The One-Pager: The Document You Need To Scale Your Ministry

Most ministries are too complicated to grow. 

A rule of thumb around SSM is that – scalability starts with simplicity. 

In other words, if you want your ministry to grow in August, you need to spend some time in July simplifying each part of your ministry. Many ministries would grow if they just spent time clarifying their mission, values, and goals. 

That’s where the one-pager comes in. 

The One Pager = Ministry Overview Document 

Essentially, a “one-pager” is a one-page document that provides an overview of your ministry’s vision & values. 

The benefit of having a one-pager is that it forces you to operate with simplicity. It is not part of your DNA if it can’t fit onto your one-pager.

My question is – Is your ministry simple enough to fit onto one page? If you can’t, your ministry will not scale easily because it will be too complicated.

Here’s an example from The Strategic Onboarding System course of the “one-pager” that we use in each First Step meeting with a potential volunteer:

What You Should Include In Your Document

Here are a few essential elements to include in your ministry overview document: 

Vision Statement – Your vision is the one statement that defines why you exist. We coach ministry to develop a clear, compelling, contagious, and consistent message about what God has called your ministry to do.

Strategic Goal – Most define a mission and vision while forgetting a strategic goal. The strategic goal should be a measurable objective that changes over time. We suggest formatting your strategic goal by following the format “We will grow from X to Y by Z.” 

Key Characteristics – The adjectives that describe the right volunteer. 

Key Actions – The repeatable actions and behaviors we take to fulfill the vision and achieve our goal. 

Our Teams – The sub-set of a team within your team and their one-sentence job description. You will use the “one-liner” attached to each bullet point to build a job description. 

How To Get Involved – An illustration that overviews your strategic onboarding process and steps for a potential volunteer to get involved. For more information on this piece of yours, read our blog post here: 

Strategic Plan of Action

We really do believe scaling growth will start with simplifying. So to help you get started, here is a strategic plan of action you can do today. 

1. Clear two hours from your schedule. 

2. Grab one sheet of paper & a pencil. 

3. Distill your ministry down to one page.

Once you have simplified, then REPLY to this email, and I will send you the editable document seen above so you can implement it!