October 18, 2017

Nine Strategic Planning Landmines, Part 1


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When you are in a season of planning in your church or ministry, there are some things you should avoid at all costs.

On this week’s Whiteboard Wednesday, Mike Gafa, church leadership development catalyst for Luminex, talks about the first five of nine landmines when it comes to strategic planning.

1. Lack of Prayer

Prayer is essential; without prayer, nothing really good happens. Often when in strategic planning and everything starts falling into place, we tend to continue on our own strength and often cease to pray fervently and rely on God. However, a good way to avoid this landmine is to be intentional about prayer. Rather than a 30-second prayer at the beginning of a meeting, make sure prayer is central throughout so that all the plans are bathed in prayer.

2. Lack of Faith

Obedience to the Holy Spirit often leads to plans that seem out of our reach, and our faith is challenged. But we have to remain faithful. To avoid this landmine, you can exercise prayer because prayer is intertwined with and supports faith.

3. Failure to add Wisdom to Faith

In addition to prayer and faithfulness, you need wisdom. God has given us the gift of wisdom. We simply have to ask for it and use it. In James 1:5 we are told to ask God for wisdom, and our generous God will give it to us. Don’t forget to add wisdom to faithfulness and prayer in your strategic planning.

4. Overlooking the Reality of Spiritual Warfare

When you are serious about following the leading of the Holy Spirit, you can be assured that you will experience spiritual warfare. Spiritual warfare takes a variety of different forms – heaviness, looming division within the team, the feeling of discouragement – but know the enemy is at work when you get his attention by doing God’s work.

5. Failure to Celebrate

When God is at work as you go through the planning process, it is a failure not to celebrate and acknowledge what God is doing. We need to give recognition and praise to God to remember that ultimately this is all His work and not ours.

So as we think about landmines, we want to make sure that we’re in prayer, that we bring faith, that we add wisdom to our faith, that we recognize the reality of spiritual warfare, and that we celebrate.  Intentionally doing these things will allow us to avoid stepping on these landmines.

That’s your whiteboard Wednesday for today. We’ll look at the last four of these strategic planning landmines next week.

 

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