Monday, December 15, 2008

Being Amazing

Had a great conversation with Billy Chia last night. As we were talking, we were discussing the value of sometimes doing less. I loved some of the stuff that came from that discussion. It came at the perfect time as we discuss a change in our ministry structure at Discovery.

At Discovery, we're going to stop doing a high school/middle school ministry. Why? For several smaller reasons and one big reason. The big reason is simply this. What we're doing now is not amazing. Bob Franquiz, my church-planting coach, dropped this nugget from his church in our last session: "It doesn't have to be perfect; it just has to be amazing." As I evaluated our HS/MS ministry, we were falling short and did not have the resources or energy to get there yet. Someday in the future, we'll re-launch that part of our ministry and it will be amazing.

With all this perculating in my mind, like a fine cup of Pike's Place Roast, I stumbled across a neat article comparing a simpler model for church to Outback Steakhouse. Anything that has to do with Outback can't be all bad.

What's your thoughts? Anything in your life that needs to be eliminated?

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Trey,
I couldn't agree more - it'll never be perfect, but it should absolutely be AMAZING.

I like how Steven Furtick says it,
"be Ruth’s Chris and not Golden Corral."

http://www.stevenfurtick.com/best-practices/audio-blog-installment-2/

Anonymous said...

I don't think I could disagree more. But I will say that it probably means I am taking it out of context. Just know that perhaps it doesn't have to be perfect, amazing, very good or even fair to decent. In fact, I wonder if we need less striving toward excellence and permission to let things go. Church plants are difficult and the pressure to perform, to count people and hope for "x" amount by "y" date... it's all a rat race and it doesn't have to be this way. -Conner