Effective church leaders are almost always effective planners. But planning requires you to set aside time that you could be using in other ways that seem more practical, so it's easy to neglect it. However, studies show that one hour of effective planning can save you between four and twelve hours of wasted work time later. Planning is spending time to save time. As you prepare now to develop a strategic plan for the development of your church let's begin by reviewing some essential planning principles.

First, apart from what many people think, planning can be very spiritual. One of the biggest mistakes church planters make is a failure to plan properly in ministry. The old adage is true in church development as it is in most of life's work. If you fail to plan you plan to fail. Most church planters, whether they have strengths in planning or not, and most do not, are forced to focus on planning and strategic goal setting or they often do not survive.

When the topic of planning comes up it often raises a host of issues in many people's minds. Some hardly plan at all because they believe that planning somehow denies the spiritual dynamics of building the body of Christ and lessens our dependence on Christ to build the church. Others go to the opposite extreme, placing an inordinate and illegitimate focus on the importance of planning and goal setting. The type of planning we're talking about in this lesson is an exercise in Godly wisdom and stewardship.

On the topic of developing a ministry strategy author and former pastor John Piper writes, "Not thinking through a strategy as a church for winning and adding and shepherding more and more people is not an option because no strategy is a strategy, a heartless one."

A second principle is that planning is dynamic not static. Your ministry plans like most aspects of a new church's philosophy of ministry should be seen as a starting place for developing contextualized ministries. Your plan should always be seen as dynamic not static. Plans are always changing as church leaders grow in their ability to contextualize gospel ministry more effectively as they face new challenges in an always changing context. Sometimes very well developed plans and strategies that are created before moving to the field must be almost completely redone and new better contextualized strategies need to be developed after you're in the field.

Another common mistake church planters make during this season is to do strategic planning only at the beginning of the church development season, when it is often needed for survival. But then as time passes and the church becomes more stable the church development plan is often filed away and thoughtful strategic planning comes to an end.

The third planning principle to keep in mind is to pray hard for your desired vision but work hard towards your practical goals. Your desires to see a ministry vision realized someday need to be kept very separate from your more practical ministry goals. Your ministry vision should be seen as long term and linked to your dreams of the desired future for your church in the many years that lie ahead. But your goals you develop from your planning should be seen as more short term and linked to your specific, measurable objectives and action steps that have very real time lines and dates.

Church leaders need to learn how to pray hard for their long term ministry vision and work hard toward their short term measurable goals, leaving the results to God. Most church leaders seem to find that it's best to have a one-year plan that is sometimes broken down into two, three or four periods per year. This more specific one-year plan is normally part of a more general three-year plan. Planning beyond three years is usually speculation and it should be seen more in the category of desired vision.

The last planning principle is for the church leader to understand that it's the thought that counts. The thinking and communication between church leaders that takes place during the planning process is usually far more important and valuable than any planning documents that may come out of that process. So don't rush or short change the planning process. It's the planning process not the plan that often really helps the church leader the most.