ACTS: The Strategic Church

September 26, 2005

In my weekday work, I have the unique opportunity to work with the best technical and strategic minds in San Diego. What I learn from these visionaries (who provide innovative leadership for the most forward thinking companies in California) is that organizational survival depends upon the strategic vision of the leaders, and the corresponding support of members in achieving the vision. Or, as the Bible puts it: “Where there is no vision, the people perish.”

Currently, I am working with visionaries in redesigning Information Technology operations using Enterprise Computing Institute’s methodology for designing, implementing, and managing world-class infrastructures. This affords me the opportunity to learn and apply such principles as strategic planning, performance measures, the Harvard Business School’s “balanced scorecard” model, and world-class industry best practices.

Realizing many clergy have no such opportunity, I feel a responsibility accompanies this privilege. What I learn about strategic technology management, I attempt to apply to the church. While the church is not “a business,” that fact does not excuse the church from responsible strategic planning. Jesus was a strategic visionary who practiced (and expects from us) good church management and stewardship.

Like most institutions, the church is slow to change, and often the last to implement and benefit from technical and strategic best practices. In the early 1980s, (shortly after IBM released its Model 1 desktop computer, and long before the Internet) I wrote my doctoral dissertation at Columbia Theological Seminary on Church Database Administration. My biggest challenge was convincing the “church fathers” who sat on my dissertation committee that computers and databases would one day transform the way churches operate. The chair of my dissertation asked, “What do computers have to do with the church?” A quarter century later, many churches are finally realizing that technology and strategic management apply to us as much as General Motors.

Technology enables the church to fulfill its mission to “Go into the entire world, teaching and making disciples”. With our re-flattened world, and with dwindling resources, the church MUST begin to think strategically.

To that end, some of my most capable colleagues and I are forming ACTS, The Academy for Church Technology and Strategy, a non-profit organization providing technical and strategic resources to churches and church leaders who may otherwise not have access to these vital resources. I invite clergy and laity in all denominations who share a vision of The Strategic Church to join with us, sharing what we know (and learn) to equip the Church in accomplishing her mission in this challenging and rapidly changing world. This will be an exciting extension ministry at Christ United Methodist Church. Details will be forthcoming. Pray for us.