More?

This seems to be the season of “more” in many churches.  Either folks want more, need more, or lament they don’t have more.

What we really need to thrive are more young people.

Or young families.

Or more babies and kids (especially the kind that don’t make noise in worship).

But what we really need is more volunteers—more ushers, more coffee preparers, more coffee servers, more office helpers.

But what would really help is more choir members, more church-school teachers, more folks to work in the nursery.

And hopefully that would all add up to more people in worship and more pledges.

We have been in three very different ministry settings in the past month:  a tall steeple church in a small city, a mid-sized church bordering a major university, and a small church in a rural mountain community.

Across these settings, it struck us:  what people worry most about these days is more.  More members, more young people, more pledgers, more volunteers.  More.

Seth Godin poses a different challenge.  He asks his reader to imagine “the smallest possible group that could sustain you in your work,” your minimum viable audience.

If you could pick the members of this audience, who would you choose?  Their dreams, their worldviews, their energy, all up to you.

Let’s pause there.  How would you answer this question for your own ministry?  What would be the smallest—not the ideal, but the smallest—congregation that could sustain your church?  Who would be in it?  And why them, what about them?

Now let’s go (or let Godin go) a little deeper:

If you could pick them and needed to delight them because you had no one else available, would your product or service improve?  If you had no choice but to ignore the naysayers (they’re not in the group) or the people who don’t think they need you or your work, would that force you to stop compromising and start excelling?

These questions require a little more imagination.  We are asked to picture a congregation in which we are not thinking about the naysayers, or the people who don’t think they need us!  We are thinking only about that smallest possible, minimum viable audience.  And we are imagining our work for them, freed from the pressure/tyranny of constantly striving for more.  Does the work get better?  What do you think?

Godin thinks it does.

Two things happen when you delight your minimum viable audience:

1. 1. 1. you discover it’s a lot larger group than you expected
      2. they tell the others 

On the other hand, if you aim for mass (another word for average), you’ll probably create something average.  Which gets you not very far.

The gospel of Jesus Christ is far from average.  The gospel can be trusted to offer meaning, depth, and a frame for living that is more than we dare imagine on our own—and it’s all the more we need.

 

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Where do you hear the wish for “more” in your church conversations these days?

 

What would be the minimum viable congregation for your church?  What do you base that on?

 

Who would be in that minimum viable congregation, and why them?

 

When you imagine leading the church toward that audience alone, what happens to the quality of the work?  Does it improve or degrade?

 

Do you agree with Godin that “mass” is another word for “average”?

 

What could you aim for, instead of average?