Watch as Jason, Philip and Maren talk about the role strategic planning plays in their ministries.

Watch as Jason and Tiffany unpack three key things to consider when planning for your ministry.

Aubrey Malphurs explains how strategic planning in leadership is crucial for the Church to achieve the mission God gave it.

This video will walk you through each step of the Strategic Planning Process in under 15 minutes!

While this is specific to children and student ministries, there’s SO MANY principles that are helpful for foster care and adoption ministry as well!

At its core, good church strategic planning is not an event—it is a process of continuous improvement.

Explore five best practices for effective strategic planning and then walk through a strategic planning worksheet.

Building a strategic plan is one of the most important things you will do as the leader of an organization. In this episode, Thor talks to Afterburner’s strategy expert, Will Duke, about the key areas you need to focus on to build a successful strategic plan.

We need to re-conceptualize church strategic planning as a healthy habit rather than an event. Good strategic planning is no more a one-time occurrence than the benefits of a healthy diet can bring results after eating a single salad. The salad is good, but a long-term habit of good food choices is what brings results. Likewise, embedding a strategic planning rhythm into your church is the only way to glean the benefits.

In this episode of the Vance Pitman Leadership Podcast, Vance and sits down with Hope Church’s Executive Pastor, Travis Ogle to discuss a highly recommended topic from listeners: how to engage in healthy and effective strategic planning.

The Theology and Practice of Strategic Planning

Thirty Feedback Questions for Strategic Planning

A list of 30 excellent questions to ask before you make a plan. While this article is geared toward the broader church, you can simply replace the word “church” with the word “ministry” and find an immense amount of value for you as you plan specifically within your foster care and adoption ministry context.

Why Your Strategy Isn’t Working: 3 Critical Factors That Could Be Sabotaging Your Success

You’ve heeded all the best practices. You’ve gone to all the right conferences. And yet if you’re like most leaders, you still feel like you’re struggling to get traction towards accomplishing your vision.

The Concept Missing from Most Strategic Planning Models: Failure

A good strategic planning model encourages risk when failure costs little.

If vision is the destination and the car is strategy, strategic planning is the map that helps you get there. Effective strategic planning works to give your ministry and all those involved the clarity and confidence they need to take their next best steps forward. It helps to answer the questions of “What are we going to do, what are we not going to do, why are we going to do what we’re going to do and how are we going to do it?” In these sections you’ll explore some principles and practices of strategic planning as well as discover how to plan confidently but with flexibility and the importance of not allowing your planning to become isolated from the real needs of those you are serving. 

Shrink the problem, grow your people and identify next steps. Three key steps to forming a plan!

As a ministry leader or team, spend time considering what the next 6-12 months. Keep in mind “peak” opportunities that already exist, like Foster Care Awareness Month in May and National Adoption Month (and Orphan Sunday) in November. How will you leverage those key opportunities and build them into your strategic plan? What will you do in between those two components that just so happen to be evenly spaced out by 6 months? Support groups, parent night out events, informationals for people considering getting involved, social events, service projects, sermons, sharing of stories…the list could go on. Spend time dreaming about what the next year looks like, then begin to identify the best and most strategic next steps you need to take in order to get there. As well, consider who needs to lead out on certain components and take ownership of different aspects of the plan? Use this plan to identify and raise up leaders who help steward the ministry – and people – God has entrusted to you. 

Use the simple mock-up provided here or your own calendar to visually lay out what your plan looks like.