I’m a business guy. I’m an entrepreneur. I’m a person wired for process management—examining, critiquing, and improving efficiency in processes. I love the Church.
Unfortunately, I repeatedly see churches—tremendously effective churches—run inefficiently. Yes, one can be effective and yet be inefficient. A person or organization can significantly impact their market (business) or community (organization/church), but it may require a ton of overhead. However, this often leads to burnout, and one’s effectiveness is limited by their capacity. As efficiency improves, one’s potential for effectiveness also increases. To be clear, an increase in efficiency doesn’t guarantee growth in effectiveness, as there are many other factors. However, the potential is enlarged. In the end, inefficient churches never enjoy their fullest impact.
I’m currently reading The Lean Startup by Eric Ries. Though a book targeting entrepreneurs and intrapreneurs, God has pricked my mind to read it through a lens of discipleship. After all, pastors lead organizations that should be exploring new markets (e.g., reaching new converts). And to do so requires a learning process—for the pastor, church, and potential/new converts.
Some initial questions I consider:
- Can the Church be innovative in reaching the lost?
- Can the discipleship process (e.g., building and developing believers) be innovative?
- Is the Church interested in discipleship?
- Is the Church willing to be disruptive in the market of meeting the needs of its communities?
Before this journey goes any further, one thing must always remain central and unchanged: Christ is the foundation, the primary agent, and the goal of discipleship. From this, I will never deviate. However, what begs to be considered is the process by which a new believer grows in Christ-likeness. Can the church explore new methods, more effective methods?
Reader interactions
2 Replies to “How It Started”
Aha!!
This brings to my mind a book I read not too long ago: Measure what matters by John Doerr. At some point I got myself thinking about church and what if everything we do in the Kingdom had as its topmost OKRs “loving God above everything else” and “loving our neighbors like ourselves”?
There is perhaps a parallel here where if that was the approach, much less effort would be put into less important things and we could see more opportunities to be efficient.
Thanks for sharing your thoughts!
God bless.
Right! It perplexes me that church mission statements are like what you’ve mentioned as, personally, I feel mission statements should be end goals—something that we set before us and strive towards. Examples like what you’ve shared leave me thinking, “Wait. Isn’t this the bare essentials to being a follower of Jesus?” My thoughts are if we struggle to follow “missions” such as these, we may want to “examine [ourselves] to see whether [we] are in the faith” at all (2 Corinthians 13:5).
In regards to OKRs, I believe that churches should identify OKRs (spirit-led, of course) and continuously measure their progress. However, I would caution that the OKRs should be attainable by the conjoining efforts of the Holy Spirit and the Church. For example, having an OKR such as “To see 100 people come to know Jesus” isn’t something that we can directly control. While church members certainly play a role, ultimately, salvation is entirely the work of the Holy Spirit, and only the Holy Spirit can determine a true conversion. Instead, a better OKR may be objectives that demonstrate obedience or the spiritual temperature of the congregation. Maybe, along the lines of the following:
Again, just a few ideas, but these are measurable and can be directly influenced by the members of the church.
Thanks for the ideas! (BTW, another great book!)