four you in the past?
- What shifts in ministry do you need to emphasize?
- Who tracks and updates your plans?
SESSION 2 | NEXT STEPS
- Start small; focus on low hanging fruit.
- Start with aligning board and paid staff.
- Build your guiding coalition.
- Focus on quarterly sprints.
- Start with aligning board and paid staff.
- Build your guiding coalition.
- Focus on quarterly sprints.
SESSION 3 | KEY POINTS
- Change what you consistently say & do
- Change culture by changing your systems
- Build a guiding coalition to support change
- Learn to ask, observe & experiment
- Start with low-hangings is where the description goes
- Change culture by changing your systems
- Build a guiding coalition to support change
- Learn to ask, observe & experiment
- Start with low-hangings is where the description goes
SESSION 3 | QUESTIONS
- What does a thriving culture look like?
- What assumptions/beliefs need to be released?
- Do your leaders model the way for others?
- What assumptions/beliefs need to be released?
- Do your leaders model the way for others?
SESSION 3 | NEXT STEPS
- Conduct a culture audit
- Create a SAY and DO list
- Build better systems
- Create a SAY and DO list
- Build better systems
SESSION 1 | TOOLS
SESSION 2 | TOOLS
SESSION 3 | TOOLS
SAMPLE NEXT STEPS
1 | FORM a visioning team
IDEAS FOR NEXT STEPS
- Create job descriptions for team members.
- Establish criteria and process for selecting vision team members.
- Assign roles to individual members.
- Commission vision team members.
- Position members for greatest impact.
QUESTIONS
- How often do your leaders dream?
- Who are your primary vision casters?
- How far into the future do you dream?
- Who is invested in your present & future mission?
2 | Define your reality
IDEAS FOR NEXT STEPS
- Conduct a congregation-wide survey.
- Review the church's current mission, vision, and values.
- Gather information about the church's history.
- Interview members and community leaders.
- Review programs and ministry activities.
- Create a roster of current ministry leaders.
- Gather current data regarding local demographics.
QUESTIONS
- Does your church have a current strategic plan?
- What's the status of your ministry teams/committees?
- What's working? What's not working?
- What's for process for onboarding members? Leaders?
- Are we staffed for the past, present, or future?
- List expectations you have for members.
3 | Rethink what's possible
IDEAS FOR NEXT STEPS
- Complete Celebrate, Tweak, Add & Delete exercises.
- Compile a Ministry Site Profile base on info gathering during step 2.
- Host a visioning retreat to develop an emerging vision.
- Assembling short-term teams to create one-page ministry maps.
- Share emerging vision with members; schedule focus groups.
QUESTIONS
- What prevents people from befriending others?
- What norms can be create help people befriend?
- Is it safe for people to let their guard down?
- Do your leaders regularly befriend?
- Which church events are idea for befriending?
4 | Create annual road map
IDEAS FOR NEXT STEPS
- Create a 4-page plan summarizing goals, strategies and steps.
- Address staffing and structural issues to be addressed in year 2.
- Align committees, teams and task forces with purpose and priorities.
- Develop infrastructure plan to support ministry goals.
- Set & celebrate short-term milestones; communicate progress to members.
QUESTIONS
- Where can members access information about our plans?
- How will we sharing our findings and successes with others?
- Have we built feedback loops into planning processes?
- How often will we review and update our plans?
- Who will be the keeper of our plans?
- How will we hold each other accountable?
VIDEOS to watch
BOOKS to read
- Advanced Strategic Planning
- Agile Engagement
- Agility Shift
- Analog Church
- Be Mean about the Vision
- Beyond Maintenance to Mission
- Beyond the Idea
- Beyond the Prototype
- Black Box Thinking
- Building the Bridge as You Walk on It
- By Design or Default
- Change
- Change: How Organizations Achieve Hard to Imagine Results in Uncertain and Volatile Times
- Change and Conflict in Your Congregation
- Change the Culture, Change the Game
- Change Your Church for Good
- Changing the Conversation
- Charting Change
- Church Leadership Essentials
- Church Leadership
- Church Revitalization Checklist
- Church Transfusion
- Church Unique
- Clarity First
- Cracking Creativity
- Cracking Your Church's Culture Code
- Creating Your Church's Culture
- Discerning God's Will Together
- Discerning Your Congregation's Future
- Doing Action Research in Your Own Organization
- Doing the Math of Mission
- Dream Big, Think Small
- Everywhere You Look
- Holy Conversations
- Kingdom Innovation for a Brave New World
- Leveling the Church
- Making the Shift Field Guide
- Mapping Innovation
- Memories, Hopes, and Conversations
- Missional Renaissance
- Missional Worship, Worshipful Mission
- Navigating the Future
- Nine Marks of a Healthy Church
- Open Source Church
- Paid to Think
- Pursuing God's Will Together
- Quietly Courageous
- Recreating the Church
- Reframing Hope
- Reframing Organizations
- Sailboat Church
- Shift 2.0
- Shift: Three Big Moves for the 21st Century Church
- Start This Stop That
- Strategic Planning: A Pragmatic Guide
- Switch: How to Change Things When Change is Hard
- Ten Types of Innovation
- The Agile Church
- The Anticipatory Organization
- The Creativity Leap
- The Five Faces of Genius
- The Five Most Important Questions
- The Five Practices of Fruitful Congregations
- The Four Lenses of Innovation
- The Gathered and Scattered Church
- The Kingdom Connected
- The Power of Asset-Mapping
- The Power of Moments
- The Post-Quarantine Church
- The Practice: Shipping Creative Work
- The Road to Better Habits
- The Shaping of Things to Come
- The Strategy Visioning Workshop Journal
- Thriving Communities
- Transformational Church
- Transforming Congregational Culture
- Whole Church: Leading from Fragmentation to Engagement