Thelemic Planning

by Walt Brock

Twenty-five years ago at Ironwood, we had two different volunteer groups working on the foundation forms for a cement pour later that week. It was going to be our biggest building to date, and we were excited. Both groups used the exact measurements, except that one group measured to the outside of the forms and the other group measured to the inside of the forms. After the cement was dry, we discovered the foundation was three inches wider at one end than the other. That little deviation caused us all sorts of trouble and special adjustments throughout the entire building process. Even when we re-roofed the building a few years ago, we again had to make adjustments for that mistake. Getting the foundation right is more important than it may seem on the surface, and a ministry will pay over and over again for a lack of good foundational planning or for being unwilling to go back and put in the proper foundation of thelemic planning.

So far in this series we have laid a solid foundation composed of biblical doctrine, vision of God’s call, philosophy of ministry, purpose, and strategic planning. Now we must answer the question, “How are we going to build upon it?” Following our metaphor of building, we are now ready to hand the blueprints to the builder or general contractor. All that has gone on before this is the job of leadership, while much of what follows is in the realm of management. The triangle illustration in Issue 6 demonstrates this by that which is above (management) and below (leadership) the dotted line. From now on, leadership’s main job is to measure all that is going on by the objective standard of the mission statement and to keep all activity in alignment with it.

I have personally found it to be one of my hardest challenges to keep my nose out of the daily work of operations and at the same time to keep measuring and evaluating our results by mission accomplishment. At the very least, my involvement with operations is through the proper channel of the main manager of our ministry and not to individual team members as they go about their work. One other aspect of operational planning which a leader can be involved in to some extent is the long-range planning facet, because those issues are often priority issues that need to be measured and guided by the strategic plan.

Operational planning is, in essence, simply planning what comes next—the next day, the next week, the next program, and the next year or budget cycle. Such planning is absolutely essential and necessary for the smooth operation and success of any ministry. Chaos and the “tyranny of the urgent” will rule the day without it. Many managers in ministry may be most vitally concerned with the daily, weekly, and maybe monthly aspects of operational planning—that which will help them survive today and hopefully tomorrow. In this series of articles, I am concentrating on the annual aspect of operational planning.

Each fall since 1996, I have put together with some input from our leadership team a one-page form entitled “Three Levels of Vision.” We have found it to be an excellent tool in four basic areas:

▪ Setting a course of action for the next year
▪ Informing our staff of what’s happening in our ministry
▪ Giving our staff team hope as they see their need addressed
▪ Keeping the whole ministry in alignment with our mission and purpose

One additional value and benefit is that the vision form aids in the whole team’s respect for the wisdom and trust of the leadership. Before we started using this planning tool and process, we would make projections for the future that failed to come about more often than not. It made our team wonder whether I knew what was actually happening or if I had manipulated them through less than honest grand plans and schemes. I must admit my first reaction to those challenges to my ability and integrity was to clam up about what the future held, but then I ran the risk of being accused of never sharing with or trusting our staff. The method is not perfect or foolproof, but it has worked for us for over a decade now.

Each November we always share the “Three Levels of Vision” with our staff and then fine tune and finalize it with our board soon after the first of the year. It is a one-page set of “working orders” for our whole team for the next year and is an internal staff document not generally shared with all our constituents. We select items on the list to share with others to give them a sense of progress, direction, and what’s next; but rarely do we share the entire page, because the list is rather scary unless you see the whole picture and understand the planning process, seeing how God has historically validated His will to us through this process as He has led and provided for His work.

Clink on the Three Levels of Vision link for a ready-to-copy form with empty columns.