Congregational Resources: Strategic Planning Around Sustainability

GREEN CONGREGATION STRATEGIC PLANNING MANUAL

TABLE OF CONTENTS

PART ONE: WORKING TOWARD A STRATEGIC PLAN

1. The Overall Utility
2. What is a Strategic Plan?

PART TWO: PRE-STRATEGIC PLANNING

1. The Role of the Green Team
2. Activities and Materials

PART THREE: STRATEGIC PLANNING

1. Facilitation & Participation
2. Activities
   1. Environmental Scan
   2. Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Challenges (SWOC) Analysis
   3. Priorities
3. Devotionals Before the Visioning Process
4. Writing the Strategic Plan
   1. Mission
   2. Goals
   3. Objectives
   4. Activities
5. Acting on and Updating the Strategic Plan

PART ONE: WORKING TOWARD A STRATEGIC PLAN

THE OVERALL UTILITY

This document is designed to provide an individual lay person or a small group of lay persons a description of strategic planning and how committed members can apply principles of strategic planning in their own congregations to garner participation and input from the entire congregation while the green team continues its activities for caring for God’s creation. Strategic planning can provide a sustainable and organized method of involving congregation members in defining the church’s role and increased participation and care for God’s creation. Congregations may find the process of strategic planning as a healthy exercise in itself for increasing participation and communication among congregation members.

Many steps precede the strategic planning process. Before jumping into institutionalizing a strategic plan for caring for God’s creation, the green team will need to take time to build its and the congregation’s knowledge and awareness on environmental care and the issues relating therein. “The Training Manual for the Green Congregation Program” provides guidance for the initial green team stages with quick successes and educational tools for the green team to use to educate and involve the congregation in taking better care of God’s creation. After establishing itself, the green team may want to suggest the congregation envision the short-term and long-term goals with a corresponding strategic plan for accomplishing these goals.

WHAT IS A STRATEGIC PLAN?

A strategic plan is a mission-oriented document that results from an interactive session of one or more strategic planning sessions. Strategic planning is a process an organization undertakes with its stakeholders to define and achieve the goals relative to its mission.[1] An organization’s mission statement concisely explains the reason the organization exists and serves as a guidepost for organizational activities.[2] An organization’s stakeholders include any person who might be impacted by an activity or outcome determined by the organization. For a congregation, this may include all congregation members as well as community members outside of the church. As in any strategic planning session, including a wide diversity of stakeholders will enrich the strategic planning process with differing perspectives.

During a strategic planning session, participants may

• Define a mission statement for the church in how the church and its members respond to the ecological crisis;
• Define broad goals for fulfilling the mission statement;
• Define specific objectives for achieving each goal;
• List activities for accomplishing each objective with each activity indicating congregational members or committees responsible for each task.

The strategic planning process may also include environmental scanning, SWOT (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats) analysis, and priorities voting to discern asset-based evaluations and consensus. Strategic planning should result in a defined vision and plan for moving forward, engaging discussion, and open communication. In itself, the strategic planning process may provide an opportunity for invigorating fellowship and direction. We urge congregations to organize their strategic plans around the following five areas: Worship, Education, Building and Grounds, Discipleship, and Public Ministry. However, this document only suggests strategic planning as an option for goal-oriented congregational involvement; each green team must determine the proper course for its congregation.

PART TWO: PRE-STRATEGIC PLANNING

THE ROLE OF THE GREEN TEAM

Once a green team, or group of committed members, has formed and determined its structure, has taken action to educate the congregation, and has implemented a few changes and demonstrated quick successes, the green team may consider how to involve the whole congregation. If the green team decides to formalize a strategic plan for the upcoming years based on guided input from the congregation, the green team might consider organizing a strategic planning session(s). While considering whether to organize a strategic planning session, the green team may evaluate the knowledge base of the congregation and reflect on the congregation’s responsiveness and interest in environmental projects.

The green team may want to consider the following questions:

1. What do we want to accomplish with strategic planning?
2. How many strategic planning sessions should we have?
3. How many people would we like to attend?
4. Who should facilitate/conduct the strategic planning session?
5. Who will take notes of what is said?
6. How many and what activities should we have?

