Direction and priorities.
Mission, values, vision, the discipleship pathway, and what happens in the next ninety days, twelve months and three years. What comes out is not a statement for the foyer wall. It is decisions, each carrying a name and a date.
Busy, well-intentioned, and pointed several ways at once.
That is the church this service is for. Not a church without a mission statement — most have one — but a church where the statement and the calendar have stopped describing the same organisation. The work is to decide, in the open, what this church is for in this place for the next three years, and then to let that decision order everything else: the pathway by which a person is formed, the ministries that stay and the ones that stop, the money, the roles, the ninety-day plan.
Two things we hold to. We will not run this for a church whose leadership health or trust sits below threshold, because restructuring a tired and distrustful team makes matters worse. And we do not name a service after anyone else's: where a term is another organisation's live brand, we use our own words for our own work.
Suited to
- a church that is busy, well-intentioned and pointed several ways at once
- a new leader who has inherited a structure nobody chose
- a leadership team ready to write down what it will stop doing
Not for
- a church in active conflict, or one without settled leadership
- anyone wanting a document rather than decisions with names against them
- a team hoping a plan will supply the energy or the trust it does not have
What happens
This service is the Recalibrate movement worked through the published engagement. The Discern day and the Design stage are its centre; Diagnose comes first so that the plan is built on what the church is rather than what it remembers being.
A first conversation about where the church is and whether direction is actually the first problem. Sometimes it is Restore. Sometimes the right next step is free training from your own denomination, and you are told so.
The Church Health Index, answered by leadership and — where it can be done anonymously — by the congregation, so that the plan begins from the perception gap rather than discovering it halfway through.
A day with the leadership team, the report read beforehand by everyone present, prayer built into the day rather than added at the end. Out of it come three priorities, the named movement, and what will not be addressed this cycle.
Mission, values and vision in the church's own words; the discipleship pathway from first visit to leading; and the plan at ninety days, twelve months and three years, built around the people and money the church actually has, with an owner and a date on every objective.
The church does the work in ninety-day cycles. We appear at review points fixed in advance, with a log of what got in the way and the adjustments made. Objectives abandoned deliberately count as completed.
Someone inside the church is trained to run the next cycle: to re-read the index, to re-ask the three questions, to write the next not-to-do list. The measure is whether the church can do this again without us.
Mission, values and vision in your own words; a discipleship pathway with a responsible person at each step; three priorities and the movement they belong to; a ninety-day, twelve-month and three-year plan with names and dates; and the list of what you have chosen not to do.
This is the service the published full engagement describes — Diagnose, Discern, Design — at €2,500–4,500 depending on the size of the church and whether a congregational reading is run. A guided reading for a leadership team, four online sessions, is the lighter form at €149–349. An implementation partnership of six to twelve months is €300–650 a month. Confirmed in writing before work begins; prices exclude VAT.
What the index reads here
Three of the ten dimensions belong to the Recalibrate movement and are the ones this service works on directly. Their first moves are written into the report, whether or not you ever talk to us.
Whether decisions are understood and trusted, and whether structure and finances fit the church as it is now rather than as it was.
Whether someone new to faith would know their next step, and whether a described pathway from first visit to maturity exists anywhere outside a few people's heads.
Whether the congregation could name, unprompted, what this church is for in this place — and whether faith is spoken of outside the building.
Order matters. Health precedes growth.
Matthew 6:33 is on the Foundations page for this reason, and it is why this practice does not sell growth and says so on its prices page. Direction is not a growth strategy; it is a church deciding, under Christ, what it is for in its place and ordering its life around that. Second Timothy 2:2 governs how it ends: every engagement should leave a church able to run its own next cycle, and a consultant who becomes indispensable has failed.
But seek first God's Kingdom, and his righteousness; and all these things will be given to you as well.
Matthew 6:33 · Matteus 6:33
Questions churches ask first
Will we get a vision statement?
You will get mission, values and vision written down, but that is the least of it. What comes out is decisions: a ninety-day, twelve-month and three-year plan with an owner and a date on every objective, and a second list — what the church has chosen not to do this cycle — which is harder to write and does more work. An objective without a name and a date does not count as written.
Can we do this ourselves?
Much of it, yes. The 3R Framework is a free download with the seven stages, the ninety-day cycle and the metrics per movement; the Church Health Index report ends with first moves you can start on Monday; and a guided reading — four online sessions for a leadership team — leaves you with the first ninety days in writing for €149–349. Many churches never need more than that, and the site calls that a good outcome.
What if our leadership is tired or divided?
Then we will not run this yet, and we say so on the How we help page. Restructuring a tired and distrustful team makes matters worse. Where leadership health or trust sits below threshold, the work begins with Restore — the leaders' own care and the trust between them — and direction comes afterwards. That refusal costs us engagements; it is still the right order.
Do you use a named strategic-planning method?
We use our own words for our own work. Where a term is another organisation's live service brand, we do not borrow it. The shape is published in full in the 3R Framework document and on the Method page, so you can read exactly what you would be buying before you buy it.
How is the discipleship pathway part of this?
Direction that does not say how a person moves from first visit to leading is a brochure. So the pathway is designed alongside the priorities: what you would say to someone who came to faith last Sunday and asked what to do next, and who in the church is responsible for each step. If that sheet comes back blank, that is the first finding.
The Church Health Index: fifty statements, about fifteen minutes, scored in your browser. The report names your lowest dimensions and the first moves for each.
Assess your churchThe 3R Framework document: seven stages, the ninety-day cycle, and the metrics per movement — each paired with the vanity metric we refuse.
Free resourcesForty-five minutes with Daniel, no charge and no pitch. We say which movement we would start with and why; you decide later.
Book a conversationThe other services: Pastoral health and leadership · Vitality and mission · How we help, in full