How do we choose which question we want to focus on?
Now that we have four themes from our observations and open questions written to explore these themes, we need to take a moment to analyze them and decide which to chose as the focus of our innovation efforts.
A simple analysis looking at value added, costs, and who needs to be included will help the team decide how to proceed.
For each open question here are some questions to dig into the details in such a way that allows a wise decision to be made:
- What value would be added in addressing this question? What are our goals in this theme? Is there a benefit to our church? What about a benefit to the people we are hoping to serve?
- What are the estimated costs in addressing this question? Consider time, money, volunteers, staff, and space? Is there a cost in using a building or changing the schedule or calendar?
- Who else needs to be included? Is the current staff equipped with time, talents, and budget to look at this question? Would additional staff or volunteers need to be recruited or hired?
- What support is needed from church leadership? Is leadership open to addressing this challenge? Is the church body open to potential changes created by addressing this challenge?
- Who needs to catch the vision and be brought into the meetings? For example, if you are going to look at how to reach the youth in the community, which youth do you need to add to the team? Are the youth leaders included in the team? Do they agree with your assessment so far?
Once you discuss and lay out the answers to these questions, your team can vote on which open question to focus on thus pausing the others. Probably, you will need to provide an overview of the journey this far to church leadership and discover the level of support in addressing this challenge amongst the leadership. Before proceeding, make sure you have buy-in from all the stakeholders that need to support.
KATHY PIERBURG 