Faithful Planning

About the book

Faithful Planning is a working guide for congregations that have decided to plan seriously — and for the small group inside a congregation given the work of doing it. It treats strategic planning in the local church as its own discipline: not corporate strategy borrowed with the numbers changed, and not a season of retreats without an artifact at the end.

The book moves from the evidence a planning committee needs, to the framework a plan takes, to the governance that carries the plan into decisions, to the implementation that measures whether the plan is being kept. Its architecture follows the work of planning itself, and its case studies are drawn from a composite of real congregations that have done this work well and less well.

It is written for the reader who will still be at the post a decade from now — the elder, the vestry member, the council chair, the pastor — and it is edited to be worth reading again when the next planning cycle begins.

Who this book is for

• Church planning committees — sessions, vestries, councils, and the ad hoc groups convened for a planning cycle.
• Church leaders — pastors, priests, and lay leaders responsible for the strategic direction of a congregation.
• Nonprofit administrators working in and around religious institutions, where planning must serve both mission and stewardship.
• Seminaries and institutions teaching religious administration, church governance, or the practical work of leading a congregation.

What’s inside

Book details