The following is from a post entitled “10 Power Principles on Church Strategy” by Will Mancini.
#1 Programs don’t attract people; people attract people (Aubrey Malphurs)
#2 Think steps not programs; strategy makes the next step simple, easy and obvious. (Andy Stanley)
#3 Strategy is a missional map, therefore communicate it visually (Church Unique)
#4 As a whole, cluttered and complex churches are not alive. (Thom Ranier)
#5 Growing people grow people; consuming people consume programs. (Church Unique)
#6 Strategy as assimilation should not be confused with spiritual formation; one is about getting individuals into the body of Christ, the other is about getting the life of Christ into the individual.
#7 Strategy connects programs and events vertically with the mission and horizontally with one another. (adapted from Bill Donahue)
#8 The fewer specials you have the more you sell. (An executive chef said this in an Auxano Vision Pathway, talking about church strategy.)
#9 Churches need strategy because mission and values alone are not enough to remove competing pictures of the church’s future. (Church Unique)
#10 The two biggest reasons people don’t get more involved are 1) they don’t know how and 2) nobody invited them. (Auxano survey work)
I like all ten but I find principles 1 and 5 to be especially powerful. Are we focused on growing people or growing programs? Are we developing Christ-followers or consumers? I hope you enjoy this post from Will as much as I did!