Integrated Planning Track
Our most comprehensive consulting package
Choose this consultation process for your church if:
* One goal of your consultation is to develop a facility plan.
* You want to conduct a comprehensive evaluation of your ministries, staffing, facilities, and finances and develop an integrated, step-by-step plan for removing barriers to healthy growth and effective ministry in each of these areas.
WHAT YOUR CHURCH GETS
If your church goes through an Integrated Planning Consultation, what payoffs can you expect?
Facilities
- In nine cases out of ten, the church will end up with a facility plan that shows how you can accommodate growth, in phases, to double your present attendance.
- If we determine that it is impractical or inadvisable to grow to this size at your present site, we will work with you to determine the timing and prerequisites for moving to or adding another site, and develop a plan for accommodating growth in the interim.
- Occasionally, for a church to accommodate 100% growth requires future decisions that the church is not ready to make. If processing such decisions now would distract the church from its primary focus of enhancing ministry, we identify the options and when the decision will need to be made, then try to focus the church on the more immediate action steps needed to facilitate health and growth.
- Your facility plan will embody "When Not to Build" principles–showing you how to accommodate maximum growth with minimal investment in bricks and mortar while maintaining (or restoring) excellence in quality.
- Typically, a single-use facility can be made to work well for a congregation at least three times the size for which it was originally designed. For example, a facility designed for a congregation of 350 can usually be made to work well for a congregation of 1000 or more through utilization changes, remodeling, and modest additions before a major building program is needed.
- Assuming your church implements the major elements of the facility plan, the church staff and ministry leaders will be free to focus more time and energy on ministering to people rather than continually revisiting facility questions.
Note: Receiving the full benefit of this facility planning process depends on your church's willingness to use your facilities differently. Changes recommended to optimize facility utilization may include schedule changes, programming changes, relocating functions, converting single-use space to multiple-use space, and deploying more ministries into off-campus meeting spaces in the community. Such recommendations are based on two criteria: optimizing use of your facility, and, even more important, increasing ministry effectiveness. If your congregation is not open to making such changes, you are not ready for a Living Stones consultation.
Finances
- As compared to traditional facility plans, our approach to facility planning saves most churches tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands, or (with larger congregations) millions of dollars, provided the church implements the plan.
- Because the Living Stones approach to facility planning reduces and postpones the need for building, churches that implement it are often able to get out of debt and stay out of debt, even through a major building program. For heavily indebted churches, the transition from a debt economy to a cash economy takes years. Our book When Not to Borrow describes our approach to church finances.
- You will receive an analysis of your giving level and your giving potential, as well as an assessment of what rate of growth your present and projected giving levels can support.
- You will receive an analysis of your budget priorities and recommendations for which areas need increased investment and any areas that may be taking too much of the budget pie.
- If applicable, we will give you guidance on establishing a growth fund out of which future growth needs, including facility needs, will be funded. Our goal is to help you meet future growth needs with little or no debt so that money that would otherwise have been spent on interest can be invested in ministry to people.
Staffing
- You will have a staffing plan that identifies any areas in which you are understaffed or inappropriately staffed including prioritized recommendations for optimizing staff effectiveness. This covers not only pastoral and program staff but also office support and facility staff. Staff vacancies provide a valuable opportunity for considering restructuring, redefining, or redistributing staff assignments to optimize effectiveness. Concerns you raise about competence of present staff are typically handled privately with the senior pastor and/or your personnel committee.
- If applicable, we will provide you with guidance and coaching for the process of beginning or continuing the transition from the traditional "minister for hire" model of church staffing to the more biblical "equipper of ministers" model.
Ministries
- You will know what your Natural Church Development (NCD) minimum factor is and your consulting team will have worked with you to identify why this is your minimum factor. Your leadership team will have experienced (on Saturday of the site visit) a session of teaching and vision-casting helping them to understand in general terms what the church's primary ministry agenda needs to be for the coming year to strengthen your minimum factor.
- You will have in place a Church Health Team to facilitate the precise identification of key issues related to your minimum factor. With the guidance of your Ministry Coach (a member of your consulting team), this team will develop and facilitate the implementation of an Action Plan.
- Your Ministry Coach will be connecting you with equipping resources to improve ministry effectiveness, especially in the area of your minimum factor.
- Provided you implement the major recommendations, your church is almost certain to be measurably healthier a year after the original site visit. Eighty-five percent of churches, upon taking their second NCD survey, show measurable improvement in church health.
Integrated Planning
- By the time you receive your written report, you will have a clear description of what immediate barriers to healthy growth your church faces in four areas–ministries, staffing, facilities, and finances. Plus your plan will anticipate future barriers to growth, especially in facilities and staffing, and recommend ways to remove these barriers before they hinder ministry.
- You will not only have received recommendations for how to remove these barriers, but these recommendations will be prioritized so that you know which areas require attention first.
- A planning consultation "fast tracks" the church's planning process. Even if your board is qualified to do planning of this nature, a planning consultation can accomplish in a few months what would otherwise require five years or more of board planning.