Helping Your Church Get Unstuck

Tag Archive - strategy

Helping Your Church Get Unstuck

Wednesday, May 28, 2014

Churches get stuck for all kinds of reasons. It’s okay to get stuck, it’s just not okay to stay that way. There’s too much Kingdom potential on the line. That’s why 2014 needs to be the year that your church finally gets unstuck! At the Unstuck Group we help churches grow their impact through church consulting and coaching experiences designed to focus vision, strategy, and action.

At the Unstuck Group we don’t just offer consulting solutions. We help churches get unstuck!

Check out this infographic to discover more about how we help churches get unstuck!

unstuckinfographic

Consulting Services:

Ministry Health Assessment Complete a comprehensive assessment of your ministry and identify opportunities for next steps.

Strategic Operating Plan Clarify your mission, vision, and core strategies – and then realize it through prioritized action initiatives.

Staffing & Structure Review Determine the best organizational structure for future growth and get the right people in the right roles.

Communications Review communications systems, staffing, websites, graphic design, branding, social media and messaging to develop a communications strategy.

Training Join one of our leadership coaching experiences for pastors and other ministry leaders. We’ll equip and train you to have a bigger impact.

Speaking We’re available to speak at your conference, leadership or staff gathering on a variety of leadership and ministry topics.

Ready to move forward? Our team is prepared to help you have a bigger impact! We’d like to get to know you, talk through options and design solutions that work for you. Let’s start the conversation! Follow this link to get started today!

The Unstuck Group isn’t just the Consulting Group that I’m a part of. It’s the Consulting Group that I believe in – because I trust the team, I trust the process, and I trust the results.

Posted in Leadership

How Churches Communicate in 2014

Monday, March 17, 2014

At the Unstuck Group we work with all kinds of churches across America, and one of the common trends we’ve observed is that increasingly church leaders feel stuck when it comes to communicating beyond the pulpit. The options have increased significantly in recent years, giving us both more effective possibilities and more overwhelming decisions. Websites, social media and smartphones have transformed the ways we interact. With these new opportunities, we know it’s tough to stay on top of what your church should be doing to effectively communicate to people.

We want church communications to get unstuck, and we need your help!

Today, we’re asking you to take a short survey–just 7 minutes–that will help us compile communications data from churches across the country. Our team will analyze it to find clear benchmarks for what your digital and print media should actually look like to be most effective.

Every church, every size–your input is valuable to us. The more diversity we have in responses, the more useful our data will be to the Church.

Please consider participating in this brief survey. If you take the time, we’ll send you a free copy of our findings before we make them available to everyone else. We thank you in advance and we look forward to sharing the insights with you to help your church get unstuck!

Church Communications Survey

Posted in Creative Arts

Bringing Clarity to the Language of Organizational Leadership

Sunday, September 8, 2013

One of the most frequently reoccurring conversations I get into in helping churches focuses around building organizational health and alignment in churches. Often times in those conversations confusion surfaces over language such as Mission, Vision, Goals, Strategy, Structure, Core Values, and Systems. So here’s an attempt to help provide some clarity and a framework to some of the most influential conversations you may have as church or organization.

1. Mission:

Answers the Question: Why do we exist?

This is the timeless answer to why your business, organization or church is on the planet in the first place. For those of us in church-world we don’t get to pick our mission, Jesus did that for us.

2. Vision:

Answers the Question: Where are we going?

This is the next hill that needs to be taken. Organizational vision typically changes every 3-10 years. Vision changes because once you get there and have taken then hill, there’s always the next hill to take.

3. Goals:

Answers the Question: How do we get there?

Goals are actionable and attainable steps or objectives to be met that move the organization in the direction of the vision. You know you’re winning and moving in the direction of accomplishing the vision when you are meeting your goals!

4. Strategy:

Answers the Question: Who does what next?

Strategies are the decisions that need to be made to coordinate the application of the resources (people, time, money, information and other assets) of the organization to meet the goals.

5. Structure:

Answers the Question: How do we organize ourselves?

This is the way you intentionally put together all the various parts of the organization to work together in order to support the strategies.

6. Core Value:

Answers the Question: How do we behave?

These are the core beliefs that drive how the people in the organization interact with one another and the organization as a whole behaves towards others outside of the organization.

7. System:

Answers the Question: How do we reproduce it?

Essentially systems are made up of complex independent parts working together to perform a function (for example think skeletal system or solar system). For our purposes building a system is the art of connecting the Core Values, Structures, Strategies, Goals, and Vision to work in alignment that builds a culture that leans towards accomplishing the Mission.

What are some other definitions of these terms that you’ve heard that may be helpful to the conversation? Leave a comment!

Posted in Leadership

Why You Should be Worried that Your Ministry is Going Smooth

Sunday, June 9, 2013

Have you ever noticed that the ministry of Jesus and the Apostles after Him was messy? I mean it was literally like one Jerry Springer episode after another. Now if you know anything about me, you know that I love helping churches implement strategic steps that help vision become reality. My first foot forward is to lead a great team to diligently execute a great plan. But have you ever stopped to think that maybe doing ministry the way Jesus modeled it means that ministry may end up being a little messier than we might like? The book of Proverbs puts it this way in chapter 14, verse 4…

“Where there are no oxen, the manger is clean, but abundant crops come by the strength of the ox.”

The Scripture is clear that one of the by products of an abundant harvest is a mess. Yes you can have a nice, clean, explainable ministry but it means you’ll miss out on an abundant harvest. Here are 4 indicators that you may be avoiding a messy ministry:

1. Infrequent Risk Taking

2. You have Church full of Nice Church People

3. Your Church Growth is more easily explained through strategic planning than it is a move of God

4. Messy People are looked at as an Interruption instead of an Opportunity

So which would you rather have, a nice, clean, explainable ministry or an abundant harvest? What would you add to the list?

Posted in Leadership, Spiritual Formation

4 steps to clear church communications

Monday, December 19, 2011

One of the biggest mistakes that churches make in their communication and messaging strategies is in assuming that people care about what they have to say. In today’s competitive, cluttered, and message saturated market there is more than enough noise to keep people from noticing and listening to what you have to say. Even at church. Here are four questions that you must wrestle to the ground if you’re going to build an effective communication and messaging strategy at your church.

Posted in Creative Arts, Leadership