We--my wife & me--will host the after-Prom party tonight. Other than having to stay awake until our guests arrive well past midnight, I expect good things. Well, maybe not all good. My neighbors will whinny because throngs of teenagers with newly minted driving licenses block their driveways with dad's SUV. My bathroom will get a workout I will make untold trips outside to see what exactly is so interesting outside that you have to go back and forth several times (maybe not, these are really good kids or so their mothers tell me). That we live next door to a park offers me no comfort as I imagine tuxedos in the grass (hey, that would be a good name for a rock band).

My bank account will also get worked over. Prom dress $300, shoes $79, earrings, $43, chocolate fondue, fruit, orange juice, plates, napkins, and cups, $118. Being the coolest Dad: priceless.

For all it's impending doom, hosting the post-Prom shindig offers the best possible way to really know my daughter's friends. I expect to see at least one couple on the brink of a breakup and more than one pledging goo-goo eyed foreverlove. I will meet the class clown, brain, jock, and dweeb who will likely change roles over the next twenty years. It should be more entertaining than people watching at the Austin airport, which is pretty good fun if you've never tried it.

Pray for me. I hope I can stay awake.

Strategy Simplified: Listen-Aim-Act-Change-Repeat

Why Most Church Plants Fail

Depending on who keeps score, somewhere 50 and 80 percent of all church plants fail to make their tenth birthday.[1] Far too much time, energy, emotion, and m-o-n-e-y go into church planting for believers to be satisfied with such dismal results. Business leaders like to say, “Your system is perfectly designed to achieve the results you’re getting.”[2] If that is true, and it likely is, then one must agree that something in the church planting system needs adjustment.

Most often, former leaders of now defunct church plants cite under-funding as their chief complaint, but (because the fruit is always in the harvest) funding causes few, if any, church plants to collapse. Over the last several years, an ongoing, faith-based (unscientific) poll helped determine what most causes failure in church planting: bad strategy. Ill-conceived, or misguided strategy always leads to failure, even in cases where funding is extraordinarily high.

Most Church Leaders Don’t Know Much about Strategy

Last February, George Barna’s research group wrote that while 92 percent of church leaders (and probably 100 percent of church planters) “consider themselves to be effective leaders, . . . only one out of every seven Senior Pastors (14%) say that they are effective at thinking and acting strategically.”[3] A wise person might wonder why seminaries do not require that graduates complete at least one course on strategic thinking and planning. Simply stated, the typical MDiv requires over ninety semester hours. Ask committee members what they would one cut in order to make room for three or four hours of strategic thought, and the answers will vary to the point of stagnation. So the larger issue of Southern Baptist Seminary curriculum must be left to greater minds.

For now, strategy rides the waves of elective courses, which is where all church planting courses abide in stateside seminaries. Nehemiah planters take at least two courses; one covering the basic principles of church planting and one that focuses on models. At New Orleans BTS, the latter course—Strategic Church Planting for Multiplication—underplays models to spend most of its three hours on strategic thinking. the thought is that if one understands models he has a good chance of choosing the wrong one for his context (as experience easily proves), but if one can plan and think strategically, the correct model will show itself.

So what can be done now? Not much it would seem. The ocean of books on strategy generally complicate the subject to the point one feels he needs a three-hour, graduate-level course on the subject, which leaves us right back where we started does it not? (Readers may find one or two good choices on the front page of my blog.)

A Simple Formula: Listen-Aim-Act-Change-Repeat

Rather than sinking into a-strategic haze, perhaps a few quick thoughts will send readers in a healthier direction. First, understand that strategy is a lot like bathing. You’re never through; no matter how clean one feels at first, after a while everything stinks again. Strategic thinking and planning never cease.

Strategy has four parts that always return to the primary source for information. Good strategy follows good information, and good information comes from listening. Most people do not listen well, if at all, so most strategies start off starved for information. Strategy does not stop at listening, it takes other steps. It takes aim at a goal, it takes action to meet the goal, and it changes to correct the things it could not have seen before it took action; but—please remember this—strategy listens all the time.

Think of the steps as four-fold and always repeating: listen-aim-act-change-listen-aim-act-change-repeat.[4] It may help the reader to draw a figure eight lying on its side; i.e., an infinity symbol; and plot the steps on at equal distances on the figure.

If we’re trying to grow a church, we listen to the people in the area. How do they perceive truth? What do they think of churches? What are their ideas on God, Jesus, Holy Spirit, baptism, communion (stick with the big stuff)? Where does life hurt and where do they find joy? If a Bible study started in their neighborhood, would they attend? Would they host it (one finds the neighbors almost always attend when they host the Bible study in their home).

