Die Alban Weekly het hierdie week ‘n interessante artikel van Dan Hotchkiss oor die begrotingsproses in gemeentes!
Congregations often plan and budget as though planning were one thing and budgeting another. Bringing the two together calls for a comprehensive calendar for goal-setting and evaluation.
A key event in the sequence is the annual planning retreat. Typically, this event includes the board and senior members of the staff, including lay staff as appropriate. Ideally, the group spends at least a day and a half off-site with a strict no-cell-phone rule. The agenda varies from year to year; the focus is always on discernment and strategy, the two zones of responsibility shared by board and staff. Some special attention to the mission is appropriate every year–but it is rarely a good use of time to tweak the wording of the mission statement that often. Once every five years is more than enough, unless something is terribly wrong with the existing statement.
A more necessary work product from the retreat and related activities is the annual vision of ministry, an answer to the question, “In what new and different ways will we transform lives in the next one to three years?” To put it differently, the vision of ministry is the board’s short list of priorities. Why a short list? Because when a list of priorities is long, they’re not priorities! The vision of ministry is a short list of things the board means to accomplish, no matter what. The fact that something does not make the list does not mean that it won’t happen. While creating the vision, the board will bank a number of ideas for the future: pieces of a long-term vision to which the board is not prepared to make an ironclad commitment now. There is no way to do this without sometimes saying no.
Om die voledige artikel te lees gaan na
http://www.alban.org/conversation.aspx?id=8485