Global Planning 1976

Summary: This article picks up where “Global Planning 1966-1975” left off. It takes us through the adjustment phase of the mid-1970s after which we began to encounter stress prompted by the rapidity of our earlier expansion. Therefore, our international leadership conference in 1980 presented two faces: a welcome and fresh commitment to what was internationally imperative, but a concern by many participants—often from countries new to international planning—that it might no longer be practicable to align around global objectives. By 1982, we had introduced planning in blocs that were intermediate between global and national planning. This was productive, but we became entangled in a surfeit of approaches to global planning. The Spirit then led us toward a less rigid, more decentralized structure that we called our enabling Global Society.

Contents

Directions of the International Leadership Team
Sanny’s Purposes for Strategic Planning, 1978
“Global Planning for the 80s”
International Leadership Conference, 1980
Steps Taken After the International Leadership Conference
New Structure Established, 1981
Conclusion

Directions of the International Leadership Team

As we approached the 1980s, we were moving from product to process; in other words, from determining an ambitious global plan (e.g. “A Strategy for the 70s”) to focusing on the flow of global planning. Broadly, we had come to realize that:

A plan developed at the center was too directive.
A plan obtained by combining all our country plans was not helpful.
The process of planning, to be relevant, required the involvement of the leaders who would implement the plan.

Although our International Leadership Team (ILT) had agreed as early as December 1975 “to develop strategic and operational planning,” the next two years placed a priority on finalizing the FOM.1

In December 1976, therefore, the ILT merely noted that we were committed to functioning as a global team and thus needed a global strategy.2 At the same time, we agreed that strategies for geographical units other than countries—such as divisions, zones, regions—were not normally useful, except in natural groupings such as Black Africa (the term used at the time for Sub-Saharan Africa) or Latin America.” Here is the genesis of what later became our ethno-religious blocs.

We were operating on a standard annual planning cycle, with three levels,3 each of which focused on countries. For a synopsis of this, see attachment A using the link at the end of the article.

In effect, international planning was being carried forward by the ILT on an ad hoc basis, through the consideration and acceptance/rejection of specific missionary allocations for Representatives.4 In the dialogue about submitted requests, wider implications related to priorities naturally surfaced.

By April 1977, when meeting in West Germany, the ILT attempted something more than the summation of country plans.5 They noted the main reasons we needed some top-down planning. These were:

To move ahead in unity
To improve our judgement as to priorities
To lessen confusion at certain levels
To help delegation
To provide a basis for feedback

They also stated that a global plan should answer four basic questions. These included:

What do we want to do . . . aim, assumptions, objectives?
What resources do we have?
What opportunities do we have?
How should we apply resources to opportunities?

Significantly, they also agreed that such a plan should be flexible and a natural outflow of the FOM project.6

McGilchrist, whose specialty in his past employment in the UK had been strategic planning, provided Sanny in May 1977 with a booklet in response to his request for a degree of depth that would lie between Sanny’s four points (above) and his own thirty-three (!) points. Extrapolating from his cover note to Sanny, McGilchrist wrote:

I do want to question any procedure whereby we simplify too early. It makes for superficial staff work and it stifles top-level debate. In fact, our failure to have such internal debate is the principal reason why Scott’s strategy galloped off at great speed in the wrong direction.

. . . if we are to give the planning project attention that even approaches that given to the FOM, we need to think in more categories. Simplifying comes later. . . . I would like to see some disciplined attention to the range of alternatives, some spiritual and intellectual explorations before we narrow down. We must treat the members of the ILT as senior managers.7

Our experience during the 1970s had not disposed Lorne to give up on global planning, but merely to avoid a fixed, detailed, overarching global plan. Before the ILT met in December, he commented that we were a mission whose members should be gifted, called, dedicated, trained. We must lay foundations for many generations.8 In December 1977, he reported briefly to the ILT on the beginnings of a planning project which he hoped would address some challenging questions, including:

Allocation of resources to non-resource-producing countries
Allocation of resources to countries in the investment stage
Criteria for closing countries
The long-term role of foreigners in any country
The requisites for a missionary representative
Perennially adolescent ministries

By now, the climate was one of caution. During 1977, we had analyzed the reasons why so many missionaries were returning from their fields. Meanwhile, for the December 1977 meeting of the ILT, Jim Petersen drew up a summary of “Factors Influencing Success in Various Countries.” This, though brief, helped us gain a better grasp on our realities in our existing countries.9

The following year, in his remarks to the US state directors,10 Sanny traced the evolution of our activity among the nations. Historically, we had tried to accomplish a sequence of the following:

Giving people to other agencies
Sending out our people without training, assuming that English would be universal among students
Assuming that anybody could be a missionary
Using quotas
Priming the pump to help other countries to send, yet the “stream” was still a trickle
Committing to open fifteen new countries during the 1970s

None of these approaches had proved satisfactory.

Sanny’s Purposes for Strategic Planning, 1978

Therefore, Sanny had undertaken to prepare a project description. What progress was he making? He presented his thoughts11 to the ILT in December 1978, revealing the methodical style of his approach. He had distilled the purposes for strategic planning. There were:

To unify action around our Calling and objectives
To provide a frame of reference for all planning
To provide a frame of reference for the allocation of resources
To focus on key tasks and crucial issues
To set out a formal commitment against which to measure our progress.

Given our somewhat variable record in accomplishing our plans, it is encouraging to note the following comment by Sanny in support of these five purposes: “The planning process is not complete until those who are to implement the plans are consulted on them.”12

According to Sanny, how were we to understand strategic planning?

Strategic refers to that which significantly impacts the point of focus. This is accomplished not by making tomorrow’s decisions today, but by making today’s decisions in the light of yesterday, today, and tomorrow.
Planning refers to coordinating efforts toward a goal. You have planned when there exist clear objectives and a program of activities for their accomplishment.
A strategic plan is not a forecast; it is a commitment to action.
A strategic plan is not a blueprint to be rigidly pursued; it provides guidelines to help us adjust wisely to changing situations.

He then observed that, thus far, our most significant areas of progress in planning, internationally, had been:

The Fundamentals of the Navigator Ministry (FOM), by far the most important
Working framework for strategic planning
Guidelines for allocations
Suggestions for strategic focus

Of these, the framework was a new feature. In this, he included affirmations, promises, commitments, and assumptions. The strategic assumptions laid down tracks for our prayer and planning as we moved toward the 1980s. He identified six, which are quoted below.

The key to “in every nation” is Navigators—that is, equippers, people gifted and called by God to major in helping disciples become laborers.
The key to Navigators is prayer, identifying, recruiting, and training.
The key to training laborers is recognizing that only some Navigators are gifted and qualified to train Navigators. Therefore, these trainers should be identified and stripped of other responsibilities to concentrate on the task of training disciple-making leaders to become Navigators
Every Navigator is a missionary, but not every Navigator or Navigator couple is suited to be a cross-cultural missionary.
Cross-cultural missionary criteria can be established, and cross-cultural missionaries can be identified.
We intend to continue to operate as a global entity with global leadership.

He followed these six assumptions with his thoughts on key tasks and crucial issues.13

“Global Planning for the 80s”

During 1979, staff work on planning continued. The most detailed expression of this was an assemblage of relevant papers entitled “Global Planning for the 80s” presented to Sanny in November 197914 as a track along which our emerging perspective could run. In a brief summary, it offered an explicit contrast with our “Strategy for the 70s.” Thus:

The central idea of our 1972 strategy was to position Nav staff in sufficient numbers in key places around the world by 1982 as to enable us to establish self-sustaining, disciple-making ministries in every nation by the year 2000.

The central idea of this 1980 strategy is to develop equippers who can multiply themselves and/or who can move into the nations . . . and to provide wise and strong leadership that will enable them to do so effectively.

This draft was offered “for consideration, improvement, and expansion” by the December 1979 ILT conference.