ACTIVITIES AND MATERIALS

Once the green team decides to organize a strategic planning session, the group may consider organizing the strategic planning session around a local foods/sustainable agriculture potluck dinner. Although the green team may omit one or more of the strategic planning activities, but may want to have the following materials handy:

• Large sticky notepads
• Markers
• Tape
• Different colored dots
• Notepads
• Pens
• Candy
• Power Point capability for presentations

PART THREE: STRATEGIC PLANNING

FACILITATION AND PARTICIPATION

Strategic planning sessions require a facilitator to dispense questions, interpret feedback, and mediate dialogue without bias. A facilitator guides the group discussion without making content contributions or providing answers.[3] The role of facilitation requires focus on structure, relationships, focus, and key resources in the following ways:

Structure: The facilitator must know the green team’s expectations and plan for the process as well as the needs of the group. The facilitator’s role also keeps the group focused and task-oriented and creates an open and welcoming environment.[4]

Relationships: Establishing and maintaining a welcoming and fair environment for all to feel comfortable and included in the discussion, also providing clarity and summation of the group’s determinations. [5]

Focus: Clarifying the process, the group’s goals and decisions. The role of the facilitator includes maintaining the group’s focus, ensuring everyone feels included and heard, and diffusing conflict among group members.[6]

Key Resources: The role of the facilitator helps identify key resources within the group when a need for information arises, recognizes diversity of perspective within the group, recognizes the different ways people contribute to the group, maximizes each member’s strengths, and provides balanced information at the times when the group needs more information.[7]

Pastors typically have these characteristics and abilities; however, due to a pastor’s lack busy schedule and tangential association with the green team, a member from the green team may want to volunteer to facilitate the session. The green team may take advantage of this opportunity to invite all ages to the strategic planning session, to gather the input of young and mature members.

ACTIVITIES

Strategic planning sessions often included environmental scans, SWOT analyses, and priorities sessions before engaging in formulating objectives and activity plans. Green teams can determine which activities will provide the participation and input of interest.

Environmental Scans serve as a good warm-up to get the congregation to think about what, in broad terms, affects the congregation. The facilitator might ask: “What is going on in external world that we should think about?” This question may elicit a wide variety of responses ranging from climate change to the economic recession to local issues.

Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Challenges Analysis (SWOC) provides an opportunity to assess the internal and external positives and negatives of an organization. Strengths and weaknesses are internal to the congregation and opportunities and threats are external factors that may help or weaken the congregation. Depending upon the size of the group, this exercise is typically completed in small groups with an opportunity with the larger group to add comments.  The chart below demonstrates the format of the analysis with prompting questions inside.

Figure 1: SWOT Table

Priorities provides an opportunity to the congregation to answer: “What do you think this congregation should focus on in caring for God’s creation?” Then after listing the responses on what the green team and congregation should regard as high priorities for the congregation, the participants rank the issues with weighted dots. Voting with weighted dots will provide an overall indication of how important the group considers each issue. Each person votes individually with colored dots that are labeled 1 to 4 with 4 having the greatest weight. Then group members place their dots on the issues according to their subjective importance. The green team will be able to gauge on which issues they should place the highest priority. The issues with the most points are considered the most important to the group. The green team and facilitator may want to prepare to frame the priorities exercise within the five foci of the comprehensive action plan of Worship, Education, Building and Grounds, Discipleship and Public Ministry. If the green team decides to do so, these priorities can build the framework for the strategic plan for caring for God’s creation.

DEVOTIONALS BEFORE THE VISIONING PROCESS

The above strategic planning exercises may take place over one or more strategic planning sessions. If the preparatory work of researching possibilities and educating the congregation about the possibilities is mostly complete, then the task of formulating a strategic plan can begin. Before getting started on the mission, goals, objectives, and activities, a member of the green team may want to take some time for a devotion from “Stewardship of Creation: A Thirty Day Discipline” (http://www.webofcreation.org/Worship/devotions/CreationCare.pdf ) provided on Web of Creation’s website. This may be a good time for participants to envision their ideal world and their idea of the church’s role in contributing to their ideal world. Visioning can be a creative and fun process for the group and may help in formulating the mission statement or reformulating the existing church’s statement about the congregation’s commitment to environmental care.

