Worship Weblog

Alban Weekly on planning as 'holy conversation'

Posted by cicw

Monday, October 20th, 2008

From Alban Weekly:

What is a leader to do? How do you negotiate all of the preferences and opinions in order to come up with a plan that all agree with and are willing to support and work on?

Leaders can be misled by such questions because these questions imply that there is a plan that will address everyone’s interests and meet the congregation’s spiritual and organizational needs. This dependence upon a plan assumes that the leader is the chief problem solver and that planning is all about finding a “solution” that will satisfy the various voices in the congregation while simultaneously addressing significant faith questions about the purpose of the congregation.

Planning does not center on problem solving. The leader is not responsible for discovering the perfect solution or for creating a perfect planning process to get people to arrive at a perfect plan. Instead, the task of the leader is to help the people have a purposeful and meaningful conversation about who they are and what they believe is important to do.

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