This afternoon I finished Simply Strategic Stuff: Help for Leaders Drowning in the Details of Running a Church by Tim Stevens and Tony Morgan. I love what Granger Community Church are trying to do, and read many of their staff’s blogs so it was with interest to read what Tim Stevens and Tony Morgan (now moved on) had to say about being strategic in church work.
This book is written for church leaders as a basic guide to both the long-term and short-term strategic and administrative running of church. It’s structured as 99 short chapters, with just over 200 pages,and written in a very easy style enabling the reader to either read 
it through from cover to cover or to dip in and out of.
Some of my favourite chapters include:
- If it feels good, check the data
- Visit other churches and steal their stuff
- Maintain an appropriate span of care
- You can pick only two
- Focus on hot projects
- Create a culture that expects volunteers to do it before staff
- Partner for the long term
- Study your stats
The key thing I took from the book this time is we need to be better a keeping and analysing stats within our youth ministry – this enables us to better see what’s working and what’s not.
