Strategic Transition Plan | Church Consultation Weekend | Assessment Report Example 1 | Assessment Report Example 2 | Congregational Self-Study

Strategic Transition Plan

Prelude

Since the split of 1889, the Church of the United Brethren in Christ has not grown by any measurable significance. While acknowledging some positive strides during the intervening time, and the godly character of most of our leaders, it is clear that:

• Most of our churches lack clear vision or purpose.
• There is and has been a clear disconnect between reports of souls reached and baptisms, as well as baptisms and those incorporated into the local church.
• A significant number of our churches lack goals or strategies to reach lost people.
• A majority of our churches are at a stage of plateau or decline.

Another pattern that can be traced is that we have tried national program after program to assist our churches. Some were helpful for a time; most were seen as ineffective or were not followed long enough to determine their effectiveness.

Convictions

After observing and interacting with the church at large for the past year, we have been reinforced in the following convictions:

1. Local churches are the God-ordained vehicles for reaching the lost.
2. Reaching the lost must be the highest priority of the church.
3. Everything rises and falls on leadership.
4. The sole purposes of the national office are to recruit leaders; to resource and develop leaders; and to assist local churches to fulfill their mission through assessment, coaching, and support.

Therefore....

The national office and structure must continue to be morphed to invest in our local churches by assisting them to be healthy, reproducing tools in the hands of the Lord.

Steps to be Taken

The reformatting of our regional structure from annual conferences to smaller clusters.

These clusters serve as the key point for training, accountability, and support. (Accomplished by National Conference action, June 2005 and subsequent voluntary actions taken by the respective annual conferences.)

Branding

Change the “branding” of the national office from a perceived place of structural authority to a center for ministry support and resourcing by:

• Renaming the national office.
• Developing a new logo/imprint for the office.
• Clearly defining the covenant agenda of the denomination and using the covenant as the basis of relational authority.

This branding will be for the function of the national office. The logo and name for the denomination will still be retained for historic purposes and for connectional relationship with the International Church. (We are currently working with an agency to accomplish this.)

Assisting Churches

Coordinate our efforts out of the national office to assist churches to function on an Acts 1:8 model of ministry in Jerusalem, Judea/Samaria, and the World:

• Healthy local churches (Pat Jones and Healthy Church Ministries).
• Reproduction (Tom Blaylock and Church Multiplication).
• World Mission (Gary Dilley and Global Ministries).

Pat, Tom, and Gary are working at communicating and coordinating efforts. For example, Tom is looking to utilize clusters to be the basis for church planting in particular regions.

The Strategic Plan for Working Toward Church Health

Background

At one of our meetings in the fall of 2005, Tom Blaylock gave a copy of the book Hit the Bullseye, by Paul Borden, to Bishop Ron Ramsey and Pat Jones. This is the account of a dramatic change in a region of the American Baptist Church in the West. This region has the same number of churches as our denomination. Their status and condition at the time of the beginning of this change sounded like us.

Paul and his team have worked with various denominations to assess how their groups can do the same thing we are looking to accomplish. One thing we have found is that we are “normal” in the state of the American church.

The Bishop and Pat attended a conference in late June 2006 held to share their story and allow others to hear from their pastors. The Bishop then arranged for him and Pat to sit in with Paul Borden in conducting a church consultation. The Bishop assisted in a consultation with a church in Fort Collins, Colo., and Pat participated in one in Dalhart, Tex. These were done in August 2006.

After observing and investigating the processes Paul and his team have used in assisting churches to be healthy and reproducing, we affirmed this was a demonstration of the philosophy and direction we need to take. This is not a program, but an intentional philosophy of leadership development and church health.

Our Proposed Plan of Implementation

This plan addresses and would fulfill all five of the strategic initiatives, the purpose/mission statement, and the vision statement as laid out by the Bishop in the Fall of 2005.

1. Expose key leaders, especially cluster leaders, to this philosophical approach of development and church health.

This will be done by personal exposure and by having Paul Borden serve as a resource person at a cluster leader retreat in January 2007.

2. Expose all of the churches to the direction and philosophy of the national office. This will be done through regional cluster information events which all church leaders will be invited to attend; information on the web site; sending of an explanatory mailing to each local church; and a major presentation at the 2007 National Conference.

3. Begin the process of doing church interventions or consultations.

a. The Bishop and Pat will each conduct an initial consultation with a willing church. The teams for those consultations will also include the cluster leader and any pastors we may ask to serve as coaches. (An outline of the consultation weekend is on page 43-3, and the church self study document that must be completed to participate starts on page 43-7).

b. We will serve as consultants to those churches for twelve months.

c. We will open the door to more church consultations after we have completed most of the process with these first churches and have evaluated our skills and tools.

4. Raise the level of quality of the current clusters.

This will be accomplished by:

a. Establishing a new cluster whose leader is solely focused on mentoring those in the group. This will place one of our most experienced and successful pastors with pastors in situations with great potential to grow. This will serve as a model for future clusters.

b. Resourcing all of our clusters with books and tools that will focus more intently on church health and leadership development.

c. Realigning the budget to allow for greater investment in cluster leaders, mentors, and resources for our pastors.

5. Hold semi-annual lay training events for lay leaders.

Through these events, lay leaders in our churches will be exposed to the same principles, books, philosophies, etc. that our pastors are exposed to in their clusters and consultations. These will be done regionally and involve bringing in high quality resource people.

6. Do church multiplication only when we have several “birthing” partners and a significant number of core people involved.

In other words, we birth a larger, self-sustaining, multiplying church rather than a smaller, dependent church that lacks the vision and resources to reproduce.

7. Use other consultants and assessors.

We will continue a process of raising up other consultants and assessors by asking them to serve as assistants and then giving them lead roles.

We will continue to use the NCD surveys and other tools as a part of our assessment toolbox. The goal will be to use whatever tools best assist us in helping churches get on mission and accomplish their vision for ministry.

8. Recruit pastors.

When in need of finding a pastor for one of our churches, we will continue to develop a process of seeking people who:

• Are not currently looking for a job but are open to a fresh challenge.
• Have a proven track record of leading a church or organization to grow.
• Desire to work in an environment of freedom and support coupled with proper accountability.
• Are doctrinally compatible with us.

9. Deal with uncooperative pastors.

When a pastor is not willing to participate in this personal leadership development plan or willing to lead his congregation toward fulfilling the Great Commission, we will not remove him immediately. But should the time come when his church requests a pastoral change, we will not consider him for any other lead pastor role in the Church of the United Brethren in Christ, USA.