"If all goes well, I plan to retire in three years, and I would like to see us expand the number and variety of small face-to-face groups here before I leave," explained the Reverend Richard Sanders to the governing board at Grace Church one evening. "Exclusive of our Sunday school--but if we include the four circles in our women’s organization, our chancel choir, the handbell choir, and all of the others--we now have a total of 17 adult groups that meet either weekly or monthly. I would like to see that increased to at least two dozen before I retire. These small groups are the best single component of our larger strategy to welcome and assimilate newcomers as well as meeting the personal and spiritual needs of the participants."

"That means creating two or three new groups every year," reflected one of the younger members of the board. "That strikes me as an attainable goal. What can we do to help make that happen?"

* * *

Four years ago, Crossroads Church, a new mission, held their first public worship service in the auditorium of a public high school. Thanks to the one-time support of scores of well wishers and at least a dozen curious Christians who came with no intentions of ever returning, plus an intensive and expensive advertising effort, the attendance at that first service was 483. The second Sunday morning attendance was 306. For the first 12 months, attendance averaged 345. For the past 12 months, worship attendance averaged 562.

During those four years, the congregation found, purchased and paid $585,000 for a 20-acre site. They also began to plan for the construction of the first unit of their new church home. The architect prepared a three-stage plan, with the first unit to include the future fellowship hall that would be the temporary worship center, offices, two dozen meeting rooms of various sizes, restrooms and corridors. The second stage called for construction of a gymnasium, plus two sets of restrooms that included showers, an expansion of the parking lot and accommodations for a large weekday pre-kindergarten ministry. The third stage focused on construction of a traditional sanctuary. That was placed third because of the high square-foot costs. The architect described it as a 15-year plan.

After nine meetings with the architect, the members of the Building Planning Committee appeared ready to recommend it for approval at a congregational meeting.

At that time, a 47-year-old member of the committee declared, "On the way home from our last meeting I began to reflect on how long 15 years is. During the past 15 years, our life has been marked by the unexpected. I’ve changed employers twice, we moved into our third home two years ago, our 16-year-old daughter was killed in a traffic accident caused by a drunken driver, and this is the third church we’ve been members of during these 15 years. I agree we need to think in a long timeframe, but I believe we need to build more flexibility into our thinking. As I look around, I see a lot of changes since 1990 in how we do church in America. One obvious difference is churches are larger."

"You’re right!" agreed another member of the committee. "What are you suggesting? How should we change our planning? How can we keep the door open to the unexpected?"

"We’re part way down what I believe is the right road," came the reply. "What we have is a three-stage design, with the first stage presented in great detail and the second and third focused on a gym and later a permanent sanctuary. I am in complete support of the proposed first stage. What I would like to see would be at least four versions of the second stage. One could call for construction of a permanent worship center. Another could focus on expanding our ministries with families with children. A third could be the gym. A fourth could provide two or three separate venues for worship. More and more churches are affirming concurrent worship services on Sunday morning. Each of those four alternatives would be designed to make it easy to add an eventual third building program. After we have been in our new building for two or three years, we’ll know better than we do now what the second stage should include. Ten years from now, we’ll also be better informed on designing a third building program."

"What I hear you suggesting is to combine a longer timeframe of 15 to 20 years with a five-year timeframe for our first building program," commented the chair of the committee.

"That’s right. We need a firm and detailed plan to be able to get a building permit for our first unit, but it should be designed with more flexibility than the current proposal allows," agreed the member who had launched what turned out to be a four-month extension of the planning process.

* * *

"Yesterday I received a welcome surprise," explained a trustee at First Church. "Two weeks ago, as you all know, the apartment building next door was largely destroyed by fire. Instead of using the insurance to rebuild, the owner has decided to raze what’s left and sell the vacant lot. We can buy it for approximately $800,000 if we want. The owner’s son, who was my roommate in college, called and said it was appraised for slightly over $1 million, but the family would prefer to sell it to the church. Should we buy it?"

"I’ve been wondering about that, so last Friday I stopped by City Hall to check out the size of the lot," commented another trustee. "It is 165 feet wide by 132 feet deep. That’s about half an acre."

"That’s $2 million an acre!" exclaimed a third trustee. "My Dad just sold the family farm to a developer for $30,000 an acre, and you’re talking about our church paying $800,000 for half an acre! What would we do with it?"

