An Alternative to Strategic Planning: What is our context?

A friend in the real estate business says that there are three primary concerns about buying and selling: location, location, and location. Where the property is located, especially in relationship to lifestyle concerns, traffic, schools, and shopping, is vitally important.

The same thing can be said for our churches. Let’s think about it in this way: God has placed us in a particular geographic place for a reason. The reason is to be an expression of God’s kingdom in that particular place. Of course, the context in which the church ministers may change over time. Neighbors come and go. The community changes. Once when we used the terms “urban,” suburban,” “neighborhood,” “county seat,” or “open country,” we had a pretty good idea of the context. This is no longer true. A county seat church may find itself in the center of a growing satellite community on the edge of growing metropolitan area. An open country church may be surrounded by housing developments. The members of a neighborhood church may now commute great distances to attend.

You remember the story of Rip Van Winkle, an American colonial who imbibed liquor from some mysterious friends and fell asleep for twenty years, missing the Revolution, and awakening in a very different world. Some of our churches are like Rip. They have been so introspective that they have not realized that the world around them has changed. Sometimes take a crisis to wake us up to the changes around us.

Perhaps it is time for your church to reconnect with its community and its neighbors. Who are the people who live around you? What are their needs? What are the ministry opportunities? Who might be potential partners for ministry?

We answer these questions by getting outside our doors, walking our community and talking to people. We can meet with local merchant organizations, neighborhood groups, school leaders, and government officials. As we do this, we listen more than we talk. We convey a spirit of curiosity and “not knowing” as we learn from others. We may even do some demographic study. And we pray. We walk and drive our community asking God to show us what we have not seen before.

In Luke 10, Jesus sent his disciples out in pairs to the villages and exhorted them to find “persons of peace” with whom they might abide and provide a blessing. Perhaps it is time for us to begin walking the streets of our cities and seeing both needs and potential partners there.

(This post originally appeared here on March 6, 2021.)

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