Looking back at the Congregational Strategy Workshops in September and October 2020

In September and October 2020, as we approached the depths of winter and lockdown, Prof. John Bates offered the Unitarian movement something for the future, with his ‘Congregational Strategy’ workshop. Prof. Bates is currently the chair of New Unity congregation in London, and drew on his experience as a Fellow of Strategy and Entrepreneurship at London Business School to deliver two one-hour workshops, with a handbook to follow for congregations to draw together a congregational strategy.

I had reason to revisit this recently, as I was doing some thinking about what lies ahead for our congregation in 2022. Hopefully, trying to keep our community together in the face of a pandemic plus ever-changing guidelines on how to keep everyone safe will not be something we have to keep doing, as we’ve had to for the better part of two years now (although you never know…). So, how do we plan for our future?

Prof. Bates defines a strategy as: “A pattern of actions over time, aimed at building and sustaining superior performance goals, in pursuit of specific objectives, to achieve an agreed mission”. He goes on to identify 10 major areas – such as attendance, outreach, financial stability, and so forth – which a congregation might like to set itself goals to achieve in.

As with all such exercises, there are no short cuts! Putting together a congregational strategy would need a lot of discussion and congregational togetherness. I was reminded of the ‘What We Value’ discussions at Newcastle upon Tyne Unitarians in 2019, which started out as discussions about what we could tell others about what matters to us, and ended up being discussions about what we all really value about our congregation – what was essentially the same thing! (And led to our Value Statement, on our website, and read out at the start of all of our services.)

I like Prof. John Bates’ approach, but then I’m a policy and strategy- type person in my day job! To make it work, I think that it would require strong leadership from the congregational leaders, and perhaps thinking about how the language used might be modified to be as meaningful as possible to the congregation in question. Fortunately, the 2021 ‘Leading Change in the Congregation’ course was just around the corner! I hope we’ll revisit the materials from this workshop soon, and be able to make some real plans for the future.

Louise Reeve