As a precursor, it looked at the world by continent rather than by country, and it identified gateway nations15 that would give access to the twelve principal languages.

The draft also refined the concept of “stages of ministry” by grouping our existing countries into the following stages:

Investment
Beginning
Developing
Maturing
Established

This lengthy November 1979 draft worked from a base of affirmations, promises, commitments, strategic assumptions, and strategic imperatives—while grounded in our FOM.

In December 1979, Lorne drew from this draft in presenting developed thoughts on global planning. However, with the international leadership conference fast approaching, this was received cautiously. The divisional directors sensibly felt that the draft (some thirty-two pages plus appendices) needed further study, and that a wider group should enter dialogue on the concepts presented.

Lorne agreed. However, he emphasized that we should avoid any plan that was formally set out and distributed to all staff; some parts should not be shared, and others would vary widely between countries.16

International Leadership Conference, 1980

Now, we enter the 1980s with the important international leadership conference17 for which our theme was: “Do not be afraid, for I am with you; I will bring your children from the east and gather you from the west. I will say to the north, ‘Give them up!’ and to the south, ‘Do not hold them back.’ Bring my sons from afar and my daughters from the ends of the earth” (Isaiah 43:5-6).

One of our five objectives for the conference was “to discuss our purposes and plans for the 1980s.”18

During the conference, Lorne launched promptly into strategic planning. He emphasized that each of his five presentations would be participative, followed by discussion groups and a process19 for distilling their recommendations into a draft which would eventually be considered by the International Leadership Team. His six presentations were:

Review of the FOM
Review of the 1970s
Prospects for the 1980s
Promises of God20
Strategic imperatives
Objectives for the 1980s

An impression of the guide questions for the groups can be gained from those attached to his second presentation:

What happened in the 1970s to apply in the 1980s?
What happened in the 1970s to avoid in the 1980s?
What do we need new in the 1980s?

At the end of the first week, the embryonic shape of our strategic global imperatives was coming into focus, as seen in the group comments. For several days during the conference, the emerging imperatives21 ran alongside the emerging objectives for the 1980s. The latter were more precise. Thus we asked for the groups to prioritize action steps and identify who should be responsible for those steps.

The conference ended with seven imperatives and four strategic needs. However, we find that Sanny later prepared, in September 1981, a set of five global objectives linked to our imperatives. He also called these “prayer targets.”22

With hindsight, it is evident that we were working with a surfeit of variables reflected in a cluttered vocabulary. Some pruning would have helped. A similar conceptual indigestion has occurred at several points in our history.

Before we move beyond the February 1980 conference, it is instructive to look into how more than 150 leaders responded to the questions being presented to them. When asked, for example, to comment on the way in which the imperatives might be used, consolidated responses23 included:

Our assignment was frustrating . . . overwhelming . . . hard even for country leaders. . . . Many of us cannot project outside our context. . . . We have no wide experience. . . . Hard to think conceptually.
It is not wise to focus on universal activities.
Some of us are hesitant to recommend action steps, lest they be enforced around the world. Action steps are best decided at a country level.
We may well have reached the limit, as regards international planning in such a large group. It is preferable that we continue with dialogue by countries or by ministry targets or by divisions.

This suggests that the valiant effort to deepen the global conversation by soliciting the views of many leaders proved too far beyond the horizons within which many of them were pursuing our vision. This is understandable.

