November 6, 2024 • 21 mins
**FULL SHOW NOTES @ malphursgroup.com/266**
In today's episode titled "The Best & Worst Times for Strategic Planning," your hosts Scott Ball and A.J. Mathieu dive into an essential discussion for church leaders. They'll explore the nuances of optimal timing for strategic planning processes in churches, highlighting why some times of the year can be more favorable for gaining momentum and implementing change. However, they also emphasize that sometimes urgent needs can override timing concerns.
Whether your church is in the midst of a crisis or routine planning, Scott and A.J. provide actionable insights to help you navigate these crucial decisions. Plus, they'll share details on how the Malphurs Group can support your church through these processes with their Healthy Churches toolkit and a dedicated team of expert guides. Stay tuned for practical advice and invaluable resources designed to help your church thrive.
Get 7 Days Free of the Healthy Churches Toolkit @ malphursgroup.com/toolkit
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:01):
The best and worst times to start a strategic planning
process today on the church revitalization podcast.
Hello, and welcome to the church revitalization podcast
brought to you by the Malthus group team, where each week we
tackle important, actionable topics to help churches thrive.
And now, here's your hosts, Scott Ball and AJ
(00:25):
Mathieu. Welcome
to the Church Revitalization Podcast. My name is Scott Ball. I'm joined by my friend
and cohost, AJ Mathieu. Okay.
Hey. Before we dive into today's episode, I wanna remind everybody that we have
the Healthy Church's toolkit is launched and live,
and, you missed I'm sorry to say, you missed the
(00:47):
special launch pricing that has gone away. However, if you go to
malphursgroup.com/toolkit, and
you see it anyway, you can sign up free for 7 days. There's also the
ability for you to apply for a grant. We have some grants
available, that you can apply for to help offset the costs because we are a
nonprofit ministry. And if you're outside of North America and
(01:09):
you, serve in a church overseas, in
any other country outside of the US and Canada, you have access for
free to the toolkit by going to Healthy Churches Global.com.
Okay. Let's dove into today's episode. This is a common
question that we get. We thought we'd just tackle a common question, which is what
are the best and worst times to do a strategic planning process?
(01:32):
And I think maybe before we dive into because we are gonna give real
answers to this. Like, there are good better times and worse times.
But maybe let's start with a a preface in just saying
that the best time to start a strategic
planning process is when you realize you need 1. That's
right. Totally. Yeah.
(01:54):
Honestly, and we'll get to this here at the very end, but I I'll say
it here now at the top. If something's going on in your church,
some some real crisis or challenge, there's not
usually enough of an upside to waiting till the optimal
time. Mhmm. And, you know,
like, the the plus side is going through the process. Like, all of the advantage
(02:17):
is going through the process. The net gain in waiting to to an
optimal time isn't significant enough for you to,
to delay or or risk some challenge. So I
I guess I do wanna say that on the front end, because when we're talking
about best and worst times, they really are best and worst times, but the
margins, AJ, are are not significant. It's not like if you do this
(02:40):
during the worst time, it's way worse than if you were to do it during
one of the best times. Yeah. And also the truth is it's you're
probably already further down the road than you should have
been. It's usually a case of coming to the realization,
getting people on board an agreement that, yeah, we've been declining for a
while. It's not like, you know, you're
(03:01):
super tracking data points, and you've had like 3
months in a row of, you know, looks like perhaps we're in a
decline trajectory, and then and you, you know, start
calling people for help. That is the that is the point
001% church. The the 99
point, you know, exponent church has been in
(03:23):
decline for a while, and it's more so a case of, like, okay. Some key
people are in agreement on it, and we've decided to
see who's out there to help us. You should call
today. Yeah. Right. And the absolute best time is
basically now whenever this is that you're hearing it. But if
all things being equal, if you could just, you know,
(03:46):
be totally objective about it and go, alright, well, what would be the best time?
You know, if if we're not in a crisis, things are not terrible. We're just
trying to think through, hey. We're we're due. It's been 5 years since we've gone
through a process like this. We think we wanna go through a process like
this in the next year or so. When would be the best time and worst
time? So that that would be maybe the context in which you should
(04:07):
take this advice, I I suppose. I think that sounds good. So,
Scott, let's kick off the best times. Hit us with the
the total upside. Okay. The absolute best
time, and I really do think that this is maybe number
1, is the beginning of the year,
for a number of reasons. 1,
(04:30):
the beginning of the calendar year is is kind of the middle of
the ministry year. So, you're kind of in a
groove already. Your programs and things are already moving forward.
