I spent 10 years in schools…and now 6 in church world.
I believe that both churches and schools suffer from the same disease.
The basic symptoms of this disease start with a sincere desire to do what’s best for the people you serve and ends in a slow frustrating death.
At the center of this disease is this…
When you’re trying to serve kids…when you’re trying to do what’s best… there are simply too many good ideas. All of them can be rationalized into a great idea that we “HAVE” to do!
For example, in schools…
as soon as they get some momentum they start to add this program and that. A sports program for boys needs to be balanced with a sports program for girls…then, if that’s successful, we need to add something for the non-athletes. Then there is some sort of tragedy and we need to add a Rainbow club to teach kids to help each other with tragedy. Then, a key parent get involved with horses and donates a chunk of money for the new Equestrian barn…and on and on we go…until the school becomes an unidentifiable-understaffed-over-budget-mass-of poorly-run-programs.
And all for good reasons…and all things we felt we had to do.
The same happens in churches…and for that matter…in individual ministries.
I don’t need to go into details…just look around.
I bet you’re overworked without a budget and your schedule is full of stuff you have to do…and you can’t do what you want to do.
I know…I’m psychic!
So…How do you stay focused? If all these ideas are good ideas for good reason…then how do you figure out what to say “yes” to and what to say “NO” to.
Here’s a little exercise to help.
Stop reading this blog for a couple of hours and answer this question.
If I could only do 3 things…What would be the most redemptive things I could do for the people I serve in this ministry?
….OK…..I was serious about stopping your reading….Go think about it.
In my world…this is what I came up with for the three most redemptive things we can do for middle schoolers.
Psych…I really want you to think about it. After you have…click HERE for Part 2
