I love Church Marketing Sucks. I love their heart and they have some brilliant ideas. But a recent post had me a bit annoyed. They suggested a church might offer to help the US post office by taking on some of their roles. The idea and intention was good.
But a church can’t afford to be distracted from its mission. Churches get easily distracted for one of three reasons:
- They get bored with church. Either they aren’t being effective, seeing growth, or church isn’t their calling.
- They see a need no one is meeting and decide they should meet it.
- A highly involved congregation member plunges the church into one of these projects.
So a church opens a food pantry, a community gym, an after-school program, a missions sending branch, and international student outreach.
Nothing’s wrong with any of those programs. But when a church of 200 tries to do all those things and do church, the church usually suffers. All their energy is spent doing those other activities, so they don’t have the volunteers or emotionally energy to make the service awesome.
The most effective organizations have a laser focus. They do only what they’re called by God to do.
Time to analyze your ministry roster. Are you going above and beyond the call of God? Have you bitten off more than you should chew? Maybe it’s time to refocus.
Thanks! That’s always encouraging to hear. Because our church has been growing, by the grace of God, and we seem to get people coming in wanting to push their agenda and ideas, not that that’s always bad, but it can be distracting from the vision Jesus has given our house.
Noticed in the original piece you loved the idea. Now your writing that your annoyed by the idea? Which is it?
Read my comment on the piece again.
I’m intrigued by the thought but I don’t think the church will get distracted by such an endeavor. They’ll lose their main mission…which is a bad idea.