Monday, April 21, 2008

Strategic Planning - Part One

Our ministry staff spent the day at Lancaster Bible College last Wednesday in a full day of strategic planning. We were hosted and led by Rich Wilson. Rich is Vice President at LBC and he and his family also attend Grace Church. Those present at the meeting were:

Myself (Senior Pastor)
Brenda Miller (Early Childhood Coordinator)
Tammy Wiggins (Daycare Director)
Sherry McConaghay (Elementary Principal)
Doug Kegarise (Director of Student Ministries)
Eric Lewis (Secondary Principal)
Rick Bernhardt (Senior Administrator of our School and Daycare)
Matt McElravy (Worship Arts Director)
Andrew Norton (Business Manager)
Susan Auld (Director of Children’s Ministry)
Tim Auld (Pastor of Spiritual Formation)
Whitie Willard (Care Pastor)

John Kegarise, who is the chairman of our Elder Board here at Grace, also joined us for part of the day. Rich began by reminding us that good is often the biggest enemy to greatness as seen in Jim Collins book, Good to Great. If we settle for being good, we will never do what it takes to become great. There is no question that we have a very good ministry. We could, if we desired, just put Grace Church on auto pilot and coast in a maintenance mode mindset and be seen by most everyone as a successful ministry. However, I believe that God desires us to move from being a good ministry to becoming a great ministry, reaching our redemptive potential in Christ.

Rich then shared with us 12 aspects of strategic planning. Strategic planning…

-is mission and vision driven
-is strategic
-is hard work
-is a process
-requires commitment
-requires communication and education
-drives the budget (not the reverse…the budget should not drive vision)
-is most successful when using data
-is results oriented and measurable
-has to be flexible
-has to be participatory
-has to be written

Be sure to read the next 2 days blogs for the rest of the notes from our meeting!

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