It's not like the beginning of the of the fall where it really is kinda
like a fresh start. You might be implementing some new things or trying some new
things. So, January doesn't feel like August does. You're going
(04:52):
back to school, but you're not going back to the beginning of the school year.
So, for all of those reasons, I think the beginning of the
calendar year is a really good time to start because you can get all of
the planning part done, whichever you're going through the strategic envisioning process.
That's like 3 months. You can get through the
planning, all of the planning phase and get into implementation
(05:13):
before Easter hits, And then you still
have post Easter, and then
hot take, I think being able to use the summer for certain types
of implementation, doing some behind the scenes stuff, particularly at
the leadership level, recruiting key teams,
set you up well to get into the
(05:37):
fall of that year, implementing some big chunks of
things. You would have had enough time to actually make some significant
plans so that you could do some major rollouts
in the in the fall of that year. So I think my number
one favorite time is the beginning of the year, like January, February
is is maybe the best time. Yeah. All things being
(06:00):
equal. I agree. I think because I think 2 things do happen. I think you're
right. The like September back to late August, September field, the back to
school thing feels like the beginning of the ministry year now. I don't know.
I think it's kind of a more recent phenomenon, but I believe it's true.
But still, the first of the year also feels like this fresh start time. Like,
fresh start time. Yeah. You know, we don't. Well, usually the weather's not as
(06:22):
good too, so people aren't. It's okay. Inside doing some well.
The sports stuff hasn't isn't. I mean, you've there's basketball, but you don't
have as many sports to contend with. Yeah.
Yeah. The northern states. Is that hockey season for the northern states? I don't
know. I don't know what hockey is. Alright. Know. You can let us know in
the comments. But, yeah, I think it's it's a good mental
(06:44):
time to, like, you know, beginning of the year, fresh start, and we can think
about the year then in in the in the seasons and holidays and all
the things that comes with it. So, yeah, second best then not
second best. Another good start time. Late
summer, early fall. You didn't already say this, did you? No. Mm-mm.
Okay. Yep. So, again, kind of what we're just saying,
(07:06):
you know, that that beginning of the school year time is another sort
of launch point. And so, you know, hitting getting the
timing right when people are coming back from their vacations and,
getting ready, they're gonna be home because school's starting in a few weeks,
is a good time to go ahead and and get something planned to kick off.
Again, you'd be able to do this planning work
(07:29):
before, you know, like winter starts, before
the, the Thanksgiving and Christmas holiday season starts, before,
you know, you get totally buried in Advent, you
can start to get your legs under you for a rhythm of implementation.
And, yeah, and then, you know, be able to hit the pause button
for for the month of December probably and, really
(07:53):
kind of feel like you you're when you come back in January to continue implementation,
you're like, we we know what's going on. We're we're in this enough
where, we feel maybe even, you know, kind of
fresh and ready to hit it again in January. Yeah. It's still I would
still call it maybe second best for for a couple of reasons.
One, the beginning of the school year is always kinda more hectic than January
(08:16):
is for the most part. Mhmm. But also in reality,
you'll get through all of the planning before Halloween,
ideally. And then, once you get into you
you can do a little bit of work in November, get to get some stuff
set up in terms of implementation, then you're gonna have 6 weeks of
nothing from thanksgiving through the holidays. Then
(08:40):
you're really gonna do your implementation in the spring, begin working
on implement implementation in the spring. But you're probably not gonna be able to roll
out major new initiatives until the following
fall. Because you're not gonna you're not gonna launch something some major
initiative in in the middle of a semester. You're
just not gonna do that. And you wouldn't have had enough time
(09:03):
before the spring semester starts to roll something out. So the reality
is you you're probably not gonna be rolling out major
initiatives until the fall of the following year. So that's why I
think it's 2nd best. I guess it gives you more time on the for
implementation, but it can feel more dragged out. But it's still a really
good time, I think, and especially if you start it just depends on when school
(09:25):
hits for you. But, you know, end of end of July, beginning of
August, is a good time to begin, so that
you've got enough runway there to hopefully start with implementation before the
holidays hit. Yeah. Pad in the time that you might
expect the decision making process in your church as well.
We're kinda talking about you've reached the point where you're ready to
(09:48):
to hire somebody from the outside to assist you. You know,
typically for us, it's about 6 weeks or so. I mean, if a church says,
hey, we're ready to get started, let's start planning dates.
