Tag Archive - stuck

The 4 Phase Planning Process for Church Leaders

Tuesday, May 24, 2016

Few churches have a great planning process. Most don’t even have a good planning process, if they have a process at all.

I’m not sure why this isn’t a bigger priority. Planning is certainly biblical. I don’t find many pastors who would really take aim at that fact. You’d have to throw out a lot of Proverbs, if you decided to.

Everyone likes to talk about stewardship and the stewardship of Kingdom resources, which involves a lot of wisdom and planning. So, if I have to put it in this context, learning a great planning process is good stewardship of Kingdom resources.

At the Unstuck Group we’ve been helping churches with strategic planning for quite a few years now, and we’ve seen a lot of what works and what doesn’t. We believe in the process the team at The Unstuck Group uses. We believe it’s a great planning process because it incorporates four key elements.

The 4 Phase Planning Process

4 Phase Process

Wise planning should always include:

1) Assessment – Understanding where you are now.

You should start with a good understanding of where you are now. We believe an outside perspective is always going to give you the best result. (We even bring in an outside facilitator when we do strategic planning for The Unstuck Group.) It’s also important to look at key metrics and not just rely on your opinions about the health of your church. Your opinions are heavily influenced by tradition and emotion, whether you want to believe it or not.

2) Planning – Defining where you are going and how you will get there.

Your plans should clarify and focus your vision, blending together the strategic, operational and financial aspects of your ministry. Involving ministry leaders from all of your departments brings alignment and will help you prevent ministry silos. Everyone will get on the same page about what you’re trying to accomplish, and what the wins are.

3) Structure – Determining the right form for your organization.

With a clear vision in place and core strategies outlined, you can easily see gaps in your staff team. For your plans to be realized, you will need to have the right people in the right roles. You will need a structure that creates accountability and supports the development of your staff.

4) Action – Monitoring how you are doing and identifying what needs to change.

Plans that never see action are worthless. Your planning process needs to incorporate timelines, deadlines and evaluation. It needs to be a living, breathing thing that gets refreshed regularly as God leads your church into the future.

With a great planning process, you should be making wise decisions based on honest evaluations. You should be building the right team based on your plan. You should be making budget decisions based on your plan. You should be providing accountability for the execution of your plan. You should be routinely identifying what’s working and what isn’t.

And you shouldn’t feel stuck.

The Unstuck Group’s process walks churches through all four of these phases. And we continually receive stories from pastors who have learned this process and are seeing breakthrough. We’d love to share more about how it works with you. Follow this link to learn more about how it works.

This post was originally published on Tony Morgan’s blog. Tony serves as the Chief Strategic Officer at the Unstuck Group. You can keep up with Tony at his blog by following this link.

Posted in Leadership

Is your Church like Walmart?

Sunday, February 28, 2016

Walmart, with all of it’s success as a company, has continued to come under public criticism in recent years. A quick Google Search will provide a litany of articles about the company devaluing employees in order to pad bottom lines and the big box store “gobbling up” smaller local retailers when they move into a new community. It seems like every town in America has a Walmart. But with all of their expansion and financial success is Walmart headed in the right direction?

I recently read an article in Forbes that suggested despite all of their success the future looks bleak for Walmart. Past wins don’t necessitate future success. Here are a few highlights that made me think about churches that have experienced success in the past but are on the verge of of painful future. Most of them, like Walmart, will never see it coming. Will you?

1. Poor Staff Culture

The church naturally takes on and reflects the culture of the staff. If your church has a hard time keeping Staff, if Staff are viewed more as a commodity to be spent or allocated to get to the vision instead of people to be developed your staff culture will erode. Eventually eroding the culture of your church.

2. Majoring on the Minors

If your tendency is to micromanage when things don’t go according to plan instead of taking ownership and rethinking strategy, your church may very well be headed for decline.

3. More interested in Growth instead of following Jesus

Don’t misunderstand me, I am firmly in the camp that if you’re following Jesus your church will grow. Because Jesus wants His Church to grow. He’d rather more people know Him than less. But if you’re more fixated on growth than obedience to calling and following Jesus then you’re already drifting towards decline…it just hasn’t shown up yet.

