Developing Strategies for Addressing Factors Inhibiting Strategic Plan Implementation among Pastors in Copper Belt Conference, Zambia

Abstract

It has become a norm for the Seventh-day Adventist Church from the global level to the local conference to operate under the guidance of a strategic plan. Unfortunately, there appears to be a challenge in implementing the higher organization strategies at the level of the district or church pastor where it matters most. The purpose of this dissertation was to discover causes or reasons for strategy implementation failure by the district pastor and suggest solutions to the same. It has been shown that the suggested solutions to the challenges will have a long-term effect on how pastors relate to strategy implementation. This research made use of questionnaires and interviews to gather data from purposefully selected key stakeholders in the process of strategy execution. These included an executive officer and a departmental director at both the Union and local conference levels of the church in the Northern Zambia Union Conference, six district pastors with years of service ranging from five to 40 years, plus one local church board. It was discovered that failure to execute the strategic plan has a negative impact on accomplishing the mission of the church at the pastoral level, which is most crucial for success. The purpose of developing strategic plans by the church at the global level is to help guide all churches to move in a specified strategic direction in accomplishing the mission to spread the gospel. When this does not seem to happen at the local church level, there is need to correct the situation. Further research in areas not covered by this dissertation should be done. One logical follow-up to this research is initiating a program that operationalizes the proposed solutions to the strategy execution problems as highlighted herein.