The congregation gains a sense of the future. People without hope are people who stop making goals. Because of the decline within the church, people sense only the frustration of failure. Setting and accomplishing easily attained short-term goals gives people a feeling of success, that there is a future for the congregation. As these goals are attained, the congregation develops greater confidence to set more challenging and long-term goals.
Goals are necessary for the implementation of the vision set by the church.
They define what the church needs to do and how it will go about accomplishing it. Goals enable people to measure their efforts and organize their efforts into a coherent plan. People in the community need to be aware of what the church is doing differently and the new ministries being planned. When we set about revitalizing our church, we sent letters into the whole community to let people know that we were beginning a whole new work. Because of the 100-year history of the church in the community, most people know of our existence, what they did not know was the new programs we were starting.