Steps Taken After the International Leadership Conference

We now enter a phase in which we struggled to reach consensus. Lorne wanted clear action steps for each imperative and hoped for progress. It did not materialize, partly because of the widening diversity of experience in our ministries around the world and partly because we found ourselves with a cluster of outwardly similar pointers to the future. These included:

1978 – Primary Aim and Essentials
1980 – Strategic Global Imperatives
1980 – Action Steps and Progress Indicators
1981 – Blocs and Geographic Priorities
1981 – Prayer Targets
1982 – International Projects
1982 – Crucial Success Factors
1982 – Global Objectives
1983 – Crucial Issues

We started with the seven imperatives under each of which Sanny had placed one or more action steps. In regard to our advance into the nations, we can illustrate the proposed action steps that derived from imperative 5 which was “to improve our selection, orientation, and placement of missionaries . . .” Four action steps were proposed to activate this. They were:

To make approval of allocations and selection of missionary staff a matter of special and protracted times of prayer under the guidance of the international prayer stimulator
To continue to develop and implement a coordinated means of identifying, orienting and placing trans-cultural Navigators
To accelerate the recruiting and placing of international trainees, support staff and missionary associates, and improve the ability to utilize them in the receiving countries
To appoint an international staff advisor, assisted by an international committee, to help match available and requested staff and to recommend ways to improve the quality and quantity of our missionaries

In this approach, the seven imperatives together generated thirty-one action steps, to each of which was attached a proposed sponsor and at least one progress indicator.

Meanwhile, Jack Mayhall had helpfully added an eighth imperative addressing our financial requirements. For the text of these imperatives, see attachment B using the link at the end of the article.

A complicating factor was that, for more than a year after the successful conference, our structure was evolving. This topic needs to be mentioned, because it altered the parameters within which we pursued global planning. For example, we saw the end of the divisions and the emergence of what we called blocs, and we saw the end of the ILT and the emergence of the International Navigator Council (INC).

ILT Meeting, June 1980

We pick up the story, therefore, in June 1980 when the ILT met for their first formal reflection on the experience of the international leadership conference. The participants were Lorne Sanny, Jim Downing, Leroy Eims, Donald McGilchrist, Jack Mayhall, Jim Petersen, and Doug Sparks.

However, one can discern the increasing pressure for a new structure24 from the fact that four others joined them on this occasion: Warren Myers, Bob Sheffield, Jerry Bridges, and Jerry White.25 Concurrently, consultant Myron Rush led them through a role clarification exercise26 which led to the formation of the smaller International Executive Team and to the larger International Navigator Council.

Sanny intended to tell the divisional directors in June 1980 that he would add to his portfolio the role of “overseas director.” McGilchrist lobbied strongly against this.27 Meanwhile, studies had been done for Sanny in March 1980 of how best to enlarge the ILT to twelve to fifteen members.28

New Structure Established, 1981

By the end of 1981, the new structure was in place. The first meeting of our International Navigator Council took place in December 1981 with eighteen participants.29 By now, the small central team around Sanny known as the International Executive Team (IET) comprised Lorne Sanny (president), George Sanchez (international ministries), Donald McGilchrist (international headquarters), and Jack Mayhall (US ministries).

The divisions had disappeared. Sanchez had eight regional directors covering the world beyond the US. Observe that Sanchez’s title used the word “international” to mean “other than the US.” This was confusing and regressive, because in other settings we employed it to mean “worldwide.” Examples: IET, IHQ, INC.

This new structure harmonized well with the incipient emergence of a dozen blocs. These would be the principal units in which our international planning would be carried forward during most of the 1980s.

During 1981, stimulated by the sense that we should pay more attention to ethnic peoples, we recognized that our organizational divisions (and regions) were not always the most natural groupings for our pursuit of the Great Commission. We asked ourselves how the world was naturally arranged. What groupings would best support productive planning and thus our field progress?

Therefore, throughout 1981, work proceeded on setting geographic priorities. Having agreed that the ranking of countries (as in the early 1970s) would not be practicable or profitable, we chose twelve blocs defined as large ethno-religious segments of mankind.30 (See the table at the link below.)

Table 1: Ethno-Religious Blocs31

Now that we had identified these blocs, we expected each regional director to think and to plan in terms of the blocs for which he was responsible, and to have an approach to his blocs that was more than the sum of his individual country plans. In return, we needed to provide him with a central statement of priorities into which his bloc would fit.