You know, building a team, getting a church ministry now Oh, right. Right.
Done. Right. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. There's some pre work. Yeah. Before your
guide is on-site. So, yeah, if you're like, you know what? Usually takes us 3
(10:10):
or 4 months to get everybody, all of our committees together to make
decisions and all that. Yeah. Pad that in back on the front
end for yourselves if you, are trying to maybe time out a start
time. Yeah. Yep. Yep. Good. Alright. Let's talk about the worst
times. Worst times, holidays. We're talking
Thanksgiving, Christmas, about this time of year. This
(10:31):
time of year? Yeah. Yeah. That time to start something. If you're in the
middle of it, and it's okay. I mean, you if you can wrap up by
December, like, if you started late in the fall, and you're kinda
wrapping up at the beginning of December, it's okay. That's not that's not the worst.
But starting now would be really challenging.
Yes. Now starting with a phone call to us
(10:53):
right now is a great time to go. Give us a call. And Yeah. Because
then you're looking at starting in January, which is the best time. Yeah.
Yeah. This would have been a bad time to start if you called us
in, you know, September. 6 weeks ago. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So,
but it's a great time to call, or to subscribe to the
(11:13):
Healthy Churches toolkit at malprosherstree.com/toolkit.
Great time of year for that. Anytime of year is a great time for
that. I'm doing I'm doing some, hand motion here. It's
good cross promo. AJ, I like that. Yeah. But the holidays are a bad
time. So to start to start this again, like, I'm working with a
church right now. We're I have a meeting this weekend with them,
(11:36):
and we have another meeting in December. The it's
fine. And they'll begin their implementation in
January. Also fine. So it's, you know, it's maybe not like
the best time, but it's not the worst. It's worked out
just fine. That's maybe another reason why I just want to reemphasize
again. We're talking about very small nuance differences.
(11:59):
Like this is better, but this is fine. It's it's not the
end of the process. It's not gonna ruin things, you know. Right. But the
the closer you get into the holidays, the further you get into it, the harder
it is to pick dates. That's Yeah. That's right. Yeah.
Yeah. And we're we're you know, we kind of the foundational maybe the
reasoning for a lot of this is momentum. We really like
(12:21):
we like to see you get started. And, you know, there's a
series of things that when you're working with the Malphurs group, there's a series of
things that we that we take you through. And we just don't like to see
any big gaps. And we don't like to see a lot of the team not
available. So if we can kinda hit some milestone
events, and help you build momentum, so that
(12:43):
you can, you know, kinda start start skating ahead on your own,
that's the that's kind of the reasoning for what we're talking about here.
So Yep. Okay. Another worst
time of year, late spring, early summer.
Yeah. I mean, where where I would say late fall is
fine. Like, mid fall is fine. It's harder to pick dates, but it's
(13:06):
really okay. You're not hurting yourself. I would
I would almost contend that starting a process after
Easter is a bad idea. It's it's the
only one that I would say, maybe don't do that, if you can
avoid it, would be my opinion. You do start running
into a lot of roadblocks on in in the United States,
(13:28):
but some holidays, you know, mother's yeah. Mother's
day, Memorial Day. In June, we've got Father's Day.
These are the weekends that people say, oh, no. We can't do that. You know,
we we got something going on. Well, no.
Graduations. Yeah. Right. Yeah. A lot of end of school.
Wards, days. And Yeah. Yeah. It's awful. And then And
(13:49):
then vacations kick in. And then vacation. So it's not like, you know, you have
the holidays, and then you and then that's followed by January. Yeah. So
you've got you know, you've got time. If you start a process like this,
you're gonna have to contend with everything that happens, at least for me and for
you all, wherever you live, it might be a different month. But for me, it's
May. May is a nightmare, and then it's followed up by
(14:10):
everyone is gone for 2 months. Right. It's
just a very bad time to start a process.
So, if you have to when you have to incorporate the summer
into a process, but it's further down the line, it's not a problem. Like
we talked about with January, it's fine. But when you start
after Easter, you you just never it's like you said,
(14:33):
AJ, it's momentum. You're never able to actually build
any momentum before summer hits.
And and then you're kind of starting again. We this is when we get calls,
you know, in in August, September being like, can you zoom into
a meeting with our implementer? We're kind of like forget forgetting what we
decided. You know? So this is maybe the one place where
(14:56):
I would go. Just don't.
