As churches grow, the need for careful strategic planning becomes more important. Many things just happen in a small church; you notice when people are missing, you know each other well enough to understand the needs, and you can welcome any newcomers well. If God blesses a church with growth, it will become impossible for one person to know everyone well, and more than possible for new people to be missed or pastoral needs to be neglected. Structures are needed to do this well, and structures need planning.

Some people like to plan for the future; others just seem to deal with whatever might happen to them. I am a planner. I like to make lists. I like to know what my diary is likely to look like next week, and what major events are planned next month. I realise that not everyone is wired like I am, and the idea of strategic planning to some people seems as interesting as watching paint dry. Yet hear me out: leaders in the local church need to plan for the future.

The local church is not like a company. It would be foolish to measure the performance of a church by the number of new members, for example, when we know that so much is due to God’s work and unpredictable from our perspective. We always need to take into account the fact that whatever we might plan, God might have other plans for us:

¹³ Come now, you who say, “Today or tomorrow we will go into such and such a town and spend a year there and trade and make a profit”- ¹⁴ yet you do not know what tomorrow will bring. What is your life? For you are a mist that appears for a little time and then vanishes. ¹⁵ Instead you ought to say, “If the Lord wills, we will live and do this or that.” ¹⁶ As it is, you boast in your arrogance. All such boasting is evil.

 (James 4:13-16 ESV)

This doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t plan for the future. Traditionally, churches have often added “Lord willing” after their planned events to remind us that nothing we plan is certain; God might have other ideas. We plan to meet together next Sunday, Lord willing, for example. This means that we think we will meet as brothers and sisters next Sunday, but perhaps there will be a riot, a building fire, or maybe Jesus will come back this week.

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