Nerd Alert! Nerd Alert! Churches are about ministry and people. You can’t go all business on us and get away with trying to tell us that we have to be analytical. The Holy Spirit isn’t analytical!
Do you feel better now? Did I get most of your or your friends reactions to being so boring as to suggest that it would be God honoring for a church planter to consider their churches key processes. Well, get over it. I am not going away and you can choose to stop reading this post but I dare you to finish. What have you got to loose? Only a few more minutes and possibly a few brain cells to store more information.
I know it is dangerous to attempt to apply worldly wisdom to spiritual things. But I also know that God is a God of order and He encourages us to plan. I also know that God gave His best for me, so I should offer my best to Him, and that includes the best “human” thinking I can muster. God deserves my full attention and best effort, nothing else should be acceptable.
So why wouldn’t it be prudent for me to take a little time and see how things flow around our church and if there are any opportunities to eliminate waste? Isn’t that what stewardship is, not wasting any resources? If you don’t spend some time looking at this, how do you know you don’t have waste? If you don’t take a systematic approach to looking at how things connect or don’t connect how will you know the state of your vineyards?
It really isn’t hard. It is best done with one or two other people who know how things are done and who are willing to be open minded when looking at them. It can be as simple as identifying the steps required to get something done and seeing how they fit together. It might involve asking a few new folks how they ended up where they are, assuming you want people to get where they are and asking a few people who ended up where you did not want anyone (like gone) how they got there.
It is really called common sense. But it is surprising how few times we stop and use it at our church. By the way, I think the Holy Spirit is analytical. How else could He keep all our spiritual gifts sorted out?
Wish you had stopped reading earlier? Want to really be challenged? Go to the new “Lean” practitioners’ sites for churches and ministries; http://theleanchurch.com/ and http://www.leanministry.com/ . Both these sites are excellent resources for people that are serious about understanding and improving their church or ministry.
My challenge to church planters is to start simple and see what you learn. If you find some opportunities, dig deeper. What church plant doesn’t need more resources and less frustration? Improving your processes provides both.
