The Future of Church Strategy led by David Saathoff & Will Mancini Every church operates in one of three strategies; "More is more," "less is more," and "to be is more." Learn not only how strategies are shifting over time, but the most important insight behind any ministry design as you lead your way into the future. David Saathoff is the Lead Pastor at Bandera Road City Church - a church with 6,000 in attendance that he planted 18 years ago. (AP 1)
Will Mancini - Clarity isn’t everything but it changes everything.
Future of Church Strategy
1) More is More Strategy
2) Less is More Strategy
3) To Be is More Strategy
Five Irreducible Questions of Clarity
What are we doing? (right side of vision frame) – mission or missional mandate, the church of God doesn’t have a mission, the mission of God has a church.
Why are we doing it? (left side of vision frame) – ethos, values, culture, collective soul, missional motives that drive culture
How are we doing it? How do we do what we do? (bottom of vision frame) strategy - we have lost the ability to distinguish means and ends. Can our top 12 leaders draw on a napkin how you accomplish your mission at the broadest level? This is where Joe goes. This is assimilation into body/programs/environments.
When are we successful? (top of the frame) define the WIN! – attendance, buildings, and cash or something else. If we aren’t clear about the outputs, then we measure strategy. We need to measure output and not strategy. Programs don’t attract people, people attract people. People who own the strategy cannot be entrusted with quality control. This is what Joe becomes. This is Jesus assimilating into people.
Where is God taking us?
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David Saathoff – Bandera Road City Church
Guy says to him. Church is really different than when I grew up. My wife is really a good Christian because she is so involved. (attends every week, multiple groups, office volunteer, serves in children’s ministry on Sundays). He can’t be that involved so he can never be as good of a Christian.
Strategy – we want people to come to our environments and accomplishing that means we are successful. Activity is not success.
Jesus healed on the Sabbath, had a conversation with Pharisees. Asked the question, was man made for the Sabbath or was the Sabbath made for man?
Was man made for church or was church made for man?
Why does our church exist?
Ephesians 4:11-13 – God gave responsibilities to church apostles, prophets, evangelists, shepherds, teachers to EQUIP THE PEOPLE for the work of ministry. The word equip is the same Greek word for when Jesus saw Peter, James, and John while they were “mending” their nets. We want to network people together so that they can catch fish.
Our goal is to equip people for mission – to be something in the world.
Right now many of us equip people to serve the organizations needs rather than equip them to be on mission.
20% of the people do 80% of the work and give 80% of the money. We get upset with the other 80% of the people. We have created some of this 20/80 problem. (At Mountain, we’d need to have 4500 volunteer roles. We don’t have 4500 volunteer roles in our organization.) We need to release people to be on mission but some of those may be roles that are not easily measured. Centrifugal force - out, centripetal force – in (toilet)
How? – moving people from bucket to bucket to bucket (typically linear). Future of the church is going to be more non-linear.
Why do we tell people that are seekers wanting to go serve on a mission trip that they can’t go because they are not at that point in the process? Does our culture/strategy prevent the desired outcomes by forcing linear?
How we reach out to people and the future strategy of our church will likely mean less linear processes.
You cannot photocopy someone else’s strategy.
We may have 2-3 buckets to assimilate people through and equip them with. What are they?
People don’t come every week. BRCC discovered that on average, they have less than 1 bucket per week. They have 1+ bucket every other week. They discovered that really they have a one step strategy which has to equip and inspire them to live on mission.
Our staff is likely being measured by how many people are coming to their programs not on life change or whether people are living on mission.
New metric is story.
7 how we live practices – Vital Signs
1) Listen to God – through word, spirit, and prayer
2) Be the church – intentionally serving the needs around us
3) Share a meal – investing in the lives of people far from God and inviting them to join you on the journey
4) Peal the onion – address the layers of junk in our lives, spiritual transformation. Disciplines are important but they aren’t everything. Psalm 129:23-24
5) Downsize to maximize – simplify our financial lives to maximize our participation in God’s efforts in the world.
6) Keep your passport current – we want to mobilize people to be ready to go be the church around the world
7) Lean towards green – we want to be good stewards of the world and environment that God has given us.
Don’t get permission – get busy with the mission of God lived out in you.
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