When is this published?

This one is at outline stage — the framework is settled and the chapter structure is still being finalised. It is the least advanced book in the series. Join the list and you will hear when it moves.

What is the difference between a plan and a strategy?

A plan starts from what you have and asks what you can do with it. A strategy starts from where you are going and asks what has to be true along the way. Most churches do the first and call it the second. That is not a semantic complaint — it produces genuinely different decisions about staffing, money and sequence.

What are the Nine Passes?

The book’s framework. A pass is the gap in a ridge — the single point low enough to cross. The image is deliberate: a flock does not go over a mountain, and neither does a congregation. Each pass is a strategic element that has to be crossed in order. The book takes them one at a time.

Do I need to read Book One first?

Not strictly — every book in the series stands alone. But strategy is the route to a destination, so if the destination is not fixed there is nothing to chart a course toward. Vision comes first in the series order for that reason.

The Shepherd’s Path Volume Two

The Shepherd’s Path to Church Strategy

How Jesus Planned His Ministry and How Your Church Can Do the Same

You know where the church is supposed to end up. What you cannot describe, in order, is how it gets there from this Sunday — which is why the same three initiatives keep starting, stalling and quietly disappearing. Planning deploys the resources you already have. Strategy charts a course backward from the future God showed you. Most churches only ever do the first, and cannot work out why they arrive nowhere.

FrameworkThe Nine Passes
StatusIn development · outline stage
Written forPastors and church leaders
ReadsStandalone — follows Vision in the series order

Tell me when it’s out

Not yet published. The list hears first.

The problem

Why the plan keeps not happening.

This book is at outline stage, so the chapter numbers are not fixed yet. The problems it is being written to answer are.

Your strategic plan is next year’s budget with a mission statement stapled to the front.

A plan starts from what you have. A strategy starts from where you are going and works out what must be true along the way. They produce different decisions about money, staffing and order.

The board keeps revisiting the same decision.

Recurring decisions are almost always a sequencing failure rather than a disagreement. Something earlier was never crossed.

You can name the destination and not the route.

The gap between a fixed destination and this Sunday is the entire subject of the book.

Three initiatives are running and none are finished.

Strategy is sequential and does not parallelise. A flock does not cross three passes at once; it stalls in front of all of them.

The framework is The Nine Passes — a pass being the one gap in a ridge low enough to cross. They are taken in order, one at a time.

What this volume argues

The distinction that makes the rest of it work: church strategic planning deploys what you have, while strategy works backward from where God told you to go. Most churches only ever do the first and wonder why they arrive nowhere.
The Nine Passes — the framework the book is built on. A pass is the gap in a ridge, the one place it drops low enough to cross. A flock cannot go over a mountain; it goes through the pass, or it does not go.
How to identify which pass your church is actually standing in front of, rather than the one you would prefer to be solving.
Why strategy is sequential and cannot be parallelised, and what happens to congregations that try to cross three passes at once.
How Jesus planned a ministry with a fixed endpoint and a hard deadline — what he did first, what he deferred, and what he declined outright.

Who this is for

Pastors who have a vision and no route: You know where the church is meant to end up. The gap between here and there is what this book is about.
Leaders whose plan is really a budget: If your strategic plan can be summarised as next year’s spending plus a hiring decision, it is a plan and not a strategy.
Boards that keep revisiting the same decision: Revisiting usually means the sequence was wrong, not the decision. The passes framework is about order.

Not for: readers who have not settled the destination yet. Strategy is the route; Book One is where the destination gets fixed.