Don't start. You'd you'd be even be very, very better to start the the,
you'd be better to start a process in the summertime than to start it
in the late spring. Because at least if you were starting in the
summertime, you would have to pick your team based on people who
are already available. I guess,
(15:19):
like, you can you can envision that being okay. Yeah.
The starting in late spring is a bad idea. Don't do it.
Alright. But we've got some exceptions for you. So Sure. Let's let's hit
on those. Yeah. Briefly.
If you are a larger church, let's say
(15:40):
500 plus, but but
and and so you have multiple staff, let's say
6 staff, 7 staff, something like that. And you're gonna go
through the strategic envisioning process, and it's gonna be primarily a staff
led process. Leadership pipeline too is
(16:00):
is primarily staff led. There's not a lot of volunteer engagement in that planning
process. That's a great thing to do over the summer, by the way, or
in the late spring because of the way that that implementation hits. It's
totally different, and it's mainly staff led. That's a beautiful thing to
do in the spring, and then the summer.
But, if you're mainly a staff led team, you can take
(16:22):
everything we've said and just chuck it out the window because you can do a
staff led process any time of the year, because they have to be
there. They work there. So you have that carrot and stick of
you're employed here and you have work to do. So,
I mean, I guess you could take the principles and apply them generally and go,
this would be a better or worse time, but I'm I'm going working with a
(16:43):
multi staff church on December 18th. I'm doing a staff training day.
You would think that'd be the worst possible time, but it's fine. They all work
there. They have they have to be there anyway. Yeah. It's a weekday pro it's
a weekday time. It's a weekday time. We're not taking we're not taking up their
weekend. So, yeah. So if you're a
larger team with a larger church with a larger staff
(17:04):
team and this is a staff led process, there really
isn't a best and worst time. You can do it anytime. Yeah. Yep. Summer, I
guess, would be the worst because your staff then are probably taking vacations at some
point. Mhmm. And you've got church camp and, like, mission trips that take
a big long chunk of time. Some of that would maybe be the worst,
but I don't know. For the most part, there is no good or bad time
(17:26):
when it comes to this stuff. It's probably narrower narrower windows of
time that are bad on a staff led process. Yeah. Staff led process,
forget it. Just any time is fine. And then
we kinda mentioned this in the introduction as well. If your church is really in
a in a crisis situation, pastor
transitions, which we didn't cover that in this episode. It's not necessarily
(17:48):
related to the time, but pastor transitions is a great time to do a
strategic planning process, and we've done that many, many
times, with really great success. So,
no matter what time of year No matter what time of year prices, or
a transition period and Even if it's right after Easter.
Doesn't matter. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Then then it is totally
(18:11):
fine. Go ahead and and, and, you
know, just pick up the phone and, and talk with some people
about, you know, what might be the best fit for your church. But don't worry
about, delaying things in those types of scenarios.
Yeah. The way I would say it, AJ, is the
the the margin of increase that you might get from
(18:34):
getting to an to an optimal timing
is not great enough to overcome the
problem or the challenge or crisis that you're in. Yeah. And
so, if you're in a crisis or your church is massively
declining or you're experiencing a leadership transition or something like
that, there's just not enough upside to waiting. Yeah. You should
(18:56):
go through a process, you know, as soon as you can get into
1. So that would be the
exception to the rule. Yep. Yeah. There you go. Alright.
If you are thinking about any, any any,
outside help to help your church, you know, move beyond where you are today, we
(19:17):
would love to do that. You can get all the information about how we can
help you and how to contact us at malphursgroup.com.
Over there at the website, is this week's article. It's at
malphursgroup.com/266. So you can
see that over there. You can watch the video version of the
church revitalization podcast on our YouTube channel. Love having you
(19:38):
guys over there with your comments, which is a great place for us to be
able to interact. So you can do that too. Yes, Skubal?
I just want to say before we, end of this thing,
it's feels like an appropriate time to mention that we have a great
team of guides that are already and willing and
able to help your church through a process. So if you, if you
(20:01):
say, you know, I don't like the cut out of that Scott or
AJ's jib. And
guess what? This is we're the ones who make the podcast, but we aren't
the we are not. AJ and I don't make 100% of the Malphurs group
team. We're just 2 two pieces. We have a wonderful
team of guides who, spread out all over the world,
(20:24):
but especially in the United States, kind of throughout the country, ready
and willing to work with your church. So, if you head over to
malphursgroup.com, any place where you see, like, connect with a guy, that'll take you to
a page where you can see our wonderful team and and the folks who are
trained and ready and willing to work with your church. Absolutely.
