The ’90s Called (Part 4)
If you enjoy this episode, subscribe on your device for more:
Apple Podcasts RSS Spotify iHeart Radio
The ’90s called again, and they want their 3-ring binder back.
In Part 4 of our series, Sean and I explore why strategic plans often end up collecting dust in three-ring binders instead of driving real ministry impact:
- why documenting a strategy isn’t the same as creating aligned action
- how churches sometimes use planning to avoid significant change
- the difference between treating symptoms vs. solving root problems
- what true organizational alignment looks like and why it matters
- practical steps for moving from documentation to implementation
Plus, we discuss how to assess whether your teams are truly aligned, share real examples of effective and ineffective alignment, and provide guidance for leaders who want to create living, active ministry plans that drive results instead of static documents that sit on shelves.
This Episode is Brought to You By Planning Center:
Planning Center is an all-in-one toolkit to organize and run your ministries. And what is a ministry without volunteers?
Planning Center helps you build a sustainable and balanced volunteer schedule that aligns ministry needs with people’s availability. Then, you can connect with your team using chat, where you can coordinate ministry details, make announcements, and engage in fun conversations with your teammates.
Get started for free at planningcenter.com.
Leader Conversation Guide
Want to take this conversation back to a staff or senior leadership team meeting?
Our Show Notes subscribers get a PDF download that recaps the episode content and includes a discussion guide you can print out and use at an upcoming meeting.
Opt-in here and get access to the full Leader Conversation Guide archive.
More Episodes in This Series
- Core Values – Episode 380
- Vision Statement – Episode 379
- Mission Statement – Episode 378
Share Your Thoughts and Questions on Social Media
We use hashtag #unstuckchurch on X @unstuckgroup and on Instagram @theunstuckgroup.
Write a Review—It Helps!
Your ratings and reviews really do help more pastors discover the podcast content we’re creating here. Would you take a minute to share your thoughts? Just open the the podcast on iTunes on your phone or computer, click Ratings & Reviews, and leave your opinion. Or leave us 5 stars on Spotify.
Transcript
Sean:
Well, welcome to the Unstuck Church podcast. My name is Sean, I’m your host. I’m here with my teammate, Amy Anderson. Amy, we’re wrapping up a four-part series on the ways that churches are stuck in the nineties when it comes to the way they approach setting direction and aligning their team around it. I’m kind of sad, honestly, because this has been a great series, and also I just love the nineties. So, over the last few weeks we’ve covered the ideas of mission statements, 10 year visions, and last week we talked about core values. Today we’re gonna officially say the nineties called, and they want their three ring binders back. Do you remember those, Amy? Three ring binders?
Amy:
I did a little cleaning out between Christmas and New Year’s, and I got rid of a lot of three ring binders. The three ring binder, you know, the one that massive three ring binder where we kept all of our, in the nineties, all of our processes, procedures. Ministry plan. It was like the holy grail of church operations. And you know, the funny thing is, we thought having everything documented in that binder meant we were actually organized and aligned as ministry team. But I’m not so sure that’s true.
Sean:
No. The reality is we’ve come alongside a number of churches that are still operating with that binder mentality. They think that just having those documented strategies means that the team will be aligned. And they’re accomplishing the right things and they’re experiencing the right results. But here’s the tension, even with all of our documentation and planning ministry teams can still end up working in silos and pulling in different directions.
Amy:
Yeah. I think the core tension, Sean, is that leaders know they need to define and document a plan and have a strategy. But then they also know that having it documented is not the same thing as creating aligned actions. And it’s easier, I think it’s easier to let the deliverable or that new report feel like the finish line. We tell our churches all the time, we’re not gonna give you a binder. But it feels like you finish, especially if you’ve done strategic planning before and failed to make significant progress. You feel like once you have your plan, you’ve actually done it, but yeah, you haven’t.