Our bloc strategies were to be clear statements by the responsible RDs of how they saw the overall development of the countries within their blocs. The first strategies would be presented to the international ministries director (Sanchez) by October 20, 1982, so that they could be considered alongside the country plans and be analyzed in advance of the second meeting of our council. The timeframe for a bloc strategy was anticipated as a minimum of five and a maximum of ten years. We also agreed that it should at least speak to anticipated progress within the bloc in relation to these factors:

Contextual reproducible ministry models32
Development of established countries
Navigators reaching out toward every nation

At this juncture, our profile of an established country33 described it as one “in which the Navigator ministry is biblically rooted, culturally relevant, and continuously effective in terms of our primary Aim.” There were six supporting criteria. An established country:

Has a strong self-renewing leadership such that, if necessary, it would not be dependent upon outside resources
Has at least one contextual reproducible ministry
Is providing continuity, so that our fruit are transitioning well—becoming models of the Christian life and continuing to labor
Has people who are functioning well within the Body of Christ.
Is committing men and money in outreach inside and/or outside the country.
Is functioning interdependently as a mature part of our Global Society.

Navigator regions would continue, organizationally, as blocs or combinations of blocs.

US Leadership Team Consultation, 1981

An important milestone was a 1981 USLT consultation34 on strategy. Some extracts include:

To structure in regions and plan in blocs was welcomed.

Sanny pointed out that our primary Aim is “technical,” so that we need something extra as a motivation. A specific mission for each country was supported.

We might need to agree on a few countries in which to experimentally place a large force of Navigators.

The psychological impact of priorities was discussed. McGilchrist explained that a “low” priority was designed to communicate our expectations and to lessen unfair pressures, rather than to be a statement of worth.

Sanny observed that most of our thinking in the 1970s had concentrated on who should receive missionaries rather than on who could be expected to send them. He emphasized that the availability of resources would determine our timetable, rather than the reverse.

Mayhall indicated that the US guidelines of two-thirds home and one-third overseas were proving to be a useful benchmark.

Toward the end of this consultation we noted that our framework for allocations would need to be meshed with the priorities of our blocs. We agreed that informal bilateral recruiting of potential missionaries should be discouraged. Jerry White identified seven additional issues which would need to be addressed.35

The beauty of the blocs soon surfaced. Through a prayerful consensus, drawing on various standardized criteria, priorities were confirmed. We agreed on a broad assessment of them in terms of their capacity to send and their need to receive missionaries.36 The output from this double exercise can be seen in the table below (see link).

Table 2: Priorities for Sending and Receiving Missionaries

Usefulness of the Bloc Structure

The uniqueness of the US is at once apparent.37 It was and is the indispensable country. Prayer and the promises of God had continued to undergird its sacrificial sending into the nations, year after year.

Africa soon offered persuasive evidence of the usefulness of the blocs.38 We had been blessed for some years with growing ministries in Kenya and Ghana (despite dizzying inflation) and Nigeria (despite the lack of residence visas for incoming missionaries). We had been forced to pull our foreign staff out of Uganda in early 1973 because of the unpredictable savagery of Idi Amin. Everybody was focused on their own cities, their own ministries. Then, in October 1981, George Sanchez traveled to Nairobi to interact with Mike Treneer, our regional director at that time. Together they lifted their eyes of faith to encompass the entire bloc. Treneer recounts how the invitation to draw up a Black Africa strategy expanded our horizons and deepened our commitment. It precipitated a fresh vision for the nations of Africa.

One energized outcome was that we entered Liberia in 1982, Zimbabwe in 1984, Cote d’Ivoire in 1984, Tanzania in 1984, Zaire in 1985, Niger in 1985, Uganda in 1985 (returned), Zambia in 1985, Ethiopia in 1986, and Malawi in 1986.39 Within the space of five years, from the initial strategy for Africa, we had lengthened the cords from three to ten countries of ministry! Other factors were also at work, of course, but the galvanizing effect of at least developing a strategy for the whole bloc was indisputable. Not only so, but our first African missionaries40 began to move into other countries in Africa.

