In this ongoing series, Auxano Co-founder, Chief Executive Officer, and Senior Lead Navigator Jim Randall is interviewed by Gary Moritz, Church Revitalization Futurist, Strategist, Professor, and pastor of City United Church in Boston.
In this episode - the seventh in a series - Gary and Jim discuss the need for building strategy and its importance in rebuilding your church. They discuss the tensions between a good and great church strategy and how to develop one.
Here are a few of the main ideas from the podcast:
- The third irreducible question is how are we accomplishing the mission at the broadest level within our church
- You have to have process. You have to have focus. You have to have strategy. The strategy that we're talking about is a strategy of engagement.
- Post COVID, all of a sudden strategy now became defined as strategy of engagement - meaning, how am I engaged?
- Churches that are stuck, churches that are plateaued, churches that are in decline, oftentimes they celebrate the busyness, they celebrate the going, and they celebrate that over progress.
- We've identified that there's three experiences or there's three environments that someone who's truly connecting in your church or truly becoming assimilated into your church, engaged in your church.
- In some way or another, they're engaged in a worshiping experience, they're engaged in a connecting experience, and they're engaged in a serving experience.
- Even whether you've already developed your strategy or whether you're going to develop your strategy, don't let the activity of the church, the busyness really overwhelm and quite get the point to where you stop elevating these key strategy components.
- Identify your worshiping environment, identify your connecting environment, identify your serving environment, and begin to eliminate all the things that are creating sideways energy around that.
- You can reach 300 people or 500 people or 1,000 people or 2,000 people at Easter on this big day, but if you don't keep that strategy simple and clear moving forward, they're not going to come back.
> Listen to the podcast: https://www.thechurchvitalitynetwork.com/podcasts/vitalnomics-the-church-vitality-podcast/episodes/2148222920
> To employ an honest assessment of your vision language, download your copy of Auxano’s tool for breakthrough leaders: The Vision Headwaters TeamUP.