Just stop it, already…
This post was originally published on my other blog, MinistryPlace.net
“Why do we do this ministry every year?”
“Well…kinda because we’ve always been the ones to do It?….”
We have all had that conversation in our churches. There seems to be that one ministry in every church that is a sacred cow that happens every year only because it happened the year before. Many times, the people who originally started the ministry are long gone by the point that the church experiences the “critical mass necessary to kill it”. The transition process in our church has led to the leadership team looking at most all of the ministry opportunities in our church and asking “why do we still do this?”.
At the end of the day, we were a church trying to do far more than it should. We had to let some things go, and be ok with it. One of the things that was let go was a back to school cookout that our church sponsored for a local collegiate ministry. One of the other churches in our fellowship of churches locally picked it up with fresh people and vision. They had a blast with it. Last night at a meeting of the local churches, the report thanked our church for allowing the new church to get the blessing of taking on this new ministry opportunity.
There are two things we can learn form this:
1) Ask why we do what we do. Is it for God’s Kingdom growth, or because you did it last year?
2) Killing a ministry doesn’t always mean its dead. Maybe its that God wants to carry it on through someone else as He leads you in another direction.
Who can you bless by killing a ministry? God knows.
What is a ministry your church “killed for the glory of God?” Share in the comments below.