Why I Don't Set Goals - Christianity Today

What are your primary goals for the immediate and long-range future?” The question came from the audience at one of our annual pastors’ seminars.

“I have none,” I replied.

Dubious stares and blank looks everywhere. I continued, “We never set goals—that is, in the sense of numerical targets, fund-raising drives, or enlargement campaigns. Our one goal is to build big people. Every effort goes into developing each believer in the threefold ministry of worship, fellowship, and stewardship of the gospel.”

And I was telling the truth. From the time I came to the Van Nuys church 15 years ago, I virtually abandoned the church methodology I had used the previous thirteen years. I knew the quotes (“Aim at nothing, and you’ll hit it,” “No vision, no victories,” “Plan your work, then work your plan”) and I knew the ropes (zeal, promotion, enlistment, persuasion, training, projecting, enthusing, inspiring, recruiting, educating, etc., etc.). The quotes held an obvious element of wisdom, and the plain work of developing goals and generating means and personnel to fulfill them is a very practical way to get jobs done—naturally speaking.

But it was at that juncture—the natural—that something inside me began to creak under the weight of the years.

Conviction Growth

While pastoring in Indiana and then working for several years at my denomination’s headquarters and also at its largest college, I had seen spiritually oriented human enterprise at its finest. I had also seen it bear a certain amount of fruit.

However, God brought me to this church with the conviction that there was a better, simpler way to do things. I didn’t know what that way was, however. So the congregation of eighteen members and I began fumbling, trying to apply New Testament priorities in ministry without surrendering either to mysticism or fanaticism.

A primary principle evolved: I would stay away from the pressure to perform (something I was well acquainted with from the past). I began to discover the joy of (1) finding direction through prayer and (2) watching the fruit of obedience as people grew—and the church did, too. Individual health became apparent in the larger group, and we began to see more progress this way than I had ever achieved through promotional precision and evangelistic programs.

We did not set out to prove a point or challenge a system. We only decided that the New Testament church seemed simpler and far more fruitful than most of what I had been able to produce. When we investigated why, we found that the Holy Spirit was the director of its life and program.

The Goals Learning Curve

I was in prayer one day about the church’s finances at a time when the monthly offerings totaled around $1,000. I felt no complaint, but I knew there was reason to request more cash flow, if for nothing else than refurbishing the building; it certainly needed it. I started to ask God for “more money,” when suddenly it came to my mind that I didn’t know how much to ask for.

I stopped short, meditating. Hmmm. If I don’t know how much to request, how can I pray specifically?

On the other hand, God obviously knew at that juncture exactly what our church ought to be doing. So I decided to ask him to teach me. Then it would be easy to ask in faith, since the amount was his idea.

“Lord, how much should I be asking you for the general budget each month?” I’d never phrased it that way before, and I knew it would sound clumsy to many, but the risk was small.

“Two thousand dollars a month.”

That was the answer—and I won’t be offended if anyone accuses me of imagining the number. “Sure,” someone may say, “you just thought up the figure, or your subconscious suggested it.” I’ll only say that I have been surprised often enough by such promptings to know, at this point in my life, that they don’t spring from within. The numbers have often been far different from what I would have ventured.

So I began praying, “Lord, I ask for your blessing and increase of church income toward the $2,000 per month I felt you called me to expect.” It was my version of “Give us this month our monthly income,” and I prayed it two or three times a week.

After four months, without any special appeals, the monthly income stood at $1,700. I began to sense a strong need to ask for the next figure before the present “goal” had been reached. One day I stopped in the middle of my praying. My usual request for $2,000 didn’t seem right. No voice spoke, but I sensed an inquiry inside:

“Why haven’t you asked the Father lately for a new amount?”

I did—and immediately felt an inner sense of freedom to pray for $3,000 a month. Later I realized that the key to my liberty was my choosing to become as a child. I was not setting goals; I was simply asking questions of my Father. I refused to intellectualize the promptings, nor did I try to psychoanalyze myself. I simply believed.

I seek to walk in the same simplicity today, even though the monthly amount is now comprised of six figures, and the church’s annual total runs into the millions of dollars. I rest knowing that we have not come to be a congregation of more than forty-five hundred through human kingdom-building or financial goal-setting, but rather by responding to the Holy Spirit’s step-by-step direction.

This does not mean we escape the practical duties of responsible management. All monies are carefully accounted for and reported to the penny. We leaders project an annual budget each fiscal year and adhere to it. But we do not proclaim that budget to the congregation or flaunt it to others as an attainment. Neither do we burden one another with it as a challenge to fulfill. We simply plot it on the basis of the track record and then wait in prayer for God to fulfill or adjust it.

