Cara: Welcome to GC Podcast, a podcast to help you develop into the healthiest ministry leader you can be by sharing practical ministry experience. I’m your host, Cara Garrity, and today we return to our series on process and practices of discernment, strategic planning, and ministry action plans (MAP).

And to do this, let’s welcome back Pastor Hector and Juanca, who helped us kick off the series at the beginning of the year. Thank you for joining us today, Hector and Juanca. We’re very appreciative for your insight that you’ll be sharing with us today.

Hector: Thank you, too, Cara.

Juanca: Hello. Hello. Thank you, Cara. How are you?

Cara: I’m doing well. How are the both of you doing?

Juanca: We’re doing great. Thanks for asking.

Cara: Good. I’m so glad to hear that. And I know we’re coming up towards the end of the year. And like I said, we’re returning to this series on the discernment, strategic planning, and ministry action plans.

So, we want to hear a little bit about how what you shared with us during the first quarter — what it’s looked and how it’s gone for you all. I do want to ask you guys; what difference did using a MAP make for your local church ministries this year?

[00:01:23] Juanca: Yes. So that will be a lot. First of all, we now have a clearer idea of the direction that our church is heading in. We have clearly defined a goal and a vision and a mission in contrast to the years when we didn’t use a MAP, right?

So, we had goals, but not specifically target or targeted towards the Avenues and the ministries. So, this strategy allows us to concentrate on each of the different challenges, events, and necessities that arise. And because of this, we just have a better awareness of all the ministries and the church as a whole.

In the past, we used to just plan, for example, for the Hope Avenue. With the Avenues, you now have more opportunities available for people to serve in different ministries and this developed relationships, more events — everything focused exclusively on making a positive impact on the community, and sharing hope, sharing love, and sharing the faith of Christ.

[00:02:45] Hector: Yes. I would say that we are more focused on things that are clearly a part of our church, giving us the good results. So we have a clear idea on what to do, where to work, and how to bring people to those Avenues.

So, it has been good to have our MAP in this direction.

[00:03:12] Cara: Yeah, that’s so great to hear. And I love how you all say it brought focus and clarity. Because you have had goals in the past, but what the MAP has done is help you to bring that specific focus and clarity and holistic approach to the ministries.

And now, I know one of the things that we can be sometimes worried about or maybe be concerned about when putting together a ministry action plan for a whole year is: we don’t always know what’s going to happen during the year. Right? And maybe things will have to change.

I wonder how did you all discern when and how adjustments maybe needed to be made to your MAP this year?

[00:03:54] Juanca: Okay. There’re always adjustments because of the context, because of a person that was not available, or things change all the time. But in this document that we call the IMAP, in the MAP, we just based on a new document that we created, we generated a very similar document, but it is basically a chronogram that we shared online.

So, we are always detailing all the year’s activities with the date and the person in charge. If some adjustments have to be made this is immediately shared with the leaders. So, in this way, everyone knows what’s happening each month, and it’s easy to change, to share ideas in a fast-paced way, creating an efficient information flow for everyone.

We use, for example, WhatsApp as a platform. That has been crucial for our connectivity due to its promptness in sending messages and ideas towards the goals and agreements, the meetings of every Avenue and the ministries. We have many groups on WhatsApp, each one representing a ministry.

And most of the weeks, weekly there are meetings in each ministry. There’s planning; they gather to pray, to talk about their ministries and their plans and everything. And most of the time they send a summary or like the meeting’s minutes so that everyone knows the agreements or the decisions or the plans. Yeah, everything is adjusted to the context, to the needs, to whatever happens in the year.

And basically, we took the MAP and IMAP documents and put them on a chronogram. We also use Zoom, but WhatsApp here in Columbia, it’s very used in our culture. A lot of people have WhatsApp. And if you are working in X or Y company, whatever company, they have a group on WhatsApp, and they communicate a lot of instructions there.

And so, we are taking advantage of WhatsApp right now. We don’t use a lot of emails. Maybe the emails are used for sending the Equipper or maybe a private matter, a little bit more formal maybe. But it’s always part of adjusting because of the context and all the challenges that arise in the year.

[00:06:47] Hector: Yeah, I would say that WhatsApp is a very easy thing to use. Everybody has a phone, a cell phone, so everybody is able to be very close to the information we send, and it has been a very effective way to communicate what we want. So, Paulina, my wife, and Juan Carlos, who is basically the person who is in charge of all the Avenues, they have an easy way to communicate.

I would say that is something that we are benefiting from the pandemic times, this new way to communicate things. We don’t have to be together all the time in a personal meeting, but through WhatsApp, we are in contact all the time. Everybody can read things, so we are always on the same page concerning messages and ideas and planning.