Sean:
That’s right. And sometimes churches let themselves think that way because they know that they’re ultimately gonna keep running the same church playbook as before. And there’s an underlying assumption that nothing really significant needs to change within their church. And this isn’t just a “small church” problem. We’ve run into this with large churches. With multi-site churches too. And the tendency is to try to fix our symptoms without solving those real underlying problems. So it’s kind of similar to when we’re sick. My son recently had pneumonia. But we didn’t know it was pneumonia at first. He just had a fever. And the fever lingered, it wouldn’t go away. And we gave him Tylenol, which would help for a few hours to alleviate that fever, and he’d feel better, but then the symptoms came right back. And it wasn’t until we got him to the doctor, they diagnosed the real problem. And then we were able to identify what’s the right solution to cure the actual illness that’s there.
Here’s a more relevant ministry example. Think about what we often see churches do address to address staffing issues. When we have people problems, we sometimes try to cure the issue by just moving people to different seats or changing supervisors, or sometimes we even promote them to try to solve the problem. And I’ve seen it before in churches where we actually find that the person wasn’t the problem at all. It was actually a strategy problem. So we’re not actually curing the issue because we’re not really addressing the real problem. Often these three ring binders that we’re talking about, they’re designed to avoid that pushback and designed to avoid significant change. They’re looking for confirmation that we’re already doing the right things. And sometimes we’ve seen churches where they just want to kind of borrow another church’s playbook, adapt that playbook. Because on the outside it seems like that’s working. So maybe if we did that just with different players that would help us be the church that we hope to be.
Amy:
Yeah. And what’s interesting is that this misalignment usually isn’t because teams are being rebellious or they don’t care. It’s really because they lack truer clarity on how the work that they’re doing connects to the bigger picture. So let me give you an innocent example. So I was working with a multi-site church that had, they built quite a bit of autonomy into their multi-site model, in other words. Instead of being highly identical in their ministry approach at all locations, they had some ministry areas that allowed campus pastors to have more liberty to lead their own approach. And I was talking with the leader, the guy who was leading their campus pastors, and we were walking through some of the current tensions in their systems. And one campus did a weekly outreach initiative with their staff serving in the community. And it was a really good thing. This was the only campus that did it. And this outreach work, it got celebrated at staff meetings and stories were told.
But when me and this gentleman, when we looked under the hood at campus results, that campus was struggling, attendance was flat, maybe even declining. Serving numbers were low groups, numbers were low. There were no new people really coming to faith, no baptisms outside of infant baptisms. And this multi-site leader needed to get his arms around what success looked like for each campus because without that definition, really what was happening is campus leaders were leading their ministries and the activities felt good, but they weren’t actually making a kingdom impact that the church was striving for. So my example here is that how the pastor, the campus pastor was spending his time, it was good stuff, but it was not producing any results that were aligned to what this multi-site director wanted to see happen at the campus. He wanted to see attendance growth. He wanted to see some of those next steps taken. So the core issue was the church had never really set those organizational goals to bring clarity to the campus pastor what success looked like.
And so when you do good strategic planning, I often describe it as it puts banks on the river so that ministry can run deep and strong, but without those banks just picture real flat lands. Just like a river would, churches tend to start to spread out too wide with very little current, and then things start to stagnate. So the truth is, you can have the best three ring binder of plans, but the binders are made for bookcases in today’s plans in our church world, they need to be agile, flexible, living, and active.
Sean:
So Amy, let’s talk about from our experience, how do we move from strategy binder three, ring binder thinking to something that works better?
Amy:
Well, first you need to move from documentation like a binder to actual true alignment. Meaning you want to create clear connections between your church’s direction, the vision to the ministry goals and priorities of your church, and then to every team member’s daily work. Again, without this type of intentionality, your team members may be busy. Who isn’t busy in ministry? But not effective in moving towards what God wants to do through your church. It actually reminds me of the quote from the book, the Unstuck Church by Tony Morgan. He said, “It’s possible to do the work of God without doing the work God has called you to do.” So doing the work God has called you to do is the aligned part of your work.
