A key concept in this process is the development of a Vision Map, a strategic plan for the major milestones that must be achieved to move from Current Reality to God's Preferred Future.
Most people who write on this subject say the same things because so much of the reality of Vision and Planning is universally true. I simply want to bring two more items into the discussion of how leaders move the church from Current Reality to God's Preferred future.
The first item is the concept of the "Lazy S Curve." This is depicted by the curvy line in the image above. Churches or organizations do not grow in straight-line or linear progression. There is no straight-line growth in the real world. For example, hunters who spend a great deal of time in the woods know if they see something in their binoculars which is perfectly straight, it is not natural, but man-made. Life does not grow in a straight time. There are times of great growth and times of rest or plateau in every church or organization.
For example, a new congregation begins meeting in the school cafeteria. Their growth is recorded and displayed on a graph. There may be a time of rapid upward movement of the growth indicator. Then something happens. It could be a lot of things. But one thing is clear, the growth rate has slowed or even stopped and the congregation does not experience the exponential growth they had known in the past. What happened?
For the sake of this discussion we will assume the thing that happened is they hit the 80% seating capacity in their worship area. A careful look at their attendance figures reveal that occasionally they exceed that 80% full statistic, but invariably their attendance drops back to the limit set by the space and comfortable seating in that space. (Note: some cultures will experience this at 90% instead of 80% because of their cultural definition of personal space requirements. 80% is generally true in Anglo cultures).
So the leaders are faced with a problem: the growth has stopped and the congregation is not yet strong enough to purchase or lease a larger facility. After much "weeping, wailing and gnashing of teeth," they make a decision to add an additional worship service in the same space each Sunday morning. They add the service, doing all things well, and attendance begins to grow again and the graph of that attendance takes a significant up swing.
The plateaus and the changes in the rate of growth are called "Inflection Points" An Inflection Point is when there is a change in direction (growth of attendance, number of discipleship groups, giving, missional involvement, any aspect of church life). These inflection points may arise from within the congregation or may come from the environment around it.
An example of an inflection point within the congregation is the change in pastoral leadership. This often changes the direction of the growth of the attendance - either up or down. But the organizational decision to change pastoral leadership will be an inflection point that will change the direction of the graph of the growth of the church.
An external or environmental inflection point is something that occurs outside the congregation that changes the direction of the growth. An environmental inflection point with which most leaders are currently dealing is the economic stagnation and recession in the US and around the world. The graph of the church's giving may have been showing growth for several years, perhaps even remarkable growth. But for many churches that direction changed and the "Lazy S Curve" graph reflects it as a plateau or even a decline.
When there is change of direction (growth) that is an Inflection Point and may be internally or externally generated. The task of effective leadership is to either respond to those changes in direction with proactive and transformational decision making and actions or anticipate those changes in direction and take peremptory actions to change the direction again to a positive growth rate.
For example, the new congregation meetng in the school does not have to languish for years asking why their growth has practically stopped and pointing fingers of blame at any number of characters, especially the pastor and worship leaders.. A proactive leader would look at the rate of growth, project that into the future and determine that in 18 months we will be out of worship space in our one service and will have to do something to avoid stagnation. That effective leader will then engage his/her fellow leaders in exploring the options and making the decisions which will proactively change the direction of the growth of the church. This pro-activity is one of the marks of effective leadership - anticipating the Inflection Points and making preparations for them in advance.
Several years ago the Consulting Group I worked with was invited by a large growing church in another state to work with them and help them evaluate their ministry and make plans for the future. The "pain" or Inflection Point that prompted the call and later action was the fact they had just built a much larger worship facility but attendance had not significantly increased. A quick look at their facilities determined they were at capacity in their parking lot. The preaching and worship service was so strong the parking lot was filled to capacity most Sundays and every Sunday people wold drive onto the lot, look for a non-existent parking space and drive away in frustration. This should have been anticipated and addressed in the planing and building stages but had simply been missed. Therefore, their growth graph reflected by the "Lazy S Curve" above was in a flat cycle. It took time to get the money and create new and additional convenient parking., However, when it was completed, the growth graph immediately took a significant upswing. The inflection point that slowed the growth was the reality of inadequate and overfilled parking. The inflection point that allowed the growth to increase again was the addition of parking.
Effective leaders respond to environmental inflection point with faith and creative decision making. Hence some churches have not experienced a decline in giving during the current recession. Rate of growth in giving has declined, but they have at least avoided a giving/funding crisis.
Sadly, most churches neither respond proactively to environmental inflection points nor anticipate internal inflection points and they live in a several year spiral of decline and ultimate death. It does not have to be so. However, for this to be avoided effective, faithful, courageous leaders must come forth to make the hard decisions necessary to change the direction of the decline using those critical inflection points to do so.
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