I just read this on Seth Godin blog and my mind is running a miliion miles an hour about how the church does this all the time. How does this look in the church. Where are we throwing the baby out with the bath water? What are we unknowingly loosing. Check it out.
http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2008/04/first-do-no-har.html
“The best way to keep your bank from getting robbed is to not open a bank.
Sometimes, in our zeal to avoid loss at all costs, we focus too hard on the false positives (that guy might be a robber) and not enough on the false negatives (we just turned away a good prospect).
I just discovered that my gmail spam filter has been blocking orders from Google checkout! Astonishing.
I have also heard from two people who applied to my internship and never got the note I sent announcing that we’d completed our hiring cycle. (I hope to report more on the intern program in a month or two). Stopping spam is a worthless endeavor when you also stop non-spam.
Tolerating some noise and shoplifting and cranky customers is part of the deal. Better to be too open than too closed, I think.”
This was from Steven Furtick’s blog and will challenge your thinking on maturity and taking risk. I think that evey ministry leader who has seen any growth will have to struggle with this.
“When Elevation was very small, taking risks was relatively easy.
What did we have to lose? There was no payroll to consider, no public image to manage. Rowdy faith was required to make the dream materialize. We had limited momentum and miniscule resource. Risk was not a virtue for us, it was more like a survival instinct. (Every church planter or upstart business owner is tracking.)
We have a lot more to lose now, practically speaking. Mouths to feed, assets to protect, a reputation to uphold. And, as Seth Godin points out often, it is in this precise stage of our development that we’re in the greatest danger.
There is now a strong temptation to mistake risk aversion for maturity.
Sometimes, under the guise of getting wiser, growing deeper, or waiting on God, we let our audacity atrophy and set the stuff that made us special on the shelf.
That must really insult God. After we’ve already seen Him part seas, kill giants, and multiply fish and loaves, we should be more inclined to push our chips to the center of the table, not less!
Otherwise, we’ll eventually find ourselves building altars in honor of where God was.”
Let me know what you think. How is this real in your life and ministry?