So here’s how it breaks down practically. So you need to start with vision. You need to have some sort of idea where is God calling your church over the next three to five years. And again, we talk about this as a what’s the bold move? What’s gonna look different about your church in the next five years? And then you break that into what success looks like for your church annually. These are, we just call ’em mission goals or organization goals. What does success look like in some key metric areas? Things like your, we like to talk about the reach goals. What are your reach goals? How many people do you hope you reach? How many people do you hope you baptize? What are you believing God and trusting in him for? You want to define those.
And then also discipleship goals. How many people are going to get connected in community next year? How many people are going to get connected in serving? How many volunteer leaders are we gonna engage in our ministry next year? Those are all examples. You also might have some goals related to your vision, but before you start talking about the why, you want to start asking God, what do you want to do through our church next year?
The fourth step then is once we know what the goals are, now we have to ask the how question. If we’re gonna baptize fill in the blank 500 people next year, what are we gonna have to do to help people meet and follow Jesus and make that decision to be baptized? Or if we want to engage a hundred new volunteer leaders in our organization next year, what is the work that we have to do to actually get them connected in our ministry leadership?
So we should always know that the how we’re going to do things should follow the what does God want to do through our church conversation. So it’s just your core ministry strategies. You need to make sure you’ve got the right strategies in place to accomplish those goals. And then of course, from there we break it into ministry areas. So just that example again of if we want to get a hundred more volunteer leaders in place, well, how many will that be if you’re multi-site at each campus? Is it 40 at this campus, 50 at this that didn’t equal a hundred. Maybe 40 at this campus, 60 at this. If you’re a single site location, well, how many volunteer leaders will get plugged into first impressions into student ministries, kids ministry? So you’re just cascading down until every team member knows what success looks like for their ministry.
Now I know I just went through like the planning process in three minutes, but just I want you to catch a picture of what aligned strategic planning looks like. That’s what a process like the Unstuck process does. We continually work through this strategic alignment to make sure that what the church is trying to accomplish, that you have the right strategies in place to do it. That every ministry knows what the success is for their team, and every person knows what success is for them. So that’s the difference in a binder versus an aligned work.
Second thing, planning means now that we’re clear on the goals and priorities, we actually have to implement the plans. So again, you want the ending point can’t be, we got our binder. Aligned planning is a process. It’s living, it’s adapting. As our friend Paul Alexander says at Sun Valley Church in the Phoenix area, he says it has to be a consistent strategic obedience, ongoing implementation and follow through.
So the two key priorities for effective planning, when we get to now, we have to implement first it’s the system, I just mentioned ours. But you have to have a system for actually implementing the work. And second, you need the right people, the right leaders to actually implement and note that I said, leaders not doers. Most churches are overstaffed on doers and light on leaders. So to develop and implement plans, that ratio needs to begin to change.
Sean:
Yeah. That’s really good. Amy, before we move on, though, I wanna take just a moment and thank this week’s podcast sponsor Planning Center. Planning Center is an all-in-one software that helps you organize your ministries and care for your church. It has easy to use, efficient platforms of products where you can organize event details, create signup forms, schedule volunteers automatically and much more. You can actually get started for free today at planningcenter.com. That’s planningcenter.com.
Let’s give church leaders some practical next steps. First, start by assessing where you are today. Are your teams truly aligned or do you just have good documentation? Here are some evidences that you’re aligned: your staff are thriving in their roles, your team is setting goals and driving for the same ministry outcomes together, and you’re celebrating the great things that are happening through your ministry collectively as a team.
Some evidences we see when churches don’t have alignment: you keep building new plans before the last plans were accomplished. Amy, have you ever been on a team like that?
Amy:
I have.
Sean:
I have yeah. You find people are spending significant amounts of time working on things that are not even part of the plan. And the outcomes that you hear celebrated aren’t connected to the church’s overall vision and strategy.
Amy:
Sometimes I just hear a lead pastor say, “I really don’t know what that person does.” We don’t need lead pastors to get into the weeds of what people are doing, but a pastor should never have questions around what a ministry area is doing or working on. The win should be clear. So that’s another evidence I would just tag on there.
Sean:
That’s good
Amy:
And having said that, this isn’t about control or micromanagement, it’s about giving team members clarity and purpose in their roles. People like to know what’s expected of them.
