Values or Sentiments?

The Spring for us is the planning, budgeting, calendaring process. We have a good process from strategic planning retreats, to innovation days, lots of templates, etc. It is an important process and an opportunity to do a strategic audit of our church. When I think of a strategic audit I think of six or seven questions to ask about where the church is headed. The first question to ask is ...

• Are the Vision and Values clear?

Clear not just on paper or in the senior leadership meetings, but in plans, budgets, and calendars. Do what we say and what we create align? If they don't what you have our sentiments, not values. Sentiments are things that make us feel good. Things that are fun to talk about, things we have aspirations of doing sometime, maybe, but not things that orient the way you do ministry.

Values are things that direct decisions, direct resources, things that you make sacrifices for. Once you operationalize a sentiment, once you orient your ministry around a set of core distinctions ... that is when a sentiment becomes a value.

One of our values is Bridge-building ... making a difference. For a number of years, it was really a sentiment ... we talked about it, did a little here and there, but most of the ongoing ministry didn't change. At a point in time it did become a value because we operationalized it. We said no to a lot of good things to simplify ministry, so people would have time to be bridge-builders. We re-aligned our staff, we re-engineered our small groups, so if you are a group at Chase Oaks now, you build a bridge together on a consistent basis. Once our sentiment was reflected in our staffing, resourcing, and ministry model, it became a value.

One thing during the planning season to ask is: Are the Vision and Values being operationalized or just talked about. Look for other audit questions in upcoming post.