And, if you are a Toolkit subscriber, there is online
(20:47):
support available. Yeah. We we'd be glad to,
to help you in our plus account. You've got unlimited coaching
access, to be able to get questions answered, in addition
to all the training and resource content to help move your church forward. Thanks
for being with the church ministry analysis in there too. And when you would take
the church ministry analysis, you get connected with one of our guides who will
(21:10):
go through that process. Start a relationship with somebody who is on your
side. Thanks for being with us. See you next week.
The best and worst times to start a strategic planning
process today on the church revitalization podcast.
Hello, and welcome to the church revitalization podcast
brought to you by the Malthus group team, where each week we
tackle important, actionable topics to help churches thrive.
And now, here's your hosts, Scott Ball and AJ
(00:25):
Mathieu. Welcome
to the Church Revitalization Podcast. My name is Scott Ball. I'm joined by my friend
and cohost, AJ Mathieu. Okay.
Hey. Before we dive into today's episode, I wanna remind everybody that we have
the Healthy Church's toolkit is launched and live,
and, you missed I'm sorry to say, you missed the
(00:47):
special launch pricing that has gone away. However, if you go to
malphursgroup.com/toolkit, and
you see it anyway, you can sign up free for 7 days. There's also the
ability for you to apply for a grant. We have some grants
available, that you can apply for to help offset the costs because we are a
nonprofit ministry. And if you're outside of North America and
(01:09):
you, serve in a church overseas, in
any other country outside of the US and Canada, you have access for
free to the toolkit by going to Healthy Churches Global.com.
Okay. Let's dove into today's episode. This is a common
question that we get. We thought we'd just tackle a common question, which is what
are the best and worst times to do a strategic planning process?
(01:32):
And I think maybe before we dive into because we are gonna give real
answers to this. Like, there are good better times and worse times.
But maybe let's start with a a preface in just saying
that the best time to start a strategic
planning process is when you realize you need 1. That's
right. Totally. Yeah.
(01:54):
Honestly, and we'll get to this here at the very end, but I I'll say
it here now at the top. If something's going on in your church,
some some real crisis or challenge, there's not
usually enough of an upside to waiting till the optimal
time. Mhmm. And, you know,
like, the the plus side is going through the process. Like, all of the advantage
(02:17):
is going through the process. The net gain in waiting to to an
optimal time isn't significant enough for you to,
to delay or or risk some challenge. So I
I guess I do wanna say that on the front end, because when we're talking
about best and worst times, they really are best and worst times, but the
margins, AJ, are are not significant. It's not like if you do this
(02:40):
during the worst time, it's way worse than if you were to do it during
one of the best times. Yeah. And also the truth is it's you're
probably already further down the road than you should have
been. It's usually a case of coming to the realization,
getting people on board an agreement that, yeah, we've been declining for a
while. It's not like, you know, you're
(03:01):
super tracking data points, and you've had like 3
months in a row of, you know, looks like perhaps we're in a
decline trajectory, and then and you, you know, start
calling people for help. That is the that is the point
001% church. The the 99
point, you know, exponent church has been in
(03:23):
decline for a while, and it's more so a case of, like, okay. Some key
people are in agreement on it, and we've decided to
see who's out there to help us. You should call
today. Yeah. Right. And the absolute best time is
basically now whenever this is that you're hearing it. But if
all things being equal, if you could just, you know,
(03:46):
be totally objective about it and go, alright, well, what would be the best time?
You know, if if we're not in a crisis, things are not terrible. We're just
trying to think through, hey. We're we're due. It's been 5 years since we've gone
through a process like this. We think we wanna go through a process like
this in the next year or so. When would be the best time and worst
time? So that that would be maybe the context in which you should
(04:07):
take this advice, I I suppose. I think that sounds good. So,
Scott, let's kick off the best times. Hit us with the
the total upside. Okay. The absolute best
time, and I really do think that this is maybe number
1, is the beginning of the year,
for a number of reasons. 1,
(04:30):
the beginning of the calendar year is is kind of the middle of
the ministry year. So, you're kind of in a
groove already. Your programs and things are already moving forward.
It's not like the beginning of the of the fall where it really is kinda
like a fresh start. You might be implementing some new things or trying some new
things. So, January doesn't feel like August does. You're going
(04:52):
back to school, but you're not going back to the beginning of the school year.
So, for all of those reasons, I think the beginning of the
calendar year is a really good time to start because you can get all of
the planning part done, whichever you're going through the strategic envisioning process.
