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 their programming accordingly. Trying to reach everybody all at once tends to result in reaching few or none at all. The most common MFG is ‘families with pre-schoolers’ (about 80% of Australian churches are intentionally trying to reach this group). Churches trying to reach this group usually run mainly music or playgroups, Another common MFG is ‘migrants who want to learn English’, hence to growing popularity of English conversation groups.
If the average weekend worship service attendance of your church is around fifty, you’ll probably have the resources to reach just one of these groups effectively. If your average is closer to a hundred you’ll be able to reach two. Try for more than this and you’ll likely be stretched too thin to be effective, other than effectively making your volunteers tired.
So, when February rolls around, maybe your church doesn’t need to restart everything that was running this year. If there aren’t the volunteers to run a particular program effectively and sustainably, perhaps you can see it as an invitation to simplify, to concentrate your resources and to be more effective in making disciples.
Melbourne Learning Community 2025
If you want to be more effective but less busy and help your church grow through forming new believers – and you live in Melbourne – you can join a new Pathways learning community commencing in 2025.
- Join with other church leaders embarking on the Pathways journey in a community of practice
- Bring your team to a practical workshop where you’ll create a pathways plan that you can implement immediately
- Receive monthly 1:1 coaching to keep you on track
For more details visit https://pathways4mission.com/events/