Developing the Strategic Plan Presentation

Prior to Retreat 4, teams should develop a draft of how they’ll present their strategic plan to the church.

Following Retreat 4, teams will choose a launch Sunday to share their presentation with their church.

Here are some things facilitators should encourage teams to consider as they develop their presentations:

• Don’t list every strategy step. Sharing a list of items might overwhelm a smaller congregation.
• Stir hearts by highlighting community need. The goal of the presentation is to generate congregational buy-in to engage the surrounding community.
• Make the team visible. Reinforce for the congregation that a team has been involved in the process.

Prior to presenting to the entire congregation, pastors should consider the sequence and timing of communication to other key leaders beyond those participating on the Acts 2 Journey vision team.

Watch the video below for instructions on how to offer guidance on how and when to communicate when implementing change.

Encourage pastors to consider the following breakdown of groups within their congregation and give special attention to how they will prioritize communication of significant initiatives to each of these groups.

• Consumer– these relationships are necessary, but diminish your strength (typically makes up two-thirds of the congregation)
  In casual relationships the conversation always focuses on the weaker person to keep the weaker person engaged. Every time you see them at church, the questions sound like this:  “How is your day going?” “Hey, how was the ballgame?” “How’s your world?” “How’s your job?” “How’s your marriage?” It’s always about them. You’re often afraid that if you ask the wrong question, the individual will get offended. That’s a casual relationship.

• Ministry– these relationships help you get things done, but don’t nourish you (typically makes up one-fourth of the congregation)
  The conversation in a ministry-level relationship focuses on the church. If a person is working with the youth, you’re always talking about the youth department, activities for the youth, or about young people. These questions sound like this:  “How’s Billy doing?” “How’s the youth group going?” “How was Wednesday night?” You talk about the works of the ministry as it pertains to the local church. You only talk about church, nothing about the kingdom. It’s always about the church and how we function and work as a church. 

• Missional– these relationships feed your soul (typically makes up less than 10% of the congregation)
  A missional relationship is one which goes beyond the arena of the local church and expands to a relationship at a kingdom of God level. Missional relationships talk about passion for ministry, personal growth—a real “iron sharpening iron” relationship. In these relationships, we talk about kingdom issues as well as church issues. We look at how our church works within the kingdom.