Whenever he prompts us to expect greater income, we pray accordingly. Whenever we sense a need to cut back, we do so without feeling guilty. Since the “goal” is not something we set, we don’t have to defend it. It is rather a case of God’s purpose being clarified as time goes by.

I have given an economic example, not because I feel it is more important than any other area, but because it is probably as good an indicator as any of general spiritual health. I am not surrendering to “prosperity-ism” in that statement; I am simply pointing out a fact that can be demonstrated in the Third World as well as the First. Life in the church manifests itself in giving, and giving begets new life.

The Principle

The general advantage of goal-setting, as I understand it, is that it enables both the pursuit of ideals and the measurement of progress. I would not criticize either ideals or progress, for the Word of God endorses both.

The problem arises, however, when we take this philosophy into church life. Without realizing it, our goals become numerical: so many workers trained, classes conducted, decisions registered, dollars given, missions begun, results tabulated. That is the way goals are verified.

It is hard to write about this, because in no way would I devalue any of the above ministries. But given enough time, something sinister often invades, and the goals begin to haunt their makers. If we reach the goal, we conclude that “God is blessing.” The next assumption is “God is in this program,” and before long we are serving the program instead of the Lord himself. People and institutions begin to corrode when fleshly zeal is tied to spiritual goals. We pastors have a propensity for launching our crusades with righteous intent and then fueling them with carnal energy.

For example, religious organizations frequently arrive at deep financial difficulty by doing nothing worse than concluding that “blessing” is carte blanche to pursuing bigger and better projects. Again, let me say that I’m not against growth or large finance in the kingdom of God. But the mindset that employs goal setting as the key to growth is in real jeopardy of setting time bombs for itself.

What if a goal isn’t reached? We could discard it as fruitless—but we seldom do, because built into the definition of our goal is that it is “for God’s glory.” So the goal must be pursued by all means, even by promotional means frighteningly parallel to Madison Avenue. Why? Because “they work.”

The Implications

I do not mean to be an obscurantist who denies the worth of contemporary technology or media. I am fully aware I risk sounding like a childish iconoclast.

Nor do I propose leadership by whim of a pastor who claims the Lord spoke to him. In fact, I am quite in favor of strategizing. I do, for example, appreciate the modern computer analyses of world missionary efforts and the consequent focus on pockets of hidden peoples yet unevangelized. I do think that analyzing a congregation’s growth (or nongrowth) rate may effectively disturb the status quo and explode people out of the rut of passivity. I do believe dreams and visions are worth formulating into strategies for action.

But goal-setting must be approached in the light of some primary questions:

1. Is this goal a direct result of a God-given directive, not just a desire to “be like the other nations”? Has the Holy Spirit spoken to the leadership, and has this sense of direction been submitted to elders and deacons? Have they confirmed it? Is the congregation generally positive toward the vision?

2. Does this goal sacrifice any principles or people on the altar of exigency? In God’s order, there is never a situation so desperate that it must grind people to powder or press a financial appeal at the cost of integrity, exploitative tactics, or world-styled salesmanship.

The Plan

In the past four years, The Church On the Way has completed and paid for a major building program and now has another $5 million development underway. We are not approaching the task with reckless abandon. But our desire is to “birth a plan” rather than “plan a birth.” The conception of vision, gestation of plans, and carrying to delivery are all pursued in an unabashed spirit of prayer and absolute dependence upon the Holy Spirit to lead—to correct, to time, to inspire faith, to release resources, to stir response.

Surely many readers of this chapter who set goals think much the same way as I have described. But I am suspicious of the practice of erecting targets, however noble the intent. Much of my early ministry was the fruit of setting goals and then pursuing them with all my promotional zeal. Naturally, I prayed. But things tended to stay on the natural level.

My intention is not really to debunk goal setting but to confront the tendency to dissolve into naturalism—to pursue holy goals by merely human means. “No goals,” in my mind, does not mean the absence of direction, strategy, or planning. It does mean:

We will not undertake anything without a clear sense of the Holy Spirit’s direction, confirmed by eldership.

We will not utilize any means of promotion or fund-raising that depends on human genius or style to be effective.

We will not pursue anything that overlooks the priorities of worship, relationship, and ministry.

At the same time:

We will pray much, often, and always.

We will think—trusting God’s Spirit to give clarity, coherence, and conviction to us all.

We will believe, knowing that “without faith it is impossible to please God.” As we do so, he will grow his purpose in us.

The following translation of (my own) expresses and summarizes my perspective: “Brethren, I do not count myself as having attained any goal, but I do this one thing: Leaving what is past, I reach ardently for what is ahead—in quest of that goal which is God’s high calling to Christlikeness.”