Great Business/Ministry Advise

Don't know if you read Seth Godin's blog or for that matter if you know who he is. But he runs the most popular marketing blogs and has written tons of books, most recent The Dip. He has a post on his site titled Small Business Success that could be easily applied to the church world. Not that we like to say it, but we as staff and pastors (not that I am right now) are basically marketing a product. The cool thing is our product is perfect and is needed by all. Here is his post:

Three things you need:

1. the ability to abandon a plan when it doesn't work,
2. the confidence to do the right thing even when it costs you money in the short run, and
3. enough belief in other people that you don't try to do everything yourself.

How many times do we committed to a plan or a program and we do not get the outcome we wanted? But because we have some much time and energy and buy-in into the program we don't won't to abandon the plan. Seth's book the dip is about become the best at what you do by enduring through the dip (the hard times) or quitting and going another route. We are so scared that by quiting or canning a program we are failing, but the greats out there know when it is time to quit!

Got a prefect example for the second point. I was at Circle-K last night getting some drink and snacks, since our fridge has absolutely nothing. I got all that I wanted and went to go pay. She ran my card and found that there system was down. The proper thing for business would be to let me have the $2.00 worth of merchandise for free. But that isn't so at Circle-K. I got a "sorry" and I left with no drink or snack.

Apply this to the church. Think about this question: do you ever draw a line (without knowing it; I'll be fair) that this is as far as I'll go to reach a non-believer? I have. Oh we only have a few non-churched student going to this event and it's going to cost my entire budget to go through with this event...so let's cut the event. We do it without any thought. But what if that is the only event that those few students would go to. Did we just miss a chance to minister life-change in their lives? Not that that's a great example, but we make decisions all the time based on money. But if God gave us a plan; is money really a reason to not follow through with that plan? I don't know just a thought.

Seth's last point is a great one and one that we all know, but still don't follow. When it comes down to it we just do it ourselves because it's easier right. Wrong. We usually do it ourselves because we think too highly of ourselves that no one else could possibly do as good a job as we would or we wait till the last minute in our planning and don't have time to get help.

Something I've learned about ministry and have been expressing a lot lately; is you can't do ministry alone...you need a team. And you don't stop there. You, and the person in authority, need to be apart of that team. Let me explain. Not that I do this well I don't. I just understand the need to do it well. When I was at Arrowhead I had a team and I relied on that team for a lot. Very few decisions did I make without the teams input. And I just didn't ask for input and then do nothing with it. I earnestly wanted their wisdom and insight. The other thing is, as a member of that team my say or vote wasn't weighted any more then any other member on the team. We were equals. I just happened to get paid for it. I think that is what made the junior high so successful at Arrowhead was the team that had ownership and a responsibly to the ministry. A team did not one person. Honestly, I think I lean toward a team model because I don't want know enough to do it myself and I need the confidence of others.

So there are my thoughts to Seth's post applied to ministry. Let me here yours. Click on the title and in the right hand column it says "clicking here." Click it and it will let you post your thoughts.