That's like 3 months. You can get through the
planning, all of the planning phase and get into implementation
(05:13):
before Easter hits, And then you still
have post Easter, and then
hot take, I think being able to use the summer for certain types
of implementation, doing some behind the scenes stuff, particularly at
the leadership level, recruiting key teams,
set you up well to get into the
(05:37):
fall of that year, implementing some big chunks of
things. You would have had enough time to actually make some significant
plans so that you could do some major rollouts
in the in the fall of that year. So I think my number
one favorite time is the beginning of the year, like January, February
is is maybe the best time. Yeah. All things being
(06:00):
equal. I agree. I think because I think 2 things do happen. I think you're
right. The like September back to late August, September field, the back to
school thing feels like the beginning of the ministry year now. I don't know.
I think it's kind of a more recent phenomenon, but I believe it's true.
But still, the first of the year also feels like this fresh start time. Like,
fresh start time. Yeah. You know, we don't. Well, usually the weather's not as
(06:22):
good too, so people aren't. It's okay. Inside doing some well.
The sports stuff hasn't isn't. I mean, you've there's basketball, but you don't
have as many sports to contend with. Yeah.
Yeah. The northern states. Is that hockey season for the northern states? I don't
know. I don't know what hockey is. Alright. Know. You can let us know in
the comments. But, yeah, I think it's it's a good mental
(06:44):
time to, like, you know, beginning of the year, fresh start, and we can think
about the year then in in the in the seasons and holidays and all
the things that comes with it. So, yeah, second best then not
second best. Another good start time. Late
summer, early fall. You didn't already say this, did you? No. Mm-mm.
Okay. Yep. So, again, kind of what we're just saying,
(07:06):
you know, that that beginning of the school year time is another sort
of launch point. And so, you know, hitting getting the
timing right when people are coming back from their vacations and,
getting ready, they're gonna be home because school's starting in a few weeks,
is a good time to go ahead and and get something planned to kick off.
Again, you'd be able to do this planning work
(07:29):
before, you know, like winter starts, before
the, the Thanksgiving and Christmas holiday season starts, before,
you know, you get totally buried in Advent, you
can start to get your legs under you for a rhythm of implementation.
And, yeah, and then, you know, be able to hit the pause button
for for the month of December probably and, really
(07:53):
kind of feel like you you're when you come back in January to continue implementation,
you're like, we we know what's going on. We're we're in this enough
where, we feel maybe even, you know, kind of
fresh and ready to hit it again in January. Yeah. It's still I would
still call it maybe second best for for a couple of reasons.
One, the beginning of the school year is always kinda more hectic than January
(08:16):
is for the most part. Mhmm. But also in reality,
you'll get through all of the planning before Halloween,
ideally. And then, once you get into you
you can do a little bit of work in November, get to get some stuff
set up in terms of implementation, then you're gonna have 6 weeks of
nothing from thanksgiving through the holidays. Then
(08:40):
you're really gonna do your implementation in the spring, begin working
on implement implementation in the spring. But you're probably not gonna be able to roll
out major new initiatives until the following
fall. Because you're not gonna you're not gonna launch something some major
initiative in in the middle of a semester. You're
just not gonna do that. And you wouldn't have had enough time
(09:03):
before the spring semester starts to roll something out. So the reality
is you you're probably not gonna be rolling out major
initiatives until the fall of the following year. So that's why I
think it's 2nd best. I guess it gives you more time on the for
implementation, but it can feel more dragged out. But it's still a really
good time, I think, and especially if you start it just depends on when school
(09:25):
hits for you. But, you know, end of end of July, beginning of
August, is a good time to begin, so that
you've got enough runway there to hopefully start with implementation before the
holidays hit. Yeah. Pad in the time that you might
expect the decision making process in your church as well.
We're kinda talking about you've reached the point where you're ready to
(09:48):
to hire somebody from the outside to assist you. You know,
typically for us, it's about 6 weeks or so. I mean, if a church says,
hey, we're ready to get started, let's start planning dates.
You know, building a team, getting a church ministry now Oh, right. Right.
Done. Right. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. There's some pre work. Yeah. Before your
guide is on-site. So, yeah, if you're like, you know what? Usually takes us 3
(10:10):
or 4 months to get everybody, all of our committees together to make
decisions and all that. Yeah. Pad that in back on the front
end for yourselves if you, are trying to maybe time out a start
time. Yeah. Yep. Yep. Good. Alright. Let's talk about the worst
times. Worst times, holidays. We're talking
Thanksgiving, Christmas, about this time of year. This
(10:31):
time of year? Yeah. Yeah. That time to start something. If you're in the
middle of it, and it's okay. I mean, you if you can wrap up by
December, like, if you started late in the fall, and you're kinda
wrapping up at the beginning of December, it's okay. That's not that's not the worst.
