Being intentional about Sunday
I personally find myself rushed off my feet to get Sunday done – sermons, video illustrations, who does what, announcements etc. and then breathe a sigh of relief when the service is over. Till next Sunday. Over time things have now become routine; a good enough mindset creeps in; lets just get it done – not good!
I think it was Sam Collins in his book ‘Good to Great’ who said ‘Good enough is the enemy of great’ It’s true in church life too and before you know it, a good enough mindset has caused your church to plateau, the building looks tired, regulars are bored with ‘same old, same old’ and volunteers are not motivated to do their best. If you stay in the ‘good enough’ zone long enough your church starts to decline in your essential numbers – attendance, baptisms, small group numbers and the like.
It’s hard to turn things around when you’ve settled in ‘Good enough’ land. So how do you turn things around. Surprisingly it doesn’t require big steps, small steps of incremental improvement will do
Here’s what I do:
I keep a notebook and handwrite one improvement I want to see next Sunday or something fresh and innovative I want to introduce. Just one thing. For instance it suddenly dawned on me that closing prayer for any given Sunday is basically repetitive – same tone, same pace, same list of closing requests. So I changed things up. We had prayers stuck to the bottom of each chair and at the end of the service everyone was asked to reach under the chair and read out God’s promise to them for the week. How refreshing!
Here’s another one from my notebook – opening closed window shutters to the side of the church. These were always kept shut out of convenience, not necessity. But when opened – it tells our community “We’re more open than you think we are!” and “It’s okay to come in!” And it worked!
There are a myriad other ways you can introduce freshness into the service – pray, brainstorm with your leadership, spend some time thinking about it.
For more ideas on freshening up Sunday read:
An Hour on Sunday by Nancy Beach. It’s a very good read
