I recently heard a story that came from the leaders of Chick-Fil-A. During a board meeting, the leaders were concerned about the aggressive goals of one of their competitors. The board room erupted with ideas to grab market share and move their numbers up. After many of them shared their thoughts on the stats and ideas for beating the competition and growing their organization, the late Truett Cathy pounded his fist and changed the conversation with this one statement: “What we need to make it better. The customers will make it bigger.”
This twist is really common sense. You can’t make people buy your product, come to your event or get involved. You don’t have control over what people do. But, you do have control over your product and how it’s presented. When the people experience your good product, they will make it bigger. They will talk about it. They will come back.
What implications does this have for the church? Striving to become better at reaching people, presenting the gospel and serving the community is healthy. Trying to outdo one another isn’t. If churches get into a copying or competing mentality with other churches, no one wins. But if a church tries to out do itself, it will continue to become stronger, sharper and better. If a church can strive to become better at the main thing, people will help make it bigger. They will talk about it. They will become proud of it. They will experience the life changing effects. They will witness to the power of Jesus in their everyday lives. They will be the church.
It takes work to make things better. And often, frustrations, challenges and chaos is what helps you improve. When a church or any organization improves a little at a time, it continue to become better and better. Improving – making things better – should be part of the culture you develop at every level in your ministry.
It would be impossible to list specific ways for a church to become better. Each leader needs to determine what could be improved in his or her area of ministry. Here are some questions to help move you toward becoming better:
1) Do we have an honest assessment of what we are doing and how well it’s going?
2) Do you want to become better?
3) What areas do you have control over that you can could begin changing today?
4) Do we believe it’s our job to do the best we can as a church? Do we want our church to grow?
5) What if it works? What if we make it better and people come – are we ready for them? Do we have systems in place to serve and assimilate them?
Answering these questions may spur on our corporate motivation to become better!
OTHER POSTS…
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