Agile Churches and Waterfalls
How to distribute risk in Church Planting
When it comes to starting a church, “What would I do if I knew I would not fail” is the wrong question. You should be asking yourself “What would I do if I knew I was going to fail?” For one thing, you’d probably go out and change the world instead of reading this article. But since you’re here, let’s talk about the implications of inevitable, ongoing failures.
How do you create something new? Most people know that it starts with an idea, some sort of vision of the future. It’s the next everything else that becomes harder to describe. Waterfall and agile are two possible paths forward.
Waterfall
Waterfall, also know as big-design-upfront, is a way to build something by thinking it through as thoroughly as you can before starting. Many modern church plants are started this way. As much information, training, and people are brought together before the launch in order to resource this infant church for the long, hard months and year ahead. The resources pile up until finally, they overflow into the birth of the church.
This methodology is sequential, with defined steps and goals forecasted into the future.
Doing a significant amount of work upfront allows you to increase the quality of programs, raise more money, buy better signs, do extensive promotional campaigns, have a big launch day, have more programs in place when people start showing up, let the band practice more, and inject more stability/certainty into the future.
Agile
There is another way to create something new: iteration. Iteration acknowledges the tumultuous, uncharted waters that any innovator experiences and encourages learning/change over long-term planning/certainty. “If you’re going to fail, you might as well do it as soon as possible,” proponents say.
There is order and sequence in agile. The key difference is that the chunks of success are smaller and cyclical. The goals are packed more closely together. The cycle happens multiple times as quickly as possible, not as one giant leap to the finish line. By embracing uncertainty, leaders work to increase understanding. The wins may not be as large, but smaller wins also mean smaller potential losses.
Learning Lean
What would this look like?
- Start with an idea (We need to launch with a children’s program)
- What do you believe to be true now, that if false, would result in failure? (People in our neighborhood with children are interested in bringing their children to church; we can sustain a children’s ministry; People with children won’t come and stay if we don’t have something for kids)
- As quickly and inexpensively as possible, prove the riskiest assumption from the previous step true or false. (Survey people in neighborhood; run a one-day children’s program as a trial; survey launch team members with kids)
- Repeat. Good ideas have supportable assumptions. Bad ideas collapse under testing.
What if we make a mistake?
The haunting question that makes agile the winner in my mind is “What if we plant the wrong thing?” When you plan the first three years upfront, you go in with a vision, but also a great majority of the risk at once. When mistakes are made, believing in the plan and not the purpose is crippling. Five-year plans are for consultants and college essays. Success isn’t measured by your ability to stick to a plan.
Church planting is all learning. If you learn, you can adapt. If you adapt, you survive. Surviving gives you time to grow. And if you’re not growing, you’re dying.
