Where the Strategic Rubber Hits the Ministry Road

Dear Dunstanland,
The essence of our strategic plan is that must be realized; it is not simply inspiring phrases in a vision document or a spreadsheet managed by the Strategic Planning Team. After all, what we are planning is change: changes in the way ministry is done (more relationally), changes in what ministries are done (more classes, better pastoral care, new worship, etc.), and most importantly, changes in people's lives (more folks knowing Jesus, following Jesus, and sharing Jesus). There are two aspects to making sure that our strategic plan truly changes St. Dunstan's for the better.

First of all, our goals will not be abstract ideas or warm fuzzies. They will be concrete goals that are measurable, if not directly in numbers, then at the very least in the sense that we will be able to know if we have met them or not. Of course, one very important metric is Average Sunday Attendance (ASA), in which all the attendance figures from every Sunday (including Saturday night) are added up and divided by 52. Easter's high is balanced by the first Sunday of Christmas' low. Fall and spring are balanced by the summer. In the end what you get is a reasonable measure of how many people are participating in a most basic way in the church's worship and programs. Currently, St. Dunstan's ASA is 427. ASA is far more important to pastors than to their parishioners, who tend to judge the church's programs by their own experience. Think of it this way: ASA is to your individual experience what the GDP is to your company's gross sales. It's an aggregate that tells you about the size of the forest, but nothing about the health of trees. So it's useful to a degree, but is not the only measure.

Perhaps other ways to talk about achieving goals might be the net of new members and inactivations and transfers. Or the number of children in Sunday School (we set a three-year record a week ago, Sunday). Or the number of folks attending adult classes. Or the number of people involved in ministry. These are all possible ways to discern if we're really doing what we are called to do. But count we will, because generally speaking, one only grows what one counts.

The second key to the success of the strategic plan is accountability. So, who will be accountable for seeing that goals are reached? Perhaps a year ago I would have quickly answered, "Me." And while the buck does stop with the Leading Pastor, and while my final responsibility for the health and growth of the parish is a given, the answer is not so simple, anymore: and that's a good thing. It's a good thing because the parish leadership and I have come to a place where we have accepted the challenge to share responsibility for St. Dunstan's faithfulness. I chose to share leadership by calling for and implementing the strategic planning process, instead of propagating the myth that I know all the answers and possess all the solutions. The vestry chose to embrace its truly strategic vocation and share the task of overseeing the implementation of the goals with the Strategic Planning Team, instead of attempting to run the ministries of the parish by remote. The Strategic Planning Team will be sharing the responsibility of accomplishing specific goals with Project Teams, instead of being gatekeepers and enforcers. Project Teams, facilitated by Project Team Leaders and equipped by the parish staff, will share Christ's work with gifted parishioners whom they call into ministry, instead of being the doers of all ministry. And finally, our parishioners will share Christ's love with the world that Christ came to save, instead of becoming a club which imagines that it can keep that love for itself without losing it utterly.

So, finally, our entire parish -- every member who is called into ministry, which is to say, every member -- shares accountability for seeing that our goals are being reached. That's what "shared leadership" means in the end: a shared engagement in and responsibility for our parish's mission -- making high commitment sacramental Christians in community.