Cleaning Up The Clutter

Kurt on November 19th, 2009

In Tuesday’s post, I mentioned that I have asked our JH and HS teams to begin to brainstorm what a cleaner, more streamlined ministry plan might look like.  There was only one comment left in the comments section, but I thought it was a powerful one:

“Perhaps a bigger “what if” for most of us is what if we were allowed to try that.”

I really don’t know of many churches that give the leaders and pastors more freedom to try new stuff than Saddleback. Throughout the years, Pastor Rick has encouraged us to think differently, try new things, make changes, and make mistakes…and he has led by example. But, with that being said, change is ALWAYS tough and it will be tough for us to make significant changes to our ministry, but we simply have to try.  And I think that would be my response to the comment above.  You may not be allowed to try to make changes, but as a leader, you have to try to try!

In our setting, ministry has simply become too cluttered.  Our calendar of events and programs is cluttered, our infrastructure is cluttered, our team is cluttered (and I’m not talking about my office!), and our work days are cluttered. There’s lots and lots of really good stuff happening, but much of it has been overrun by all the clutter.

It won’t be easy, and I’m sure we will hit some obstacles along the way (both internal and external). But God is doing something special in our ministry and things are better than ever and I feel like we are poised for something amazing….I don’t want the clutter to get in the way.

Related posts:

  1. An Attempt @ Organization
  2. Training, Resources, Encouragement and More..
  3. Summer Debrief
  4. Almost summer…
  5. Weekend Wrap Up Etc.

Share Discuss (1)

Jeff at 7:55am November 20

Actually I’ve made several significant changes in my setting. Another piece of “being allowed” to try to make some changes,is that there are some areas of student ministry that we don’t hold sway over…like youth choir or something like that.
I think longevity goes a long way towards being “allowed” to make changes. I think that most of the time it’s not been an issue of if things needed adjustment but it was an issue of how wide the church’s margins were. I think each of us needs to know the margins of our church and do all we can to work within that context. If you feel too restrained by those margins, maybe you need to find a place that fits you better. I realize we youth workers have the most brilliant minds, thanks to incredible hand eye coordination via Xbox, but on ocassion we might actually not be right! If we are to work within the framework of the church where we are at then we need to do that. If the framework needs to be changed, God will make it happen.
Bottom line I agree about uncluttering and evaluating. Both incredibly valuable and both often incredibly difficult!