We are now in a position to summarize the three elements in the “bottom-up” (from a global perspective) aspect of our planning during the early 1980s. Thus:

Bloc Strategies. Focus: future of five-to-ten years. Value: for international leaders and for countries within the bloc, to stimulate strategic planning in large segments of mankind, leading to better decisions on the pace and scope of our development.
Country Plans. Focus: future of one-to-three years. Value: for country leaders and their teams, leading to specific decisions and programs.
Country Summaries. Focus: one-year in the past. Value: analyzing ministry progress for the INC and forming a permanent, perhaps superficial, record of our development around the world.

Neither the strategies nor the plans required the use of a standard format, although there was a consensus on a minimal list of standard elements that each strategy should address.

International Council Directions, 1982

When our International Council41 met in December 1982, the agenda concentrated on strategic global planning.

A separate “History of Our Strategic Thinking: 1970-1982” was provided.42 It may be helpful to summarize the highlights:

1970 – Corporate plan for the decade, with numerical objectives
1972 – Introduction of “A Strategy for the 70s”
1973 – Reactions against some implications of this strategy
1974 – Decision to build up from national strategies
1975 – Introduction of our first framework for allocations
1978 – First edition of the Fundamentals of the Navigator Ministry
1979 – Drafting of a comprehensive global strategy
1980 – Introduction of strategic global imperatives43
1981 – Introduction of ethno-religious blocs

We entered the December 1982 council intending to move through the following sequence of discussion:

Who are we? (Foundational promises; FOM 2: Highlights; Primary Aim and essentials)
Current situation (Internal: strengths and weaknesses; External: opportunities and obstacles; Issues: questions for which we need an answer)
Strategic global assumptions
Crucial success factors
Global objectives

It was at this juncture that the process began to become complicated. There were too many factors to digest and an increasing diversity of experiences was emerging. We worked through the five stages of the process outlined above and integrated our statements. We then prioritized seven objectives that came out of this process.

Shortfall of Missionaries

Meanwhile, the first cycle of bloc strategies revealed the gap between the number of available and requested staff missionaries. This had always been a tension (the laborers are few!), but the strategies made it plain. For the next five years, 157 new staff missionaries were offered and 250 were required.44 This took no account of some returning missionaries, or of the mismatch in the kinds of missionaries that would be available and required.

Admittedly, the margin of error was wide, but the challenge was unmistakable. Our process for deciding how to allocate new missionaries would need to be very discerning.

The table below shows the projected gap from September 1982 to August 1987.

Table 3: Available vs. Required Missionaries, 1982-1987

Productive Missions Analyses

By now, in addition to our primary Aim and three essentials from the FOM, we also had identified some issues, strategic global assumptions, crucial success factors, strategic global imperatives, and draft global objectives. As previously instanced, this was heavy and somewhat overlapping. Increasingly, participants in the council urged that we simplify our vocabulary and the intentions expressed by that vocabulary.

However, the introduction of bloc strategies had been a major advance. We no longer expected the IET or the council to digest and draw applications from the forty or so country plans that were updated every year.

The strategies allowed us to generate several productive analyses, including a central focus for every bloc, and also the following:

Contextual reproducible ministry models
Missionaries available, by country and type
Missionaries required, by country and type
Stage of ministry, by country

Our stages of ministry were still fluid in 1982, but they soon settled into four stages: penetrating, developing, consolidating, established.45

There was residual concern that the use of “established” for stage 4 communicated that a country had “arrived” and might even relax! Therefore, the term “partnering” later replaced “established.”46

Lists of peoples and languages by bloc became available. By 1987 we were ready to embrace the definition of a “major nation” as a population of at least one million persons who could be identified as a people or by language or as a country.

As we moved through the first two annual cycles, several transfers of individual countries were arranged. For example: Malaysia and Singapore from East Asia to Southeast Asia; East Germany from Northern Europe to Russo-Slavic; Djibouti and Somalia from Africa to Arab-Muslim.

