Ministry Compass™: Overview, Description, Objectives, Services
Overview: Every organization needs direction, plans, objectives, and evaluation. Churches and non-profit ministries are no exception. “If you aim at nothing, you will hit it,” the proverbial saying attests. The reality is that every church or non-profit ministry will experience seasons of transition and leadership change, necessitating vision refocus, and infrastructure realignment. But how do you formulate a new vision and plan? How do you create a fresh direction and a new strategic blueprint for your church, non-profit organization, or ministry? And if you have a plan, is it the right plan?
Introducing Ministry Compass™: The Time-Tested Way to Create a New and/or Refreshed Strategic Plan for Your Church, Ministry, or Non-Profit Organization
Description: Ministry Compass™ offers strategic planning counsel, formulation, resources, tools, and evaluative strategies to equip pastors, church and ministry leaders towards analyzing the present state of their ministry (where they are now), and in developing fresh, new initiatives and objectives for ministry and work (where they want to go). This process climaxes in the production and distribution of a 3–5-year strategic plan that prioritizes on spiritual renewal, ministry rejuvenation, leadership revitalization, and organizational wellness and/or recovery.
Objectives: The central concept necessitating a Ministry Compass™ involves the acceptance of the season of an organization’s life commonly known as “The Intentional Interim.” Instead of quickly and hurriedly replacing lead pastors, key staff members (or other strategic leaders), and continuing in the same ministry practices (whose deficiencies and failures likely contributed to some aspects of organizational decline and debilitation), a better way is offered. The protocols implemented in the intentional interim allow the objectives and goals in the Ministry Compass™ to take priority towards forging a direction that will lead a church or ministry organization towards greater health and ministry fruitfulness for the next 3-5 years:
- Understanding the stages that a church and/or ministry organization experience as they go through the intentional interim timeframe.
- Participating in a grassroots analysis of your church’s or organization’s vision and values through strategic questions and answers, discussions, questionnaires, and group-focused panel interactions.
- Deciphering and prayerfully highlighting the central themes, core values, passions, values, spiritual gifts, and skills that your church or ministry possesses that need incorporation into a new strategic plan.
- During this deciphering process, determining the foundational footings that define and support the church’s or ministry organization’s DNA or “reason-for-existence” and how these footings have guided their past up to now (in both good and bad ways).
- Examining the community and/or neighborhoods that surround the church or ministry, the “turf” where congregants or ministry participants go each day to serve, to work, to live, and to play in their world (aka, their community environment).
- Evaluating the church’s or ministry organization’s stated purpose, and how that purpose is currently implemented and seen in ministry priorities, resource allocation, budgeting, and daily operations.
- Assessing how a church or ministry organization lives out its core values and beliefs through missional and organizational structure, and what elements need revision, refinement, or replacement.
- Enabling a church or ministry organization to articulate its 3–5-year strategic plan (her unique Ministry Compass™), incorporating plans, resources (both spiritual, financial, and human), and timetables, including periodic occasions for review and evaluation.
Services:
- Analyzing: Examining the current Sitz-En-Leben (life situation) that the church or ministry is currently experiencing: the good, the bad, and everything in-between.
- Assessment: Utilizing proven strategies, questions, and tools to gather needed information from church congregants, officers, staff, and ministry leaders to gauge awareness and understanding of the current vision and values of the church or ministry, and its perceived effectiveness or deficiency.
- Formulation: Empowering congregants and leaders (key stakeholders in the ministry) to understand not only where they are now, but more importantly, where they want to go in ministry, and what is needed to formulate a dynamic, strategic plan for life, work, and witness.
- Articulation: Providing church and ministry leaders with a Ministry Compass™, a written strategic action plan of ministry incorporating components of evaluation, assessment, and the presentation of ministry objectives and goals for the next 3-5 years.
- Communication: Assisting church and ministry leaders with ideas and methods to communicate the Ministry Compass™ effectively to their constituents.
- Resourcing: Helping ministry leaders to assess the resource streams within their ministry that will supply the church or ministry with the necessary means to advance their mission.
- Implementation: Guiding church and ministry leaders with reasonable strategies to implement ministry objectives and goals in achievable ways.
- Evaluation: Offering church and ministry leaders, at their request, with occasional review times, appraisal, evaluation, and encouragement.