Growing Your Ministry Through…Strategy

I’ve recently been playing a web-based game called DiceWars, which is loosely based on the Risk board game. To win DiceWars, you must take ownership of all the territories on the game map by massing troops (dice) and attacking your neighbors. The strategy that has worked most often for me in this game is to maximize my troops in a small set of territories on the edge of the map, then work outward slowly. As I started applying this strategy, I realized that it had a lot in common with ministry strategy.

Strategy #1: Establish a Single Focus

As we all know, there is always more to do than we have time and resources. Determine what your single focus for your ministry is by asking the following question:

If this ministry could only do one thing, what is it and can I confirm God’s calling?

After you answer this question, you know where to place all of your effort. Remove much of the cruft of your ministry – things that you’ve been doing but don’t really need to do. Once you’ve achieved this, you can move on to the next strategy.

Strategy #2: Create a Firm Foundation

Put all of your time and effort into this single focus and make your ministry be the best at it. Create job descriptions for recruiting and seek people to fill those needs. Create training materials for your new recruits and make sure everyone understands their job role. Recruit additional volunteers to backfill for your current team to allow for rotation and sick days. At this time you will also need to begin to identify one or more managers to help you oversee the week-to-week tasks, freeing you up for the next strategy.

Strategy #3: Grow Outward

As you begin to take on more people to handle your current focus, you can begin to take a small team and venture into the next territory. Now is the time to transition management of your teams to your new managers, if you haven’t done so already. Focus on the next aspect of your ministry and perform the same strategy to grow it in parallel. There may be times when you need to put your focus back on sustaining your current offerings, maybe even to the point that you need to pull back sometimes and refocus. That’s ok – everything we do is temporary in this world, so accept that things you do today may not be needed tomorrow.

By focusing your attention in small steps, you will create a growing ministry with a firm foundation that will enable your team to win the true victory.

[tags]church leadership, ministry leadership, ministry strategy[/tags]

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