WRITING THE STRATEGIC PLAN

Establishing the mission statement may take its own session unless the green team formulates one beforehand. The next step in formulating a strategic plan takes time to brainstorm and agree on the formulation process, goals, objectives, and activity plans. This process may be expedited by group work with each group working on one of the five focus areas of Worship, Education, Building and Grounds, Discipleship, and Public Ministry. However, the groups should check back into the larger group to share their work.

Mission Statement Before breaking into groups, the group should determine the church’s mission statement on caring for God’s creation. A mission statement should be timeless, general and far-reaching about an ideal future about the health and treatment of God’s creation.

Examples of Mission Statements:

• To eliminate all environmental and social exploitation to live in harmony and prosperity with all forms of life as good stewards of God’s creation.
• To live in a world where members of society respect and honor all of God’s creation to maintain the health, dignity, and peace of the earth.
• As called by Christ to be good stewards of God’s creation, *Church Name* commits itself to restoring God’s creation through environmentally sustainable practices, societal outreach and individual transformation.

Goals With the goal areas of Worship, Education, Building and Grounds, Discipleship, and Public Ministry, the facilitator can briefly elaborate on these areas and ask participants to divide into these goal areas based on their interest. Once in groups, prompt the groups to ask themselves about their goals for their goal area. Goals are idealized outcomes of the group’s vision of taking better care of God’s creation. Goals are then modified by more specific objectives.[8]

Examples of Goal Statements:

Topic Area: Worship

Goal: To increase awareness about caring for God’s creation through worship.

Goal: To reduce the carbon footprint of each worship service.

Topic Area: Public Ministry

Goal: Advocate legislation that restores environmental health.

Topic Area: Education

Goal: To teach all youth principles of caring for God’s creation.

Objectives indicate the specific outcomes that the congregation hopes to actualize. Objectives should be S-I-M-P-L-E; i.e. Specific, Immediate, Measurable, Practical, Logical, and Evaluable.[9] Objectives should, to varying degrees, explicitly state what will be done, in what time frame, how it will be measured, how it is feasible, how it contributes to the overall goal, and its impact.[10]

Examples of Objectives:

Goal: To identify opportunities to increase awareness about caring for God’s creation during each worship service.

Objective 1: During the next six months, the Worship committee will meet twice to discuss the five possibilities each member researched for reducing the carbon footprint of worship practices.

Objective 2: By the end of 2010, service bulletins will be made with at least 10 percent of recycled material with a statement indicating reduced carbon footprint.

Objective 3: Synchronize environmentally sustainable practices with each church season.

Activities Each objective must have its own activity plan for accomplishing the objective. The most effective activity lists include enumerated activities with a timeline and responsible parties.  The activity component of the strategic planning session will require the groups to return to the larger group to share their plan and ask for suggestions for the proper recommendation for responsibility. Each group should review each section before developing the activity plan. The goals and objectives can circulate and undergo revision until satisfactory. Committee members will very likely gravitate toward the topic area in which they serve, but if not, these members should have final review.

Example of Activities:

• Contact Lutheran Outdoor Ministries for an energy audit
• Schedule energy audit
• Buy vegetable seeds for church garden
• Survey church members about receiving church news via email
• Collect email addresses of church members
• Update comprehensive strategic plan

Example of a Strategic Plan Segment:

Goal: To reduce the carbon footprint of each worship service.

Objective 1: To replace five material elements used for worship with earthly elements at each worship service by April 2010.

Activity Plan for Objective 1:

ACTING ON AND UPDATING THE STRATEGIC PLAN

After formulating, revising, and agreeing upon a strategic plan, the people and committees listed in the strategic plan should have been a part of this process and know what activities for which they are responsible. The strategic plan should be updated when activities are accomplished and progress is made. Adding a column to the strategic plan to document activities may make updating the strategic plan easier.

[1]Anderson, Thom. March 2004.  “Community-Based Volunteer Management: A Quick Reference Guide for Rural Community and Economic Development Leaders.” Illinois Institute for Rural Affairs.

[2] Ibid.

[3] U-FACILITATE Module 1: Understanding Facilitation. www.communitydevelopment.edu/u-facilitate

[4] Ibid.

[5] Ibid.

[6] Ibid.

[7] Ibid.

[8] Writing Government Proposals. Chapter 8.

[9] Ibid.

[10] Ibid.