October 25, 2017

Nine Strategic Planning Landmines, Part 2


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Hopefully by avoiding these landmines, your strategic planning experience will be a blessing to your leaders and church as a whole.

Last week on Whiteboard Wednesday, we talked about the first five of Nine Strategic Planning Landmines – lack of prayer, lack of faith, failure to add wisdom to faith, overlooking the reality of spiritual warfare, and failure to celebrate. This week, Mike Gafa, Church Leadership Development Catalyst for Luminex, continues talking about the last four landmines to avoid.

6. Planning Fatigue

Strategic planning is difficult, stressful, and tedious work that is not for the faint of heart. Though our planning is structured and somewhat procedural, often we are left waiting on the Lord …which is when we are most susceptible to planning fatigue. But staying the course is essential!

7. Inflexibility

In strategic planning, the Holy Spirit will lead us in a variety of ways according to His timing and purposes. Being inflexible and holding our own plans too tightly becomes a landmine. If we truly want to be led by the Holy Spirit and follow Him, we have to hold our plans loosely in order to be flexible.

8. Procrastination

Procrastination can stall momentum and even kill the strategic planning process. If you know you are prone to procrastination, bring accountability mechanisms into the process to hold you accountable and to hold the whole team accountable. Basically, make good on what you commit to doing. Be accountable and avoid the trap of procrastination.

9. People-pleasing

Our efforts need to be focused on pleasing God, not people. If we are obedient to God’s calling us when we are planning, hopefully many people will end up being happy with our decisions. But if our main goal is people-pleasing, we usually end up with just the opposite.

To recap, the landmines to avoid are: lack of prayer, lack of faith, failure to add wisdom to faith, overlooking the reality of spiritual warfare, failure to celebrate, planning fatigue, inflexibility, procrastination, and people-pleasing. Make sure to avoid these during your next season of strategic planning!

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