[00:07:51] Cara: Yes, and what I’m hearing that I think is important for us to keep in mind is that when adjustments are made throughout the year to the ministry action plans and details to even timelines or deadlines, or maybe who will be responsible for something, communication is a really key piece that. That you all have put in place and found the ways that best work for your team to communicate to one another, which in your cases is the WhatsApp, to make sure that you are on the same page. All of the information is available to all the team members on a continuous basis, right? That if any change is made, immediately, the whole team has access to that, and you can quickly communicate one to another so that adjustments can be made in a smooth manner amongst the team with everyone still in the loop.

I think it’s really helpful to think about, that the communication is really important when we have to make adjustments to our ministry action plans throughout the year. That helps us continue to work in that team-based way.

[00:09:05] Juanca: Yeah, two years ago, we started implementing MAP, and we did have an annual plan, but with the MAP, we were able to focus more as we said before in each Avenue.

And so, all the events and the overall planning seem to be more organized using this structure, right? Efficiency. And the vision, for example, was a big change for us. And this was the result of some meetings in which we generated — in a great practice, a conversation that we had — a vision, a new vision.

And so, this new vision is now part of our liturgy or Sunday service. So, after we read a psalm verse from the Bible, every single Sunday, we always read our vision as a church. The whole church reads the vision with the person in charge, for example, of the announcements.

And the vision goes like this:

We are a church that honors God, proclaims the gospel of Jesus Christ, serves the community and grows in faith, hope, and love.

So, we always mention this vision every single Sunday. And if a newcomer, or a person that is visiting us, is present, the person is going to know that we have this vision that involves the three Avenues and that we are focused in proclaiming the gospel of Jesus Christ through the Avenues.

And so, we needed these changes to focus more on developing each Avenue and having a clearer vision and mission for every year.

[00:10:52] Hector: Yeah. Also sometimes, not every Sunday, but sometimes I explain a little bit of each Avenue, how it works. And we invite people to integrate into one of those Avenues, so people know that we are working in certain areas. I explain what is the Love Avenue or the Faith Avenue. So, people get acquainted with things that we are doing and the things that we are working on.

[00:11:27] Cara: Yeah, I really like what you all are saying, that this becomes interwoven in the rhythms of the life of the local church because that’s one of the things that I was going to ask about next.

Sometimes with ministry action plans, we’ll put them together for the year and make these goals, put together a vision and a mission and even put together a timeline and a calendar. But then we never referenced back to it. We don’t use it to inform our routine ministry activities. And what you all are describing that you all have that vision that you all have put together and that kind of as an organizing piece of your local ministries of the church.

So, I would just love if you had more to add about how often did you all as a team refer back to your ministry action plan? And what ways did you make sure that it helped to shape the day-to-day, week-to-week, month-to-month routine ministry activities of your local congregation?

[00:12:43] Juanca: There’s something important that we have to mention, and that is with the MAP, we were able to create a theme for every year. We started two years ago. For example, in 2023 our theme was “Rebuilding the Church.” But this rebuilding the church implies that — this title implies that we needed to organize the church with the new parameters which are the Avenues.

We needed to organize everything focused on the Avenues and in delegating people and ministries and leaders preparing leaders for each Avenue. And at the beginning, it was a little bit of a challenge.

But now this year in 2024, our theme is “Building Together” because we feel that we were able to rebuild quote “the church,” in terms of reorganizing the church in such a way that we contemplated the three Avenues, the pastoral, the faith, love, and hope.

So, in 2024, we are building together from what we did in the year 2023. Yeah, we’re definitely always in a constant change towards, in this case, the great commission in Matthew 28. This is applied in all the Avenues, following these goals, the vision, and the mission that have been created in an agreement with all the brothers and sisters leaders that are attending these meetings in which we discuss everything regarding the Avenues.

[00:14:39] Hector: One thing that motivates me a lot is to see more and more people involved. That’s good because at the beginning it was difficult to invite people to this new way of thinking. But as time went on, more and more people understood what we meant by the three Avenues and more people now are getting integrated into the ministries, different ministries.

So now we have a lot of people working in these Avenues, and I see a lot of people involved, which is very good. It is excellent because to see a lot of people working it gives you a sense of, I’m not alone, a lot of people are working, which is excellent.

Sometimes myself as a pastor, I have to confess, I see the results of people working, and I didn’t know exactly that they were working in things, developing plans, doing things. And I say, this is great. This is great that people are getting the vision, doing things by themselves. But finally, we get all of us together and reach things all of us together.

[00:16:04] Juanca: Yes. In addition to that I will add that it is also, from a different perspective, a challenge to stay, to be stable sometimes because of the liquid society, the liquid modernity that we live in. Everything is changing, people come and go.

It brings to my mind two authors, Gilles Lipovetsky and Zygmunt Bauman. They talk about the liquid society, and it is so real right now. Everything changes. You don’t know what’s going to happen tomorrow. The structures are not that strong. And this is happening on all levels in society and also in the church.