But starting now would be really challenging.
Yes. Now starting with a phone call to us
(10:53):
right now is a great time to go. Give us a call. And Yeah. Because
then you're looking at starting in January, which is the best time. Yeah.
Yeah. This would have been a bad time to start if you called us
in, you know, September. 6 weeks ago. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So,
but it's a great time to call, or to subscribe to the
(11:13):
Healthy Churches toolkit at malprosherstree.com/toolkit.
Great time of year for that. Anytime of year is a great time for
that. I'm doing I'm doing some, hand motion here. It's
good cross promo. AJ, I like that. Yeah. But the holidays are a bad
time. So to start to start this again, like, I'm working with a
church right now. We're I have a meeting this weekend with them,
(11:36):
and we have another meeting in December. The it's
fine. And they'll begin their implementation in
January. Also fine. So it's, you know, it's maybe not like
the best time, but it's not the worst. It's worked out
just fine. That's maybe another reason why I just want to reemphasize
again. We're talking about very small nuance differences.
(11:59):
Like this is better, but this is fine. It's it's not the
end of the process. It's not gonna ruin things, you know. Right. But the
the closer you get into the holidays, the further you get into it, the harder
it is to pick dates. That's Yeah. That's right. Yeah.
Yeah. And we're we're you know, we kind of the foundational maybe the
reasoning for a lot of this is momentum. We really like
(12:21):
we like to see you get started. And, you know, there's a
series of things that when you're working with the Malphurs group, there's a series of
things that we that we take you through. And we just don't like to see
any big gaps. And we don't like to see a lot of the team not
available. So if we can kinda hit some milestone
events, and help you build momentum, so that
(12:43):
you can, you know, kinda start start skating ahead on your own,
that's the that's kind of the reasoning for what we're talking about here.
So Yep. Okay. Another worst
time of year, late spring, early summer.
Yeah. I mean, where where I would say late fall is
fine. Like, mid fall is fine. It's harder to pick dates, but it's
(13:06):
really okay. You're not hurting yourself. I would
I would almost contend that starting a process after
Easter is a bad idea. It's it's the
only one that I would say, maybe don't do that, if you can
avoid it, would be my opinion. You do start running
into a lot of roadblocks on in in the United States,
(13:28):
but some holidays, you know, mother's yeah. Mother's
day, Memorial Day. In June, we've got Father's Day.
These are the weekends that people say, oh, no. We can't do that. You know,
we we got something going on. Well, no.
Graduations. Yeah. Right. Yeah. A lot of end of school.
Wards, days. And Yeah. Yeah. It's awful. And then And
(13:49):
then vacations kick in. And then vacation. So it's not like, you know, you have
the holidays, and then you and then that's followed by January. Yeah. So
you've got you know, you've got time. If you start a process like this,
you're gonna have to contend with everything that happens, at least for me and for
you all, wherever you live, it might be a different month. But for me, it's
May. May is a nightmare, and then it's followed up by
(14:10):
everyone is gone for 2 months. Right. It's
just a very bad time to start a process.
So, if you have to when you have to incorporate the summer
into a process, but it's further down the line, it's not a problem. Like
we talked about with January, it's fine. But when you start
after Easter, you you just never it's like you said,
(14:33):
AJ, it's momentum. You're never able to actually build
any momentum before summer hits.
And and then you're kind of starting again. We this is when we get calls,
you know, in in August, September being like, can you zoom into
a meeting with our implementer? We're kind of like forget forgetting what we
decided. You know? So this is maybe the one place where
(14:56):
I would go. Just don't.
Don't start. You'd you'd be even be very, very better to start the the,
you'd be better to start a process in the summertime than to start it
in the late spring. Because at least if you were starting in the
summertime, you would have to pick your team based on people who
are already available. I guess,
(15:19):
like, you can you can envision that being okay. Yeah.
The starting in late spring is a bad idea. Don't do it.
Alright. But we've got some exceptions for you. So Sure. Let's let's hit
on those. Yeah. Briefly.
