A roadmap to effective congregational planning

Creating a sense of mission and carrying it out

How do you do effective congregational planning? Darrell Kehler of SCOPE Leadership Development was asked to answer this question at the June 10, 2022, Ministerial meeting. His focus was on how leaders work together with their congregations in assessing their church health, deciding what is important, and moving forward.

Congregational planning is a little like moose hunting, is how Kehler began the session. Planning for the hunt is an interesting process. Everyone who goes is committed, but everyone approaches it differently. They need to bring everything along but can’t bring very much. Despite all the planning, results are somewhat unpredictable. It requires patience and hard work, and the hunters must make it work—no one gets voted off the island. Congregational planning, in a similar way takes intentional effort and planning.

Evaluate realistically where you stand right now.

The first step, Kehler said, is to evaluate together where your church stands right now. He showed the life-cycle chart (above right) and explained its purpose is to help us be realistic. Stages one to seven are the phases that churches normally go through from when they first launch. All congregations launched at some point, he reminded us. The final life-support phase is one which a few of us have experienced first hand.

Those present at the meeting were invited to respond to a poll and say where they thought their churches landed on this chart. The answers (shown at left) were shared at the meeting. Twenty-three of the fifty people who responded believed their church was in the maintenance phase.

After this exercise, which was designed to provide clarity on where ministerial believed their churches stood currently, Kehler presented them with three key steps to effective congregational planning:

Step 1: Clarify where you are going

Kehler used the example of the cruise to nowhere to illustrate what churches should not be. The cruise to nowhere, he said, is a discount cruise where the ship is the destination. “You won’t visit any ports, but rather have two to three days to relax, unplug, and explore all the bells and whistles the ship has to offer.” That is not a picture of the church—our churches are not in existence just to exist. We have a purpose.

As we go through a process of congregational planning like this, Kehler stressed, we need to remember that it’s Christ who builds the church (Matthew 16:18). We must not institutionalize the church to the point where human effort, rather than Christ, is leading the church. It’s not just colony Mennonites who fall into traditionalism, Kehler reminded the Ministerial.

Making disciples was the great commission given by Jesus; it is his authority in giving that command that should be our driving force. Although there are many ways to articulate it, making disciples should be the core of any mission statement. It is always more important than the method we use and the goals we set.

We can then ask where we are going and why we exist—this is our vision, our purpose statement. We consider which path we will take to achieve the vision—our strategy. And finally we identify specific, practical, measurable targets to move us toward our goals.

All of us are prone to fall into traditionalism, Kehler reminded the audience. We drift off mission very easily and just do what we’ve always done. Change is hard; we become invested in the ministries we are, or have been, a part of, so keeping the mission before our eyes is important.

Conference Pastor Layton Friesen introduces Darrell Kehler of SCOPE Leadership Development, who spoke to the Ministerial on June 10, 2022. (Jaime Loewen)

Step 2: Align people and ministries

Kehler then spoke about the importance of leaders intentionally leading the change and about how to work together with the church to accomplish the mission. Programs and personnel, he said, are external events and can change quite quickly. Transition, which is an internal process, takes time.

Change can put people in crisis and people need to be supported through it—not pushed. The first stage in the transition is to identify what is being lost and learn how to manage that. It’s important to determine what is being left behind and what is being kept. The second stage is a neutral zone between the old reality and the new one. It can be a time of confusion and distress, but it is also the seedbed for new beginnings. The final stage in the transition process is the new beginnings which comes with understanding of purpose and the parts people will play. It is a time of reorientation and renewal. Throughout this process those leading need to keep communicating.

Step 3: Get moving!

The final step in congregational planning is to get moving, Kehler stated, and the first step in doing that is to build leadership capacity. Rather than making accidental leaders, we should have a clear discipleship process that engages the gifts of the leadership team and the congregation. Engage the “spiritual entrepreneurs,” and give them a chance to speak up. Engage the planners. And be okay with people having different leadership styles and a different pace. This is not about control, Kehler emphasized. People are different and we need those differences.

In particular, the Ministerial was told, churches need to bring the APEs back from extinction, a phrase Kehler borrows from 5Q Central (https://5qcentral.com/ape-extinction/). APEs are the apostles, prophets, and evangelists in the church, and they are agents of change.

Developing people takes time—more time than some of us would prefer (and less than others would like) but this is about the mission of the church.

The second step in getting moving was to structure for growth, not control. Be aware of where God is at work and release people to serve. There are a variety of structures, we were told, and not every structure fits every congregation. God didn’t intend for discipleship making to be bureaucratic or complicated. It needs to get simple and get outward, as Thomas Rainer and Eric Geiger say in their book Simple Church.

The third step in getting moving, Kehler said, is to pick the low-hanging fruit. “Do something,” he said. What is right there that just needs to be done? Do that. A small but effective change can build trust in the process.

Kehler concluded his session by encouraging the ministerial never to be caught off guard, and by the words of a friend who reminded him frequently that this is our generation, and we are responsible for our generation.

For additional learning, Kehler provided a book recommendation list (shown below).