Re: Assumption vs Fact

Amen, Amen, and Amen to everyone’s thoughts.

 

I like Denise’s point about realigning resources and perhaps having more success than we think….gets into the area where Lovett was talking about moving resources although since I missed the presentation I’m not clear exactly what he said (slide 13 quotes Asbury and says move resources “from the center to the periphery” then on slide 25 he talks about drawing resources from the circumference….anyway, that definitely should be one of the strategic assessment tasks).

 

Of course you are right Andy. This is a complementary effort…I like to visualize a stool: it won’t stand upright without ALL of its legs and, in this case, the legs of our stool are new-churches, revitalization, and small-membership.

 

Last thought: do we have any liaison/relationships with the various Universities around the state (aside from Wesley Foundations of course)? What I’m wondering is if it might be productive/efficient/useful to ‘reach out and touch’ their business/management/leadership/sociology departments and invite them to participate in the strategic analysis of our conference.  I’m sure there are lots of students/professors who “do” demographic research, studies, etc., and maybe we could leverage some of that for free…offer students a chance to do research that benefits them and us at the same time. Also, as I mentioned to you once before Embra, I think it would be very useful to invite in some non-church type folks to talk about things like strategy, managing growth, etc. 

 

Well, okay, I fibbed….one more “last” thought:  considering things from a “business model” viewpoint it’s interesting to compare the approach of Wal-Mart and Walgreens to our conference.  In many ways as I look at our state and our churches it seems that we are perfectly positioned to follow a Walgreens approach (i.e. stores on every corner) vs the Wal-Mart approach of building supercenters and drawing people in to them.  Although, even more intriguing, is that we may be in a position to use the best of BOTH….i.e. revitalize/’Elijah-ize’ ourselves so that our ‘corners’ are productive, and ‘new-church’ ourselves into the growth areas.

 

Final last thought…..PRAYER….we need to PRAY unceasingly that we wake-up from our stupor and get out of the comfortable surroundings that our previous success has bequeathed us.  We need to PRAY that all our conference hears the words to the churches in Revelation 3, particularly Revelation 3:15-17 “I know your deeds, that your are neither cold nor hot. I wish you were either one or the other! So, because you are lukewarm – neither hot nor cold – I am about to spit you out of my mouth. You say, ‘I am rich; I have acquired wealth and do not need a thing.’ But you do not realize that you are wretched, pitiful, poor, blind and naked.”

 

Let the church say Amen.