If you are a larger church, let's say
(15:40):
500 plus, but but
and and so you have multiple staff, let's say
6 staff, 7 staff, something like that. And you're gonna go
through the strategic envisioning process, and it's gonna be primarily a staff
led process. Leadership pipeline too is
(16:00):
is primarily staff led. There's not a lot of volunteer engagement in that planning
process. That's a great thing to do over the summer, by the way, or
in the late spring because of the way that that implementation hits. It's
totally different, and it's mainly staff led. That's a beautiful thing to
do in the spring, and then the summer.
But, if you're mainly a staff led team, you can take
(16:22):
everything we've said and just chuck it out the window because you can do a
staff led process any time of the year, because they have to be
there. They work there. So you have that carrot and stick of
you're employed here and you have work to do. So,
I mean, I guess you could take the principles and apply them generally and go,
this would be a better or worse time, but I'm I'm going working with a
(16:43):
multi staff church on December 18th. I'm doing a staff training day.
You would think that'd be the worst possible time, but it's fine. They all work
there. They have they have to be there anyway. Yeah. It's a weekday pro it's
a weekday time. It's a weekday time. We're not taking we're not taking up their
weekend. So, yeah. So if you're a
larger team with a larger church with a larger staff
(17:04):
team and this is a staff led process, there really
isn't a best and worst time. You can do it anytime. Yeah. Yep. Summer, I
guess, would be the worst because your staff then are probably taking vacations at some
point. Mhmm. And you've got church camp and, like, mission trips that take
a big long chunk of time. Some of that would maybe be the worst,
but I don't know. For the most part, there is no good or bad time
(17:26):
when it comes to this stuff. It's probably narrower narrower windows of
time that are bad on a staff led process. Yeah. Staff led process,
forget it. Just any time is fine. And then
we kinda mentioned this in the introduction as well. If your church is really in
a in a crisis situation, pastor
transitions, which we didn't cover that in this episode. It's not necessarily
(17:48):
related to the time, but pastor transitions is a great time to do a
strategic planning process, and we've done that many, many
times, with really great success. So,
no matter what time of year No matter what time of year prices, or
a transition period and Even if it's right after Easter.
Doesn't matter. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Then then it is totally
(18:11):
fine. Go ahead and and, and, you
know, just pick up the phone and, and talk with some people
about, you know, what might be the best fit for your church. But don't worry
about, delaying things in those types of scenarios.
Yeah. The way I would say it, AJ, is the
the the margin of increase that you might get from
(18:34):
getting to an to an optimal timing
is not great enough to overcome the
problem or the challenge or crisis that you're in. Yeah. And
so, if you're in a crisis or your church is massively
declining or you're experiencing a leadership transition or something like
that, there's just not enough upside to waiting. Yeah. You should
(18:56):
go through a process, you know, as soon as you can get into
1. So that would be the
exception to the rule. Yep. Yeah. There you go. Alright.
If you are thinking about any, any any,
outside help to help your church, you know, move beyond where you are today, we
(19:17):
would love to do that. You can get all the information about how we can
help you and how to contact us at malphursgroup.com.
Over there at the website, is this week's article. It's at
malphursgroup.com/266. So you can
see that over there. You can watch the video version of the
church revitalization podcast on our YouTube channel. Love having you
(19:38):
guys over there with your comments, which is a great place for us to be
able to interact. So you can do that too. Yes, Skubal?
I just want to say before we, end of this thing,
it's feels like an appropriate time to mention that we have a great
team of guides that are already and willing and
able to help your church through a process. So if you, if you
(20:01):
say, you know, I don't like the cut out of that Scott or
AJ's jib. And
guess what? This is we're the ones who make the podcast, but we aren't
the we are not. AJ and I don't make 100% of the Malphurs group
team. We're just 2 two pieces. We have a wonderful
team of guides who, spread out all over the world,
(20:24):
but especially in the United States, kind of throughout the country, ready
and willing to work with your church. So, if you head over to
malphursgroup.com, any place where you see, like, connect with a guy, that'll take you to
a page where you can see our wonderful team and and the folks who are
trained and ready and willing to work with your church. Absolutely.
And, if you are a Toolkit subscriber, there is online
(20:47):
support available. Yeah. We we'd be glad to,
to help you in our plus account. You've got unlimited coaching
access, to be able to get questions answered, in addition
to all the training and resource content to help move your church forward. Thanks
for being with the church ministry analysis in there too. And when you would take
the church ministry analysis, you get connected with one of our guides who will
(21:10):
go through that process. Start a relationship with somebody who is on your
side. Thanks for being with us. See you next week.
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