Wednesday, August 13, 2008
Does The Holy Spirit Make Plans?
- Acknowledge the sovereignty of God.
- Listen for the “bass note” of biblical theology.
- Respect the ways God has led in the past.
- Recognize that God’s new wine requires new wineskins.
- Acknowledge that God uses all we are for his purposes.
This is all very worthy and practical advice, I strongly recommend that if you are in church leadership in any way, you read the series carefully and heed every single word.
Mark is saying in his sage advice something that I would put more simply and directly. In general, strategic planning tends to focus on the institution instead of the Kingdom and the role of the members of the institution in the Kingdom. Most strategic planning I have ever been a part of focused on how to make the church grow instead of how to make the people in the church grow. It focused on how to bring people through the door instead of how to make people that go out and bring people in. It focused on the temporal instead of the eternal.
At the risk of blowing my own horn, I think my business and business in general provides a good example. Most business building today follows a pretty standard model of planning and execution, it is anchored in marketing and sets certain key points where new financial resources are needed, etc. What happens in these circumstances is that the business usually grows exponentially, and then it reaches a certain maturity level and has difficulty transitioning from "new" to "commodity" status. Most businesses fail at this point. Some people, namely the initial investors make an enormous amount of money under this model, and when failure occurs, it is of little consequence to them, their fortune is made.
Of course, 100's, even 1000's of people can be put out of work if the transition fails, and customers that have come to rely on the product are left in a lurch - but the business has done what it set out to do - make money for the investors, at least the early ones. Later investors can find themselves holding the bag.
My business in recent years has become pretty successful - a fact for which I thank the Lord daily. By business standards, it remains small, but I have way more than I need and remain the only investor, and employee. I have built it on a very different model. I focused on the product, not the marketing. I focused on relationships with customers and sub-contractors. I went through many, many lean years.
But my transition point has been a very different one. Rather that transition from "Start-up" to "commodity," I have transitioned from "struggling for the business" to "presumptive vendor." By virtue of the relationships I have built, business now comes to me rather than me having to find it. I do not have to worry much about the next product or sale - they find me easily. My business has a permanence that will become problematic only when I choose to retire and need to figure out a way for my clients to be cared for.
My business plan did not focus on sales, marketing, financing, and investors. My business plan focused on finding customers, providing service, and making friends of them. Now, they send me the new business, and as to all that other stuff, well, it takes care of itself as it is necessary.
What I long for in strategic planning for the church is that later approach. It is slow, results are often hard to see for a long time. But it has permanence, and it focuses on what matters. I long for a strategic plan from a church that says, "Step One - make disciples. Step Two - have those disciples make disciples." Then let the rest of it work itself out as we go along.
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