How to Make New Ministries The Core of The Local Church

James from PASTORIA

“I have a plan. First, I’m going to put a big wooden cross at the front of the church,” he said on the floor of annual conference, speaking against a vote waiting to close the local church where he was a member.

“Then…”

I don’t actually remember what he said after that. But, I do remember the vote being taken shortly after that. It was not close and it was pretty quick.

It’s not really his fault for that church closing. What such votes signal is not only that it is insufficient to try and promote what we already have, but also that we must systematize the opening of new ministries as much as we have systematized the closing of them.

And, so, what I would propose is the teaching of local church committees everywhere how to make new ministries the real “core” of their local church. Just give them a simple process to do it (since we seem to have that for everything else).

Here’s the three simple questions that I think that process should include (when considering an existing ministry of a local church that we call Version A):

1. Given the need that Version A addresses for people that like Version A, what might Version B have to accomplish if it was a different version made to address a need for a different group of people? - This is a good way to not start from scratch, but from something familiar… allowing people to participate whether or not they consider themselves “creative.”

2. How much would it cost to fund an experimental, low-cost version of this ministry to test and see if people would want it? - This would make actual what is potential so that people take the possibility of reaching new people a genuine reality, if we just tried.

3. Who among us might want to try putting on this version this year? - This would bring out the people who have been interested in doing and supporting new things, but who may not have had an outlet for doing so. Just make sure that the ministry matches their interests and gifts.

This is my adaptation of what is called “pretotyping” - a method for testing new business ideas by Silicon Valley entrepreneur, engineer, and teacher Alberto Savoia. In his book, The Right It, or also his talk at Stanford, Savoia makes the case for testing out a crude version of an idea because of exactly that: an idea is a theory that someone will do A to result in B.

For example, he cites the website carsdirect.com, which, at its start, was a website that offered people the ability to buy cars that they did not have in stock. So, every time someone actually bought a car, they would go and manually buy a car from somewhere else. They would lose money, usually. But, what they gained was validation of the theory that someone would buy a car online. It was not a “prototype” because it was not fully built out - it was a “pre-totype” because it was a crude version that required manual work to make it work and, most importantly, test the theory.

The same is possible in denominations such as The United Methodist Church at minimal cost. For example, instead of pitching a concept of a new church plant, vetting the planter, and then fully funding one, an Annual Conference can simply create several websites each of which represents a church plant concept that differs in some way to test and see if that difference… makes a difference enough for people to inquire about it. You don’t need an actual congregation or even a worship service - just say that it is “coming soon,” but that the church plant is taking “rsvp’s” and see what comes in. It’s a better approach than spending tens of thousands of dollars up front in order to validate an unproven idea.

So, coming back to the local church then, the similar principle can apply: announce several new ministries in the works each of which will only happen if it meets a threshold number of supporters. For example, maybe you want to start an outreach program specifically to nonprofits who themselves are serving the community. But, to see if it would work, you decide to cold call or ask three local nonprofits to see if that’s the kind of support that they are looking for.

Or, maybe you want to start a local music program. Brand it, make a flyer for it, and put a detailed description of it on there along with an RSVP. Then, get the word out in all of the right places and watch what happens.

In either of these cases, two things are likely to happen: 1) you will learn from what people tell you and 2) you will adjust your original idea so that it actually matches the real context of real people around you. This way, you are no longer making the core of your local church ministry the maintenance of what has always been. While that is important and something that you should keep doing, it just does not become core.

Instead, what becomes core is “putting out the nets in the deep water,” as Jesus once said, and resonating with the future.