Gordon Gray
Born in China, Gordon studied Print Management at the London College of Printing. He emigrated to Melbourne in 1965, where further studies in Theology (Ridley College), Visual Communication and Communication Psychology (Melbourne State College) were applied during 25 years of running Christian Media, a Communications Design Agency serving Christian organizations. More recently he spent 5 years as international Media Director of OMF International. Gordon has also served on a number of Christian Boards and Councils. In his work Gordon has been involved in Strategic Planning, Organizational Architecture, Scenario Planning, Initiating and coordinating Integrated Communications and Marketing Projects, Book and Magazine Publishing, Website and Video production, IT Development and other key aspects of organizational operation.
During the past 35 years he has had the privilege of working with congregations, parachurch groups, missions, training colleges and denominational departments of most Protestant traditions.
"Since retiring from full-time employment, I have spent my time researching, reading and ruminating on the theme of Strategy and its use by Christian agencies of various kinds.
"My concerns were raised when leading a strategy task-force for one organisation, and I found that all the literature I could dig up utilized secular strategy planning models. At the same time I had become aware that within both the corporate and the academic arenas, strategy planning was on the way out. In fact Henry Mintzberg said “Strategy planning is an oxymoron!”
"The deeper I read into the secular strategy literature, the more concerned I was - the focus on competition (with many militaristic references), the drive to win at all costs, the emphasis on humanistic intellect and innovation, etc. The addition of ‘prayer’ and the impact of the Holy Spirit by Christian consultants seemed tacked on, rather than integral to the model.
"Consequently I have tried to ‘re-frame’ strategy from a Biblical Mindset. The result is "Issaachar Thinking"."