Sean:
Absolutely.
Amy:
They want to know what the win is for their role, team, and church. You know, we used to do staffing and structure a little bit differently, Sean. We used to spend 30 minutes interviewing 10 to 12 people about their roles and teams. I would ask them, “What’s the win look like for your role? How do you know if you’re hitting the mark?” Nine out of 10 times, they’d say, “That’s a really good question.” To which I thought, “That’s a really bad answer.” When people have clarity about how they contribute to the bigger picture, they’re more engaged and more effective.
I kind of did a quick drive by with the strategic alignment pyramid, but if you’re part of the learning hub at the Unstuck Group, you have access to our course that includes that and we have it documented throughout our website. But to go back and reference. I would encourage you just work from the foundation up and say, all right, our core beliefs, do we know what we die for? Most churches do, by the way. Our mission, is our mission clear? Do we know our purpose? Red, green yellow, where are you at? Most churches are green. Those discipleship outcomes we talked about on the podcast last week. Have we been clear about who we hope people are becoming as they follow Jesus through our ministry? Red, green, yellow, and likewise, you’ll go to vision next, goals next, what’s after goals, Sean? Strategies. There it is.
Sean:
Yeah, strategies.
Amy:
Then your structure, and then your ministry priorities, and then your personal priorities. Just work your way up and see how are we doing? Are we aligning the work so that we can connect every person to what we’re trying to do as a church? I like the last thing you said, Sean, where you said, we just, you have to have a plan for planning. And so that’s the other thing I want you to be thinking about. You need to set up a system or a rhythm for planning. You can’t plan once and then just live off that plan for the next five years. I would say, you know, our recommendation is annually you are setting aside a couple of days to work on your ministry. You’re talking about your ministry, you are not doing other things. You’re turning off the phones and you’re just getting leaders in a room. And then you nurture and create those plans, but then every quarter you are resetting and making sure you’re on track with all of your initiatives, and then you do it again next year. Right? So there’s, there’s an annual rhythm, there’s a quarterly rhythm, and there’s probably a monthly rhythm for inspecting and checking in on how are we doing. And rinse, slather, and repeat. Right. That’s what we do. That’s that discipline that we mentioned with Paul.
Sean:
Yeah, absolutely. And I would add to that, Amy, you mentioned implementation. Planning and implementation. If you’re not committed to the implementation, don’t do the planning.
Amy:
Right.
Sean:
Don’t do the planning. It will create disillusionment in your people and the next time you have a great idea about developing a plan, everyone will say, “oh, look, last time we did that and nothing ever came of it.” So that implementation is so important. You have to be committed to following through on your plan. And if you don’t, it’s not gonna create great outcomes for your church.
Amy:
That’s right.
Sean:
Amy, as we wrap up today’s conversation, any final thoughts from you?
Amy:
Yeah, just one on yours. It’s funny; the two major faux pas of planning is not doing what you said you’d do. And the other side of it is we try to do too much. Good planning, again, it’s living, it’s ongoing. We’re always reassessing. But sometimes we forget that church is every Sunday, and so we really have to bite off in increments that we can handle as a team. Be careful not to get too far on either end of that. And then, I mentioned it in these monthly things, gaining and maintaining alignment requires regular check-ins and adjustments. So when you, when you get through some planning, make sure you get it on your calendar. When are we gonna inspect? What is our rhythm? How are we doing? But I have to just say, it’s worth the effort when you see your entire team pulling together, yolked together to get the work done and celebrating together some of those evidences that you shared. Absolutely.
Sean:
Absolutely. Yeah. Well, listeners, we’ve helped hundreds of churches learn this system and rhythm for setting clear direction for their church, aligning their team around it and then executing and implementing those plans really well. And we’ve seen how it starts to snowball and pick up steam as you build these muscles and repeat that process over time. We would of course love to equip you to lead an unstuck church like that. So you can start a conversation with us today at theunstuckgroup.com/start. And next week we’re back with a new episode in a new series. So until then, we hope you have a great week.
