The overcommitted church has become the ineffective church

What Rainer says is true in many ways. It is important to let people know that ministries may be temporary and that is OK. The cycle of life and demographics is such that you may only have a single young adult group in a smaller church for a time, or that the seniors group may increase and decrease in activity depending on who is involved. Not to mention that there must be a monitoring of the personnel involved, so that their commitment to a ministry doesn’t become a life sentence without parole. There must be a sufficient depth of workers to help people to not become discouraged and to provide for training and growth.

We were members of a church for years that basically taught activity equals spirituality. The more active you were the more spiritual you were. If you got involved you could easily be there seven days a week which was pretty much expected. Unfortunately some of the more active members were caught in immorality. When I was in college I attended a church that not only had a large number of programs but the pastor believed it was important to always keep a contest going to motivate the people. This was a church of abut 1,000. It no longer exists.

Churches have the same difficulty as do companies—a lot of people in companies think that the way to get things done is to create a new program. Then the next CEO comes and ends his predecessor’s programs to make his own mark, thus actively preventing it from entering the corporate culture. Or, worse yet, he leaves the program in place, but fails to realize it’s not doing what it’s supposed to do.

Hardest thing to do, really, is to chart a sound course for corporate culture. However, that is, really, the job of both the pastor and the CEO.