4. Refusing to Change

It’s difficult and often painful to navigate change in a church setting. But what’s even more painful for everyone is to have Sr. Leaders refuse to change and doggedly remain steadfast in direction when all the signs point to a needed change in strategy.

5. Lack of Sober-mindedness

When you’ve accumulated a winning track record it’s possible to begin to believe your press clippings. Be careful though. All of those accolades can assist you in losing touch with reality and fuel an undisciplined pursuit of more. Be mindful that you remain courageous enough to listen to the truth and act accordingly.

Has your church become like Walmart? Is what used to work not working anymore? Are you in a growth stall? The Unstuck Group can help you define reality by using a proven method to assess the health of your church and build a new strategy for the future.

Posted in Leadership

5 Questions Stuck Churches Commonly Ask

Tuesday, February 16, 2016

You’ve probably heard me say before that “stuckness” is no respecter of the “brand” or “flavor” of a church. All kinds of churches across America are stuck. Large churches, small churches, old churches, new churches, Baptist churches, Methodist churches, Nazarene churches, Presbyterian church and even non-denominational churches are stuck. In fact Thom Rainer, President and CEO of LifeWay Christian Resources has stated in his research that:

“Eight out of ten of the approximately 400,000 churches in the United States are declining or have plateaued.”

That’s 80% if you’re doing the math. In my work consulting with churches and coaching church leaders there are 5 common questions or values that I see come up over and over again in churches that are stuck, but sometimes don’t know it yet. Could this be your church?

1. How do we make change and keep people from leaving the church?

The simple answer is, you don’t. The good news is people are always going to leave your church. You get to choose who leaves by the decisions you make and the way you lead. Churches who are making decisions based on who they are going to keep instead of who they are going to reach are stuck.

2. How do we get more people in our discipleship class?

If your primary method of discipleship is a class, your church may be educating people but they’re not building disciples. Christian education is not the same thing as disciple making. If you don’t have a clear pathway for people who say yes to Jesus to move towards knowing Him and following Him then your church is moving towards being stuck.

3. How can we hire more staff to run more ministries?

When your church is hiring people to do ministry instead of lead people to do ministry your church is stuck. Church that are rapidly moving towards providing more “ministry services” for more people to attend and participate in instead of investing those same resources into developing volunteers are often stuck and don’t know it yet. Ministry participation is not the same thing as people development.

4. How can we protect our kids and students from the world?

Churches that adopt a protection-oriented mindset instead of a preparation-oriented mindset often end up stuck because that thinking permeates the entire culture of the church. These churches are often risk-averse and talk about defending the Gospel. The Gospel doesn’t need to be defended from outsiders it needs to be unleashed. These churches often choose to curse the darkness instead of proclaiming the light.

5. How can we continue to increase our missions giving?

Don’t get me wrong, I’m all for missions. But when a church begins to take pride in supporting a long list of missionaries across an ocean instead of doing anything short of sin to reach people in their neighborhood with the Gospel they are stuck.

Need help getting your church unstuck? The Strategic Operating Process that we lead churches through at the Unstuck Group will help your church clarify your mission, vision, and core strategies—and then realize it through prioritized action initiatives.

Posted in Leadership

Celebrating an Incredible year at The Unstuck Group

Tuesday, January 19, 2016

If you’re like me, taking time to pause and celebrate probably isn’t a strong suit. I’m usually more interested in what’s next than what just happened. Slowing down, celebrating wins, and enjoying the fruit of ministry is a discipline I’m continuing to grow in.

Four years ago when I joined Tony Morgan to become a Consultant at The Unstuck Group I never imagined what that startup Consulting Group would turn into. Recently Tony shared some incredible wins from 2015 on a video call with team that I wanted to share with you.

