Planning ahead

After completing a course in college late in my Sophomore year, I turned into a planning nut - I wanted to have a clear sense of direction with every detail and every minute of my life channeled to help me reach my final destination. Several years later, with graduation on the horizon, I quickly realized that for all my planning and direction, I had no idea what the future held in store, no leads other than directly to unemployment. And out of the blue, God orchestrated a phone call that lead to a job offer that I hadn't seriously considered. That experience altered my view of planning.

I was involved in a ministry that after years of dreaming of facility expansion, made plans to put shovels in the ground. I've seen ministries with long-range projections which years later (with the benefit of hind-sight) look far-fetched and unrealistic. Those observations again altered my view of planning.

Today, planning to me is focused on trying to discern God's plan. Pastor Scott's blogged about some of the planning process we've been taking in recent weeks and there are several questions I've been asking myself and the staff throughout the process:

Where do we see evidence of God's work?
What ways is God opening up for us to join what He's already doing?

Our purpose, our vision of where we want to be in 10, 20, 30 years, our strategic objectives of how we'll get there and the specific goals all need to be centered on where God's working and the role we can play in His work.

I'm excited because it's a process I've been taught, one I've employed in specific areas under my leadership, but I've never seen it thoroughly put into practice for an entire ministry. Even more, recognizing that it's a real-time, ever-changing process, we plan to get together quarterly to discuss, evaluate, reassess where we see God working and how He wants to utilize us in those areas.

We've come up with our answers to these questions, but we're taking time to pray about them and make sure it's where we think God's at work. After that we'll be reviewing it in a couple of weeks before we start to move forward. Stay tuned.