By Steve Matthews, FaithX Senior Consultant
Editor’s Note: This is the beginning of a four-part series on Strategic Missional Planning in different contexts. Next week’s post will be on strategic missional planning for leadership transition.
Remember the good ‘ol days when we felt we could project the trajectory of our congregations and judicatories with some degree of confidence? Remember what it was like to be able to cast a vision based on thoughtful discernment and a sense of stability – believing that in five years we might just reach our goals?
The world has certainly changed in a year, and we are reminded again that we are not in control. A couple of nights ago I had a very dramatic and involved dream. All night long, I was battling evil “Transformers.” You know, the Paramount Pictures, 200-feet-tall monsters that have the ability to change themselves from a walking robot to a fire-shooting four-wheel vehicle of destruction. They are very adaptable based on the threat and the weaknesses they see in their opponent. In reaction to their threats, I was also called to be very adaptable (mostly in the way I hid from them). It was an exhausting night.
2020 was an exhausting year, and we as faith communities continue to be called toward adaptability. In 2021 it is possible to plan and to be adaptable… and even strategic, but we won’t do it in the same way we did prior to 2020. We need to recommit to those spiritual practices that ground us in God’s love, to the practices that enable us to listen to one another and our neighbors at a deep level, to practices that encourage us to accompany our hurting neighbors in a more courageous and prophetic way – and we need to understand our world better in order to move forward together based on our current reality.
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