The most significant change came in April 1984 when the commonwealth bloc was created by linking Australia, Canada, New Zealand, and the UK. Alan Andrews was the first “coordinator” of this new bloc. For convenience, Oceania was included.

The blocs were still functional in 1987, as we approached the launch of our Global Society. At that point, the composition47 of the blocs was:

Table 4: Composition of Navigator Blocs48

Conclusion

After emerging from this complex but less centralized planning experience of the first half of the1980s, our focus on designing our enabling Global Society came as a respite. As I have described elsewhere, the triad of vision-values-relationships came to be much more prominent than the older triad of hierarchy-strategy-policies.

It was soon followed by the launch of the Scriptural Roots of our Ministry in many countries. When this process had concluded, the local statements of our sphere of ministry and our values that it generated revealed a satisfyingly high degree of consistency.

We entered the twenty-first century ready to embrace the fullness of The Core.

By Donald McGilchrist
6346 words

See also articles on:

Global Planning: 1966-1975
History of Our Strategic Thinking: 1970-1982
Surge and Stress in the Seventies
International Leadership Conference: 1980
Structures in the Early 1980s
Stages of Ministry
Our Enabling Global Society
The Scriptural Roots of our Ministry
Strategic Gatherings: 1980 – 2010
Cross-cultural Missions
Allocation of Cross-Cultural Missionaries
Fundamentals of Nav Missions