We had the opportunity to serve more than 60 churches by helping them through a Ministry Health Assessment, the development of a Strategic Action Plan, and reviewing and developing their Staffing and Structure Plan for the future.
We added Amy Anderson, Amanda Baranowski, Ron Baum, Sara Chapple, Josh Clark, David D’Angelo, Chad Hunt, Tammy Kelley, Michael Moore, Chris Surratt and Elizabeth Welborne to our team. That more than doubled our capacity to serve churches.
We traveled to 22 states, Canada and the United Kingdom to help churches get unstuck.
We launched an online ministry health assessment to encourage churches to take a first step in understanding what’s working and where there are opportunities for improvement.
The churches we served ranged in size from under 100 to over 22,000 in attendance. In case you’re curious, the average size church we serve is 1,150 people.
We started GrowthSolutions–our service that is designed to coach leadership teams at smaller churches who want to take intentional steps towards growing their church to 500 in weekly attendance.
We worked in 18 different denominations. That included launching a new initiative supporting denominations that want to resource their healthiest churches that have the most potential for future growth.
We engaged 46 leaders in coaching networks to help them take their next steps in their leadership.
We refreshed our website to better reflect what we do to help churches get unstuck.
We released two eBooks. The first one was 7 Warning Signs Your Church Has Ministry Silos. The second one was Reaching and Leading Millennials.

It was a great year for our team, and I wanted to take the opportunity to share this with you. It’s exciting to see the Unstuck Group grow, I’m proud of the team that’s being built and I believe in the way we serve churches. But what’s even more exciting to me is to watch churches get unstuck and see more people meet Jesus as a result.

We want to help more churches get unstuck.

Posted in Leadership

Top Posts for 2015 #2: “5 Core Behaviors of Churches that get Unstuck”

Thursday, December 31, 2015

Five years ago when I started writing this blog the primary driver was to help churches make vision real. To help churches bridge the gap between ideas and reality. This post will help your church avoid getting stuck and get on the path to making vision real!

Churches all across America are stuck. Large churches, small churches, old churches, new churches, Baptist churches, Methodist churches, Nazarene churches, Presbyterian church and even non-denominational churches are stuck. Stuckness is no respecter of the “brand” or “flavor” of the church. It happens to all kinds of churches. Lead long enough in a church and it will happen to you. In fact Thom Rainer, President and CEO of LifeWay Christian Resources has stated in his research that:

“Eight out of ten of the approximately 400,000 churches in the United States are declining or have plateaued.”

Churches get stuck for all kinds of reasons but there are a handful of core behaviors that I see over and over again in churches get unstuck.

1. They’re Outsider Focused

They’re consumed with the idea that the need for the Gospel in their community is greater than their capacity to meet it. And so they’re willing to go to extraordinary measures to bring people far from Jesus close to Him. So much so that their posture is towards those outside of the faith rather than those inside of the faith. They consistently make choices based on who they’re going to reach rather than who they’re going to keep.

2. They have a Strong Organizational Culture

They are clear about their vision, they know where they’re going. But it’s not just that they have some aspirational idea about where they think God wants them to be one day they actually have a clear plan to get where they’re going and they methodically work the plan. They’ve done the hard work of defining their leadership culture, and values, and aligning every ministry of the church to move in one singular direction.

3. They Develop People

They don’t pay everyone in the church to do ministry, instead they typically have a pretty lean staff (a ratio of 1:100+) and pay those staff to invest in and develop volunteers. They identify young leaders and give them real responsibility to make real decisions and own the ministry. Actually be the church instead of just come to church.

4. They view Spiritual Maturity Differently than most

They don’t view spiritual maturity as something that happens in a classroom. It’s not about content but rather your behavior. In other words it’s not so much what you know, it’s what you do with what you know. Ironically enough, that’s the same way Jesus defined it. They’ve also mapped out a clear pathway for people to run on. The moment they say yes to following Jesus there is a series of clear next steps for them to take to move forward with Jesus.

5. They’re Courageously Humble

The posture of their leadership is a humble confidence. They’re life long learners and incessant tinkerers. Willing to learn from anyone from any industry and any size organization. They’re not afraid to ask for help, even outsiders. They lead in their area of brilliance and submit in areas of weakness. They’re willing to confront the brutal facts and listen to the truth, even when it’s not pretty.

Does your church need help getting unstuck in 2015? The Unstuck Group can help, follow this link to learn how.

Photo Credit: Lachlan Hardy via Compfight cc

Posted in Leadership

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