Musings on Spiritual Matters

Down the road there is this house with the best light display in the town.  It is amazing, lights everywhere.  The house is the first stop in the Christmas lights tour for the children.  The house is requested by the kids.  The display is beautiful to look at and surely the owners of the house have received numerous praises for the hard work that is evident in the presentation.  The problem is that the lights are still on and it is January 23.  Everyone else in the town have turned the Holiday lights off for the season, but this one house is still showcasing the lights.  One cannot blame them in a way, most people spent an afternoon or one day putting up their lights, while this house must have spent a week.  It would seem reasonable for them to showcase the work a little longer.  But the problem is that we are over the season now.  Instead of rejoicing over the lights, I am annoyed with them.  Turn off  your lights, you Christmas braggers.  It was beautiful while it lasted, but you are killing the displaying by showcasing it too long.  You are ruining a good thing.  It seems that churches do this too.  They take something that is good, and drive it into the ground.  By the end, you are done with it.  It was a good ministry, a good program, a good work, but it was taken too far.  People are sick of it.  Yes, there was a ton of praise, a ton of excitement, a ton of good produced, but it is too much.  The people should have quit long ago, and if someone wanted to start it up again, it would fly, but not now.  They lit the ministry up too long.

So what to do?  Here are some helpful hints.

1. Start Small.  Churches and church members are addicted to the big start.  The church has a great idea for a ministry, and spends a ton of time promoting it, and it starts with a bang, and the only place it has to go is downhill.  It is so much better to start small and allow it to grow.  This way it will have a longer life in the church, and if it grows, this is good, but if it does not, there is a good reason.

2. Establish a time frame.  Not all ministries are developed to last forever.  Or even all year round.  So make a time frame at the beginning, like this is going to go for one year, we have objective goals to reach, if we do not meet these we are going to stop, reorganize, or something else, like a change in leadership.

3. A Program is a Program.  Sometimes people become too attached to a program.  Remember these are tools to accomplish the work of the Lord, not the gospel.  One must remember that fruitfulness is part of faithfulness.  Just because one is being faithful to a program does not mean that it is wise to keep it.

Effective congregations are those that have effective ministries.  One must always remember that “movements” are meant to “move.”

Related posts:

1. Visitation Programs on Lifesupport
2. Merry Christmas To All
3. Ever Wonder about Christmas
4. Christmas Season
5. Merry Christmas to My Blog Friends

Tags:

This entry was posted by Matthew on Monday, January 23rd, 2012 at 1:09 pm and is filed under Church News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.