truncate_post December 2024 - Pathways 4 Mission

Getting sensible after the silly season

The lead-up Christmas is called the silly season for good reason.  All of those endless breakup parties, various seasonal activities that have become must-dos for churches, plus numerous family events to wrangle.  No wonder we take most of January to recover. Then comes February and we restart all of our regular programming, hoping we’ll have enough volunteers to get all of the previous year’s wheels turning again.  With people working extra hours to cover cost of living increases, parents enrolling their kids in numerous extra-curricular activities, and congregations aging, it’s getting harder to secure volunteer hours .  Meanwhile safeguarding, OHS and other compliance obligations soak up volunteer time. We can fall into the habit of just assuming that everything we did last year will continue into the new year.  We try to do the same things with less resources and by Easter we’re all exhausted again. Working with a couple of hundred different churches over the past 25 years, I’ve observed that most churches try to do too many activities and try to reach too many people all at once, the result being reduced effectiveness and increased fatigue.  Effectiveness is not just keeping the wheels turning, it’s creating opportunities for people to become followers of Jesus. I’ve developed rough rule of thumb to help churches figure out balancing sustainability with effectiveness: for every 50 people that attend your weekend public worship services, you can pursue on Mission Focus Group (MFG). If you haven’t heard the term before, an MFG is a demographic, or associative slice of your local community that have a common set of needs or interests.  Churches do well to identify specific Mission Focus Groups and tailor...