It all seems obvious doesn’t it? Yet leaders start most churches, or any program for that matter, with what they think might work instead of what their listening ears tell them will work.

After listening enlightens a few trends, one can aim his energies at something specific. If he finds people receptive to small group Bible studies, but not to large group worship gatherings, he could aim at starting small groups in every neighborhood in a ten block square.

When his aim is clear, he can act on his target. He can look for host families, pick a night, invite people, train leaders, and start networking between groups.

Then he can plan on changing. Strategic plans always change. Every plan demands change soon after one takes action, and no one can anticipate those changes. Moreover, no one can anticipate how changes will affect they people in the group. So, wise strategists listen again, shift their aim, take new action, make new changes, and—you guessed it—listen again.

100,000 blessings, Jack Allen

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[1] Jeff Nyberg, quoted in Jerry Pierce, “Church Planting Fellowship Gets Gospel in Written Form to 13,400 Plano-area Homes,” Southern Baptists of Texas, accessed 27 April 2006, http://www.sbtexas.com/default.asp?action=article&aid=1341. Elizabeth D. Rios, “Chronicles of Church Planting: 80% Failure Rate,” Next Wave: Church and Culture, accessed 27 April 2006, http://the-next-wave-ezine.info/issue81/index.cfm?id=4&ref=ARTICLES_CHURCH%20PLANTING_45

[2] The saying is generally credited to Frederick Taylor (1856-1915), the father of scientific management.

[3] “Church Leaders Emphasize Motivation, But Struggle with Strategy,” The Barna Update, http://www.barna.org/FlexPage.aspx?Page=BarnaUpdate&BarnaUpdateID=220. accessed 27 April 2006,

[4] Adapted from Gary Gagliardi, The Golden Key to Strategy (Seattle: Clearbridge), 2005, which was, other than the author’s brilliant formula, a metaphysical mumbo jumbo and utter waste of $15.95.

Marty Duran came up with a great question on his blog: "You are the new President of NAMB. What are your goals?" Chime in at http://sbcoutpost.blogspot.com

I guess my first thought would be to ask "what sin did I commit to call down God's wrath on my head? Now I'll actually have to work." After that, here's a list, a flawed one I'm sure:

1. Put a 90-day moratorium on new programs.

2. Get on my face before God and stay there until He tells me what to do.

3. Tell some godly people with a proven track record for wisdom what I think God said. Listen to their advice.

4. Take revisions to the Lord.

5. Tell the Trustees what I think God is saying. Listen to their advice. Read this list to them. Listen to them some more.

6. Ask NAMB staff for names of people they most trust within the organization. Meet with those people and listen to them talk about whatever they want to talk about. Once they wind down, tell them what I think God is saying. Listen some more. Pray with them enough for all of us to feel like we actually prayed (this will take a lot of time).

7. Meet with small groups of NAMB staff (8-12 people), and listen. Then repeat what I did with the influencers in #6.

8. Create a field-based strategy (and reduce the administrative-based strategy) to accomplish what the Lord is telling us to do. This will be fun because NAMB staffers will soon want to call it the "FBS" but they'll be afraid to say that out loud, so maybe we can get away from using intials for everything and learn to talk plainly again. Admin-based strategy is easier on the people in the home office, but it's really hard on the people in the field. The field-based version is easier on the people on the front lines (like church planters and missionaries). A field-based strategy is usually harder to measure or to report, but it is more consistent with "caring for the needs of others" (Phil 2:4), so it get better long-term results.

9. Do everything in my power to make NAMB a fun place to work. Watching God do stuff leads to joy, and joy is fun. In fact, it really seems that working for NAMB should be relatively easy. Ask God. Listen. Do it. (Maybe that would be my slogan.)

10. Remind people that the work of NAMB is missionary work, (Ed Stetzer would say, "missional" which is a good new word Ed invented). It means we have a mission that involves fighting a spiritual battle. We might want to learn more about how to fight a spiritual battle and rely on our biblical training and the Holy Spirit more than on marketing or psychology. The latter two arenas are very helpful, but only if we combine it with spiritual fighting. Is it not interesting that Jesus gave us direction on one, but not much on the other two?

I like it that I put a lot of listening in there. My wife & children will tell you that I am a better teacher than listener, but I am working on reversing the two. As I get older, one seems infinitely more important than the other.