"This isn’t farm land," explained another trustee. "This is valuable land only a block from the intersection that is the heart of the central business district. If we can buy it for $800,000, I say let’s not pass up this opportunity to keep the future open for our church. It’s worth at least $500,000 if we used it only for parking, and it’s worth at least $1 million simply to keep our future open. We need to be thinking in a 20 or 30-year timeframe, not whether we can afford an $800,000 expenditure."

* * *

"Two years ago this coming August I was installed here as the ninth pastor of what at the time was an 85-year-old congregation," recalled Jeff Harrison, the 37-year-old minister at the Monroe Street Church. "This became my third pastorate after seminary. The first was three years as the associate minister in a large downtown church. That was followed by nine years as the fourth minister in a suburban congregation founded in 1958. When we came here, my friends asked how long I expected to be here. My usual response was we’re leaving that up to God, but I hoped it would be at least 10 or 15 years."

The occasion was the third Sunday in January, a day usually reserved in this congregation for the pastor’s annual state-of-the-church message. The previous year, the theme of Jeff’s message focused on how he was so favorably impressed by how God had blessed this congregation over the decades since it was organized in 1921, by the deep commitment of the members, by the abundance of gifted volunteers and by the 30-year ministry of Jeff’s immediate predecessor.

"During the past eight months, as many of you know," continued Jeff, "I’ve been meeting with seven members who constitute our Long-Range Planning Committee. We’ve discussed at least a dozen possible scenarios for the future of this congregation. At one point in our discussions, Terry Fulton suggested one scenario could be on what God is calling this congregation to be and to be doing when the time comes to celebrate our 100th anniversary in 2021. That gave us a 15-year timeframe for our planning. As we began to expand our thinking about what God is calling the Monroe Street Church to be and to be doing in the 21st century, Steve Brown challenged me by asking if I expected to be here as your pastor in 2021. I hedged by replying that would depend on whether I was the right person to help lead in implementing a 15-year ministry plan. This morning I would like to focus on two points. The most important is the central theme of the plan your Long-Range Planning Committee is ready to recommend. The second is to respond to Steve’s question. The answer is if God is willing, and if the Monroe Street congregation approves this ministry plan, I hope to be here long after we celebrate our 100th anniversary."

For the fourth time in at least a decade, according to long-tenured members, and for the first time since Jeff’s arrival, the Sunday morning message was interrupted by spontaneous applause.

Six Questions
1. What is the length of the timeframe your congregation currently uses in planning for ministry in the 21st century?

2. Do some groups concentrate on short-term goals while others use a longer timeframe for their planning? Would it reduce potential conflict and confusion if every group, board and committee used at least a three-year timeframe for planning?

3. Changes in "how we do church in America in the 21st century" clearly are more frequent and often more radical than they were in the 1950s. Does your timeframe for planning provide the flexibility required to accommodate change?

4. If you do use a 10 or 15 or 20-year timeframe for planning, does it open the door to the possibility that two decades from now today’s 15-year-olds will bring a different set of expectations to church than are brought by today’s 35- year-olds? One example of that is in 1955, thousands of churchgoing adults born in 1920 enthusiastically endorsed the plans for a new church building based on a split-level design with 20 church-owned, off-street parking spaces. Most 35-year-old Americans of today have been taught that every motorist is entitled to a vacant parking space at the end of the journey. By contrast, the 35-year-old churchgoer of 1955 had been taught for years that a vacant parking space near the main entrance to the church proved that God is alive and at work in His world.

5. How does the actual or probable tenure of your pastor and/or your pastor’s age influence the length of the timeframe for planning in your congregation?

6. Does your ministry plan emphasize inputs into the system such as money, real estate, personnel and schedules? Or does it emphasize outcomes such as worship attendance, the choices offered people to be engaged in doing ministry and the transformation of the lives of people? Are the benchmarks or criteria used for self-evaluation in that annual audit of congregational performance compatible with the timeframe used for planning?

For more than four decades, Lyle E. Schaller has served as a parish consultant to hundreds of congregations and scores of denominational agencies. His recent books include From Geography to Affinity, The Ice Cube Is Melting, and A Mainline Turnaround.