Road test your ideas

"Even decisions that have been allocated a lot of time and work often need to be given a road test"

Going round a subject numerous times can be a failure of indecisive leadership - leading to frustration and inaction. But it can also be the result of careful leadership - looking at all the angles and potential consequences. I have been in both places - and depending on how bored or stimulated I am with the discussion, I can describe it differently.

Even decisions that have been allocated a lot of time and work often need to be given a road test. Last September we started a second meeting we called The Chapel in a vodka bar. The desire to promote The Chapel with a great fanfare was massively diluted due to a severe lack of funds. The resulting low-key launch has given us the opportunity to experiment, road test and evaluate our strategy.

This has meant that we have developed a much more coherent plan as it became apparent that we were trying to achieve too many concepts that at times conflicted with each other. We discovered that people viewed “The Chapel” as a cool meeting in a vodka bar. However, not many people saw it as a place that could or would commit to and identify as their local church.

The outcome of this low-key road test is an exciting and more coherent strategy. Ten minutes walk away from the vodka bar we have hired Luther King House where we are going to launch a new 6pm Sunday evening meeting – CCM:City. This gives us the opportunity of carrying on using the vodka bar later on the Sunday the evening, developing The Chapel into a creative community. Another beneficial consequence of looking at all the angles and taking adequate time to road test is the rebranding of our morning meeting to CCM: East

Road test your ideas

Going round a subject numerous times can be a failure of indecisive leadership - leading to frustration and inaction. But it can also be the result of careful leadership - looking at all the angles and potential consequences. I have been in both places - and depending on how bored or stimulated I am with the discussion, I can describe it differently.