I used to dream of pastoring in a church that had at least 5 event items scheduled for each day on the church calendar. What was I thinking? We’re in the exciting and sometimes painful process of going in the opposite direction at Crossroads. You’ll hear our new informal motto often in staff, management, and volunteer gatherings: let’s do more with less. What does that look like?

Continuum Planning

We’re learning how to be intentional in arranging what we do so that we can answer 2 questions: what is this a next step from and what is this a next step toward? We are working on aligning what we do in our foyer environments with what we do in our living room and kitchen environments. Here’s a recent example. The weekend main stage topic was God’s plan for budgets, finances and priorities. People could take a next step from that foyer environment into a living room environment with a  Good $ense Solutions seminar. Participants in the seminar could take a next step one-on-one financial consultation with a financial coach. Being simple and smart, doing more with less is driving us to define our process and defend what we do on the basis of a next step continuum.

Anticipation Planning

We are also learning how to look further down the road so that we have ample breathing room to create the next steps continuum. Our weekend mainstage staff invested a couple of days this summer hammering out a mainstage topic outline that encompasses almost 12 months. As I meet with our various teams (women, singles, kids, Cruisers, students, etc.), we study that outline, looking for strategic next step opportunities appropriate to the team’s target and mission. Excitement is growing with our serving teams as they begin to appreciate the impact of doing more with less…planning with the next steps continuum and mainstage topic anticipation.