I just heard a story about a mid-size congregation that debated a $1,000 line item in a $250,000 annual budget for over an hour. I laughed at the story, but not because I thought it was unusual, but because it was so familiar. This is the way of our people. We micro-manage. We argue. We get ourselves so tangled in knots we can’t find either the end or the beginning.
Over the last 6 months, people have been asking me what we need to do to transform ourselves into what the world needs us to be. I have lots of ideas and steps and things we can all do starting right this minute, but it doesn’t matter. The problem isn’t that we don’t know what to do; the problem is that we’re stuck in patterns we may not even want to get out of. We are stuck in our stuckness and no one can get us out but ourselves.
Like any addiction, the first step is acknowledging you have a problem. This is easier than it sounds. Does this sound at all familiar…
Person 1: I want to update the way we sign in new members. Instead of the guest book, I’d like to set up an iPad in the front.
Person 2: But we’ve been using the guest book for decades. Everyone who ever walked in the door has signed it.
P1: I know, but it doesn’t capture any relevant information.
P2: It’s part of our history. The membership committee voted on it once and we decided to keep it. The guest book stays.
It doesn’t have to be a guest book. It could be a newsletter that gets printed and mailed requiring all kinds of staff or volunteer time even though most people won’t even open the envelope, or a 2nd service 6 people attend. The point is that it can be clear that something doesn’t work but because there are a handful of people – or maybe just one – who want things to stay the same, nothing changes. We live in a memory, fearful of an unknown future.
We don’t even know we have a problem. Or, frustratingly, some people do but they can’t budge those who don’t.
If you’re looking for the first thing you can do, the thing you can do right now to move your church into the future, write down the top 5 habits of your church that are keeping you standing still. Then make a plan to change them.
Nothing changes if nothing changes. Time to make your move.
Something so simple as signing a guest book can be “AND” gathering additional information on an iPad. If redundancy becomes a problem, the one that is most irrelevant will be discontinued. Change certainly can be hard.