David Watson of CityTeam Ministries discussed how to have a good strategy during Verge Conference’s 3rd session. Here is what he said:

Strategy is determined by structure. If we are a house church, the strategies we think about are house church strategies. If we are a megachurch, the strategies we think of are megachurch strategies. The problem with this is the strategy is based on us and not who we are trying to reach.

Strategy and structure are intimately connected, but most of us have connected it to the wrong end - ourselves. The strategy cannot be us but about them. We must learn how to reach people within their context not our context.

I’ve got to learn something in order to reach people that churches are not reaching. Our strategy has to be defined by the structures we are trying to reach. This means you have to understand the structures in your community.

What is difficult is we all get tunnel vision. We all drive the same routes daily. We like routine. We avoid things and people that look different.

We need to map our community’s many different structures and then define our strategy for reaching each culture. We must understand the structures around us and learn how to work in those structures and through those structures. And that takes lots of people.