So, we feel that sometimes people are tired because of their jobs. And it brings to my mind a family, for example, that has a graveyard shift. And they’re always tired, and sometimes they’re just absent because they’re so tired. And we have to work, and we have to provide, and there’s a pressure from all of these things. But in spite of that, in spite of all of those challenges, we feel that if we continue down this path, in this path of the three Avenues, and we make them clear for people, so we’re building together, as our theme says.

[00:17:34] Cara: I think that is brilliant using a theme as a kind of practical way to keep at the forefront your goals and the ways that you’re wanting to express your mission and your mission specifically that year because things are memorable, right?

It’s harder maybe day to day to be like, oh, yeah, we set this one goal, and we were going to use this metric to measure it. And on this day, we’re going to do this. But a theme is something that we can connect to. And so, I think that’s great.

And as you guys are saying too, that invitation for people to come in and participate in that ministry of the three Avenues — I think that’s just a wonderful picture of the local ministries of the church, just coming to life in these healthy rhythms, in a way that the ministry action plan is just a helpful tool versus something that helps to serve the life of the church, right? Rather than, it’s not just us just doing something just to check off a box or serving the ministry action plan rather than it serving us.

I think that you guys have shared a really beautiful picture of what it can look like. So, I thank you very much for sharing what that has looked like for you this year.

Are there any other thoughts that you want to share before we close out our time today and then invite you back in for our next mini episode?

[00:19:22] Hector: I would like to mention something. But probably I don’t know how to put it together with the subjects we are discussing right now. But it is our effort to educate our people. We are in the CEM, in Spanish, Centro de Educación Ministerial. And we are preparing new leaders. And this is another activity that is motivating a lot our members, our congregation. They know that we are involved in something that is preparing leaders and pastors for the future, for having in mind new congregations in the future.

This also has motivated those that are already working in the Avenues, and it is motivating also the congregation as a whole. It is so good to have these different, I would say, efforts to bring growth to the congregation; it’s good because I perceive myself, the church, very alive, very enthusiastic with a clear vision with the desire to grow.

And we have Jews involved in these classes, Saturdays in the mornings, and the MTC that we have over here in Bogota. So, I would say I wanted to add that to [inaudible] the Avenues. All of that together is bringing health to the congregation.

[00:21:15] Cara: Yes, thank you, Pastor Hector for adding that because while not every congregation will have an MTC that they’re developing and running in their local congregation, what I think is really important about what you’ve shared and that every congregation can connect to, is this idea of pouring into the next generation, the future generations of leaders, recognizing that the church is alive with a clear vision, as you say.

And for that to motivate the people that are gathering together as the church to participate in Jesus’s ministry. I think that’s a wonderful thing. And as you said, for you guys in Bogota specifically, the MTC is one of the things that helps to bring that motivation to the members because they see specifically and with clarity what you all are doing, what you’re working on, how you are preparing these leaders for the next generation, maybe church planting in the future, things like that.

And I think, again, that comes to the importance of how you all have named clarity and focus and organization and communication as being important pieces of how your team functions, because when a plan or goals or something that you are working on is clear, then that can be motivational, right?

We don’t have that clarity, sometimes it’s not so compelling, right? And so, I really appreciate you sharing that, Pastor Hector. And for our listeners, just because you might not have an MTC, don’t miss out on what Pastor Hector just said, because the future of the church and generations-to-come is something that is applicable in your context.

So, thank you so much. Well, I was just going to close us out for this episode, say a brief prayer for you both, and thank you for your time with us.

[00:23:38] Juanca: Thank you, Cara.

[00:23:39] Cara: No, thank you. I appreciate everything you shared. It’s so insightful. And again, I think it paints us a really compelling picture of what the life of the local church can look like.

So, I’d love to pray for you both and our leaders.

God, I come before you so thankful for Pastor Hector and Juanca. And I thank you for their team of leaders, for Paulina, who also works very closely with them in key leadership, their Avenue champions. I thank you for the ways that they have brought focus and clarity to their local church ministries.

I pray that you would continue to bring them wisdom and discernment as they work together as a team. I pray that you would continue to bring them that excitement, that motivation, that more and more would come to want to participate in your ministries. I pray that your Spirit would invigorate them around this vision that they have articulated.

I thank you so much for what they’ve had to share. And Holy Spirit, I ask you that you would do the same for all of us in our local context what is happening in Bogota — to bring us clarity of vision, willingness and excitement to participate in your ministry. We thank you and we praise you in your holy and precious name. Amen.

[00:25:04] Hector: Amen. Amen.

[00:25:06] Cara: All right. Thank you, guys, again for taking the time to join us today. Listeners, don’t forget to check back next month for the next mini-episode of this series. And until then, take care. Keep on living and sharing the gospel.

Thank you for listening to this episode of GC Podcast. We hope you found this time valuable. We would love to hear from you. Email us at info@gci.org with your suggestions or feedback. And remember, healthy churches start with healthy leaders, so invest in yourself and in your leaders.