Have you ever had a great growth in your ministry. You restructured and started new age groups. Had enough children's ministers etc. And all of a sudden after the July holidays, you are faced with too few ministers and feel like you are losing the few you have as well??
I've been there a few times in my ministry and the thing I learnt: was downscale to GROW!
Not making sense am I? Well the principal is simple. If you don't have enough man-power to fuel the current situation, rethink your position. If it means cutting back to 3 classes from 4 to save the people that are committed, I do it in a heartbeat.
If you continue trying to get one committed person to do a classroom by herself, she too will get to a place where she will feel she is not coping.
IN RESTRUCTURING YOU ARE:
- You are not a failure if you restructure or cut back.
- You are a true leader, because you see the problem and find a workable solution until the problem can be solved.
- By doing this you are resilient and adaptable, both very admirable qualities in a leader.
- You are consolidating what you have to enable the committed ministers to thrive and give their best again.
- By downscaling the amount of class rooms being ministered in you are:
- Coming along side your ministers that are struggling to cope alone.
- You are forming a support structure for all involved.
- You are lifting the quality of the product being ministered. - The saying: "More hands make light work!" comes to mind.
- You are making sure that the children are ministered to on a better ratio.
- Downscaling gives you time to rethink.
- Time to recruit and train new children's ministers.
- You create a more stable environment for the new recruits to get comfortable in.
- It gives everybody time to recalibrate.
- When you have enough trained hands on board - you reopen the class room and you will have a thriving ministry once again.
FAILING TO RESTRUCTURE:
- Is more stressful to you and your children's ministers when everybody knows we have too little hands.
- It makes the quality of ministry take a dive. - "It takes teamwork to make the dream work!" - John Maxwell
- Functioning alone only brings burnout not success! - "One is too small a number to achieve greatness" - Johan Maxwell
- Parents will rather understand a downscaling that be understanding when their little one comes in harm's way, because there were not enough eyes and hands to watch them and protect them.
