Here is some guidance I gave to church leaders this morning. They are preparing to cast vision for their people and compiled a list of "good things" going on around their church. They want to share this list as positive examples of what's going on around their church.
The message they sent to me and their team:
Here are some more ideas for positive bullet points:
- Broadway style Christmas play that is done every year is a big deal and always generates new commitments for Christ from the message and invitation that is presented.
- New roof paid for in cash.
- Grenada and Kenya. Need to hit on how many trips and what has been accomplished.
- Food pantry - should be easy to calculate approximate pounds of food given away every year.
- # people attended Church 101 - and explain what Church 101 is.
- Partnering with Habitat and what has been accomplished.
- New back building paid for.
Now, here is my response:
Team - as you think about these kind of good things to celebrate, try the best as you can to put a "face" to each one. Make as many of these as possible about the story of how people are involved, how lives are changed, etc. You will find that the more you focus on people stories the more your message will get through. Projects = boring. People = God at work!
As an example - I'm making these up...
- Broadway style Christmas play that is done every year is a big deal and always generates new commitments for Christ from the message and invitation that is presented. Try to find the story of a person who was IN the play this past year, but came to the church (or perhaps even came to Christ) as a result of attending the play in the past as a guest. Tell THAT story.
- New roof paid for in cash. Find someone who gave to the project and for them, this was a big first step of generosity. Perhaps they went through Crown or Financial Peace and as a result gave in way they had not before.
- Grenada and Kenya. Need to hit on how many trips and what has been accomplished. Yes, focus on how many trips...but don't just give a list of "we built 5 houses" or we "saw 200 people in our clinic" - instead tell the story of one of the new homeowners, or tell the story of a woman who put her sick child on a donkey and walked 12 hours to come to the clinic (this is a story from another church...it's real and moving).
- Food pantry - should be easy to calculate approximate pounds of food given away every year. Yes, it should be easy to calculate the number of pounds of food...but that in itself is INFORMATION and it is not a MESSAGE. The message would be a story about a widowed young mother who needed to visit the food pantry to feed her 3 children and how not only did she get food, but someone from the church went to her house to fix her broken window...etc., etc.
- # people attended Church 101 - and explain what Church 101 is. And tell the story of one of those people and how Church 101 FINALLY helped them open their eyes to truly understand the Christian life and what it meant to be loved by a church...
- Partnering with Habitat and what has been accomplished. Again...tell the story about people. There's the story of your people and what they felt God do in their lives as they served and the story of the person who is now in a home and what it means to them to be part of the community...and what it means to their children...
- New back building paid for. Story of an older person in your church who was resistant to change...but saw the vision for this space and gave to the space, and what it means to them to be part of a church that values being free of debt.
OK - get the idea? You must get away from facts and figures and tell stories. I promise if you do, you will touch a variety of people in a variety of ways...God is at work in all of these "good things" but the better thing is the work he's doing in peoples lives. Focus on those stories.