Attachment A: Planning at Three Levels

Attachment B: Strategic Global Imperatives

Endnotes

FOM: Fundamentals of the Navigator Ministry. Our primary Aim was confirmed by the December 1977 ILT notes as to “Help Fulfill Christ’s Great Commission by Multiplying Laborers in Every Nation.”
December 1976 ILT minutes, sections 2 and 12.
By November 1979, the ILT executive committee observed that we had only one FOM but a hierarchy of strategies.
Using a revision to our December 1976 framework for allocations. See December 1977 ILT minute 5.1. Also, see the article on “Allocation of Cross-cultural Missionaries.”
They received a proposal from McGilchrist, “Toward a Dynamic Strategy,” which referenced twenty-five earlier documents/proposals from seven leaders (Lorne Sanny, Waldron Scott, Doug Sparks, Walt Henrichsen, Jack Mayhall, Joe Simmons, Donald McGilchrist) identified as resource materials, including a convenient brief summary of his strategy from Scott and a rather daunting flow chart from McGilchrist on the planning process.
April 1977 ILT minutes, section 4. Sanny undertook to bring a draft plan to the IET by December, but other priorities delayed this.
Memo to Sanny of May 13, 1977 on global planning.
Remarks on November 15, 1977, in McGilchrist archive, global planning 1977-1978.
Jim Petersen, dated December 8, 1977, four pages.
Sanny to SDs on May 12, 1978.
December 1978 ILT agenda: strategic planning, Sanny’s draft of November 24, 1978. We did recognize the need for flexibility in any such plan, which should be a natural outflow of the FOM project.
McGilchrist archive, box 1, global planning 1982.
See Sanny’s presentation to the April 1979 ILT, section on strategic planning.
McGilchrist text of November 25, 1979, which was forty-seven pages long but was identified as a first draft.
These were an evolution from the sending countries of the early 1970s. However, it is the first occasion in which language is given such prominence.
December 1979 ILT minutes, section 4.
February 26 to March 16, 1980 at Glen Eyrie (164 participants of twenty-one nationalities).
Notice the less directive and more democratic tone. We had been chastened by our experience during the 1970s.
This process is explained in the conference notebook. McGilchrist summarized and combined the various group recommendations every evening, for distribution the next day. Sanny asked for the groups to provide prioritized consensus items, but this was not always how they reported!
At the December 1978 ILT conference, each participant shared his foundational promises. See McGilchrist archives, box 1, global planning 1979-1980.
It is interesting that the first full draft of the imperatives ended with a definition of a society as a voluntary association of individuals for common ends whose members have developed organized patterns of relationships through interaction with one another.
See pocket of the December 1981 INC notebook, attached to some draft “personalized” global objectives dated February 1980.
Source: divisional directors on March 10, 1980.
From May 1979, the executive committee of the IET had only been Sanny, Leroy Eims, McGilchrist. This was one of several indications that many desired broader leadership. By February 1980, Eims was deputy president and George Sanchez was responsible for staff development. For job descriptions and individual priorities see the June 1980 ILT agenda.
Marvin Smith, studying for his masters at Fuller Seminary, would also have been an asset. In May 1980 he noted our need for a philosophy of missions, a resource that eventually became our FONM in the 1990s. He also compiled the views of seventeen American missionary country leaders on the effectiveness of the worldwide missionary program of the US Navs. See McGilchrist archives, box 1, global planning 1979-1980.
See booklet “Clarifying our Roles” summarizing the output from Myron’s sessions. He also introduced a priority grid which helped us make several decisions during the next few years.
See, for example, his memo of June 3, 1980. Sanny graciously dropped his intent.
See McGilchrist of March 12 and 25, 1980.
One objective of this gathering was “to determine the purpose and functions of the INC.” Oswald Sanders of OMF was our valued guest. Appendix L of the minutes listed twenty-five prioritized projects and issues!
Blocs as agreed by December 1981 IMLT. We had forty-eight countries of ministry of which thirty-six had resident staff of twenty-seven nationalities.
Black Africa was chosen to convey that this bloc did not include the nine (later eleven) countries in the north that were largely Arab and Muslim. From around 1990, we changed the name of the bloc to Sub-Saharan Africa.
See (e.g.) Sparks’s paper on CRMMs presented to our consultation on special groups in March 1982.
Profile as at December 30, 1981, appendix K.
September 12-13, 1981 in Granby, Colorado with guests Lorne Sanny, Donald McGilchrist, George Sanchez, Marv Smith.
Extracts taken from notes by Smith and McGilchrist dated September 16, 1981.
We chose eight criteria for prioritizing capacity for external sending and three criteria for receiving missionaries. These can be found in the December 1981 INC notebook. UK Director Roger Anderson pushed hard but unsuccessfully for the UK to be a separate bloc.
It was agreed that no bloc strategy for North America would be expected in the first cycle.
A decade earlier, in November 1972, Doug Sparks had produced an Africa strategy which divided Africa into four regions in support of our ten-year plan. This was an urban strategy embracing both student and laymen’s ministries. It was well documented, after several exploratory surveys, and was probably timed to stake out a plan before Scott’s “Strategy for the 70s” was presented the following month.
In the case of Liberia, Tanzania, Zaire, Niger, and Ethiopia, we entered with a missionary associate rather than a full launch team. The heart of the 1982 Africa strategy was to “move as quickly as possible toward establishing six national works, with the aim of these becoming sending bases to take the ministry into other African nations. This involves strengthening our existing ministries in Kenya, Nigeria, and Ghana, and making plans to survey and open ministries in three other countries: a French-speaking country (1984), a southern African country (1985), and one other (preferably French-speaking) at a later date. This would involve an investment of thirteen Representatives over five years, five for the existing countries and eight to open new countries.” Source: Treneer, October 1982.
By September 1986, two Nigerians were serving in East Africa.
This was INC 2, with twenty participants of four nationalities.
See separate article.
See attachment B.
Summary by bloc of November 22, 1982. Americans comprised 124 of the 157 that had been offered. The largest requests were Russo-Slavic (74), southern Europe (37), Africa (36).
Stage 1-3 recommended by the May 1981 international ministry director’s consultation on global planning, and then replacing reproducing with established. Adopted by the December 1982 IMLT and accepted by the April 1983 IET.
During the first decade of the new century, the stages were provided with threshold indicators: initiating, developing, maturing, partnering.
Source: May 1987 table by McGilchrist. Supporting data included rates of increase in country populations and other factors such as life expectancy at birth and GNP per capita.
The US bloc included Bermuda and the Midway Islands.