Discerning Your Congregation's Future: A Strategic and Spiritual Approach

Rating:
Summary: An excellent planning book for any venue
Review: Oswald and Friedrich have given us a wonderful source book for doing congregational planning. But in addition, they have given strategic planning consultants and facilitators in many fields a concept that opens new horizons in strategic planning. The idea of discerning, rather than planning, future direction says that there is a way we ought to go and our job is to find it. This concept, when coupled with systems thinking and organizational learning (see for example Senge, _The Fifth Discipline_), provides a way of reframing the strategic planning process. The exercises, while generally unsuited to the board room, can be adapted to that environment with a little imagination, once the planning consultant creates a safe place for those invovled in planning to access the part of their mind capable of discernment.