Organizational Strategy Part 2

In our last post we began talking about Organizational Strategy. I know that is a whole lot to talk about when it comes to church and organizations. Specifically, we are discussing having a vision, mission and values that unify the whole organization.

One thing that is important to any organization is having ministry alignment. Ministry alignment creates momentum, focus and unity. Unity creates a powerful driving force within an organization.

Often time churches think that unity is everyone agreeing with each other. They rarely picture unity on an organizational level and then fail to grasp why they don't get any results.

I thought it would be great to define each of them and show you how they work for us here at Life Church.

Vision
Vision is simply a picture of the future for your organization. If or when you have completed what you feel your organization is setting out to do, what would it look like.

This vision is a picture for everyone. It is the driving picture of the destination we are going to.

Our vision at Life Church is: To DOMINATE the Coastal Bend area with the life of Christ.

That could mean and lead to a variety of things but for us it is a snap shot of where we are going.

I would encourage you to pray and seek the vision God wants for your organization. It should really be a burning inside of you. The vision should be so clear that you can close your eyes and picture it.

Now right that down. If it takes a whole page...do it.

Once that is complete...create a one sentence vision rallying statement. Distribute it to your leaders with the vision statement that you created.

Mission
Mission is the how...for me I picture it as the road map. It encompasses the larger steps that get the organization to the vision.

For us here it is our 3 G's:

• Create environments where we GATHER weekly to connect people to the life of Chris
• Initiate weekly Life Groups where we can GROW together in accountability
• Impact the world as we GIVE of our time utilizing our unique talents, passions, and resources

These three steps work for all our departments. They also specifically define our the process of being a disciples. You can take those three into our children's ministry and they work. Youth ministry...they work.

Our goal is to keep it simple and streamlined so that we will have the maximum amount unity and results. Our mission is actually a picture of what a disciple is within our organization.

Values
Values are the way we do things. One way of thinking about values is that it is kind of like the car you drive. They spell out what really matters. It is our ethos our DNA values.

No matter which department it is there has to be a congruency of organizational values.

Click [here] to see a list of our values. For a visual...I put them in an acrostic. You can do them however you feel is necessary. The important thing is that your team must know what is important as an organization.

Huge point I'm making in all of this is that for an organization to have unity, all of its departments must be going in the same direction. Having vision, mission, and values that simplify what you are doing can create the momentum, focus and unity to get the results you desire.