I recently read Simple Church by Thom Rainer and Eric Geiger on a cross-country flight. I loved it. Extremely helpful book as we go into our strategic season at NCC. Just thought I'd share a few 30,000 foot reflections over the next few weeks as we gear up for our annual strategy retreat in December.
I'm convinced that the healthiest churches are the most focused on the mission. We have to constantly be reminding ourselves of what we're trying to accomplish. What are our primary objectives? And then we need to invest our time, energy and money trying to accomplish those things.
Every church has the same mission: make disciples. We want to help people cross the line of faith and grow into Christ-likeness. But I think we need to break it down into measurable objectives or practical steps.
Here are few of our primary objectives off the top of my head:
1) Get people plugged into a small group.
2) Get people plugged into a ministry.
3) Send every NCCer on a missions trip.
4) Challenge people to go public with their faith via baptism.
5) Show the love of God in practical ways via outreach.
6) Experiment with new ways of doing church.
7) Equip people to practice personal spiritual disciplines.
8) Turn attenders into inviters.
9) Help people develop a God-honoring giving habit.
10) Help people develop a biblical worldview.
Our planning retreats boils down to this: what are we trying to accomplish as a church and how can we do it better? We need to be evaluating and upgrading all the time!
Here are two strategic questions:
1) What do we need to do better?
2) What do we need to stop doing?
In order to do something better, you generally have to stop doing something so you can rechannel your energy. Sometimes you need to curse a barren fig tree. If something isn't producing fruit, you need to kill it. We killed our second Saturday night service earlier this year. Then we resurrected it a few months later with a few tweaks and it is thriving. If we hadn't killed it, I think it would have died a slow death.
We honestly try to put everything we do on the table at our annual strategy retreat. Too many churches have too many sacred cows. One of the ways you stay simple is by killing what isn't working!
I'm convinced that the healthiest churches are the most focused on the mission. We have to constantly be reminding ourselves of what we're trying to accomplish. What are our primary objectives? And then we need to invest our time, energy and money trying to accomplish those things.
Every church has the same mission: make disciples. We want to help people cross the line of faith and grow into Christ-likeness. But I think we need to break it down into measurable objectives or practical steps.
Here are few of our primary objectives off the top of my head:
1) Get people plugged into a small group.
2) Get people plugged into a ministry.
3) Send every NCCer on a missions trip.
4) Challenge people to go public with their faith via baptism.
5) Show the love of God in practical ways via outreach.
6) Experiment with new ways of doing church.
7) Equip people to practice personal spiritual disciplines.
8) Turn attenders into inviters.
9) Help people develop a God-honoring giving habit.
10) Help people develop a biblical worldview.
Our planning retreats boils down to this: what are we trying to accomplish as a church and how can we do it better? We need to be evaluating and upgrading all the time!
Here are two strategic questions:
1) What do we need to do better?
2) What do we need to stop doing?
In order to do something better, you generally have to stop doing something so you can rechannel your energy. Sometimes you need to curse a barren fig tree. If something isn't producing fruit, you need to kill it. We killed our second Saturday night service earlier this year. Then we resurrected it a few months later with a few tweaks and it is thriving. If we hadn't killed it, I think it would have died a slow death.
We honestly try to put everything we do on the table at our annual strategy retreat. Too many churches have too many sacred cows. One of the ways you stay simple is by killing what isn't working!
7 Comments:
This is great. I may "borrow" some of these...
Thanks for sharing "Simple Church," Pastor Mark. The 10 primary objectives and 2 strategic questions seem vital for assessing any ministry. Two questions for you: (1) dates of annual staff strategy retreat so that we can pray specifically for all of you and (2) is the strategy retreat internal or do you invite an external leadership coach or external ministry consultant to attend/speak (with you all and the Holy Spirit, of course)?
Baptism service testimonies and Catacombs worship was phenomenal last night! (Revelation 12:11)
Pastor Mark,
I'm in the middle of "Simple Church" right now. I had seen it on another blogger's list of books he's read this year, and ordered it and Ed Stetzer's "Breaking the Missional Code" from Amazon. I started reading "Simple Church" first, on a family weekend getaway to Branson in late October. I got through the intro and first chapter on the drive up from Little Rock.
We went to Springfield first to see the Ron DiCianni paintings at HQ. We stopped in the GPH bookstore, and while browsing the Spanish section, I found "Iglesia Simple." I bought it to give the the pastor at the Spanish church I attend in addition to my home church in NLR. The story of Pastor Rush described our situation there perfectly.
A week and a half ago, our Spanish pastor read the book, in a marathon session that sounds like yours. He said it really helped him focus, and he's planning some major retooling for 2008 to simplify our schedule so people don't have church activities every night of the week. We're going to focus on the main things, and eliminate programs that are there "just because" and not really contributing to spiritual growth.
It was really cool how God had me purchase the book and start reading it right before the trip where I saw the Spanish version, so I could get it to our pastor right before starting the 2008 planning.
Our church is 11 years old. Our leadership team read "Simple Church" last year. It helped us create a clear and simple process for discipleship. It's critical to stay on mission. But it's amazing how hard it is to kill sacred cows. And like your church, ours is young and very flexible. But every cow has an owner or two. Cows with names who've been treated more like pets than livestock. When you kill their cow, you kill their pet! So do the right thing and get focused on mission, but be prepared.
I was surprised by how many people were turned off by the title. "Simple Church" to them meant simplistic and shallow. Instead of stream-lined, focused and effective. We decided to stop using the phrase "simple church" and instead talk about giving our people a "clear path" for growth.
Christina,
Last year we brought in an outside consultation, but we'll keep it internal this year. We'll do it first week of December! Thanks for praying for us. We need lots of wisdom and energy! Pretty intense two days!
PM
Sacred cows are tasty. How true, sometimes we need to scale down rather than do more.
I was the youth pastor at a church where if I wanted to do something new I had to add it rather than replace something that wasn't working right. Not the way to do ministry, and it certainly isn't simple.
As one book title puts it, "Sacred Cows Make Great Gourmet Burgers"
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