During my past 30 years as a professional soldier, I have learned the value of planning in every area of life – personal, family, work, and my relationship with my Father.  Planning enables us to establish priorities and to keep first things first.  It focuses our attention on goals and sharpens our resolve to achieve them.  Planning should never be a substitute for faith, but a pathway through experiences which strengthens our faith.  Planning, like any other thing, which excludes God is a faulty and fruitless effort.  However, the ultimate goal of our planning must be a greater relationship with Him.   

Recently, I have heard some Christian leaders deride planning and strategy.  They have claimed that mission and vision statements are corporate tools that have no place in the church.  However, I respectfully disagree.  Good corporate practices are usually adapted from other resources, often the Bible.  Ethics and values were not creations of elite business schools.  These things are attempts to reflect the nature of our righteous Lord (even though academia may not recognize the true source).  Likewise, planning is a biblically grounded principle.  Consider Jesus’ words recorded by Luke, “Suppose one of you wants to build a tower. Will he not first sit down and estimate the cost to see if he has enough money to complete it? For if he lays the foundation and is not able to finish it, everyone who sees it will ridicule him, I saying, 'This fellow began to build and was not able to finish.' Or suppose a king is about to go to war against another king. Will he not first sit down and consider whether he is able with ten thousand men to oppose the one coming against him with twenty thousand?” Luke 14:28-31   

Strategic planning is simply identifying resources (means) and developing courses of action (ways) to achieve a desired end state (ends).  It is critically important to seek God in each of these areas.  God is the source of all of the means with which we have been entrusted.  We must always seek His ways as He invites us to join Him in His work.  Henry Blackaby suggests that God reveals Himself to us as we earnestly seek Him.  Through diligent study of His word, prayer, communications within the church and careful consideration of circumstances which occur around us, God reveals Himself, His purpose and His ways.  His purpose and is certainly the objective of our plans.  Too often we have “good ideas” and aspirations.  We develop our plans and then ask for God’s endorsement, His blessings, on our plans.  The examples we have in the Bible is that God reveals His purpose and we join Him.  Our planning should focus on seeking God and His purpose.  We ought to plan how to recognize His ways and adjust our desires to His will.  Dr. Blackaby said that this adjustment would only result from a crisis of faith as we give up our aspirations and pet projects, listen to God, and submit to His will. 

Strategic planning is a valuable tool when developed in a mature and deliberate manner.  One problem is that few people, even good Christian leaders, are familiar with real strategic planning.  The effort of NoblePurpose is to share strategic concepts and deliberate planning tools that will enable Christians to be effective leaders, submissive to the call of our Sovereign Lord to achieve His purpose among people living in these misguided times.  My prayer is for Christians to bring His light into the darkness and the preserving flavor of salt into lives of those who do not know the Lord. Matthew 5:13-16

In Him,

Danny G. Nobles

 Colonel, U.S. Army (Retired)