Plans & Objectives...

With a community’s vision, mission, and core values in place and clearly articulated, the leadership, along with the community, is ready to make decisions about the future of the church. A community needs to take steps to have achievable milestones along the journey towards its vision to avoid missional drift. A five year and/or ten year plan is a great place to start. A question such as, “what will our church look like in X years if we faithfully implement our mission and keep our eyes on our vision?” If you are to reach this goal, you will need closer goals, and if you are going to reach those goals you are going to need to decide on some “objectives.”

Patrick Lencioni suggests that there are two types of objectives: standard objectives and current objectives.[1] A community’s standard objectives are things that they commit to always doing, activities and procedures that are connected to the life cycle and rhythm of the community’s continued existence.[2] For a specific church that might be something like weekly worship, youth ministry, evangelism, community service, prayer gathering, etc. There are also current objectives, activities, and procedures that are part of the steps towards meeting your next goal.[3] These could be something like make a new staff hire, make your poverty alleviation efforts sustainable, find a new way to engage a specific demographic of your context, ect.

[1] Lencioni, Patrick, The 3 Big Questions for a Frantic Family: A Leadership Fable- about Restoring Sanity to the Most Important Organization in Your Life, San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass, 2008, 193.

[2] Ibid., 193-4.

[3] Ibid., 194.