Outsourcing Your Ministry
It can be hard to give up control. For some, the belief is that no one could possibly do ministry the way you do it. You have your style, your process, your culture. But on occasion, you may find yourself in a bind. That is what happened to our church this weekend. We had need of some help getting our sound adjusted for a satellite service. Keep in mind that, unlike most circumstances, this one has been difficult of late – we are hosting services in a gym that wasn’t built for great sound. So, our sound team has been struggling, as have many other areas of ministry, as we adapt to kicking off a satellite service away from our main campus. At first, we thought we could handle it – we even surprised ourselves by some great services at the start. But, over time, we slowly noticed that we weren’t giving our best to the Lord.
Eventually, it happens – that breaking point – you know what I mean. The point when everyone realizes that its out of control and that help is needed – usually far past time and when people are saying “shouldn’t we have this fixed by now?” The trick is, this often happens unknowingly – kinda like how we are slowly steered off course until we realize that we haven’t been doing our daily devotionals, reading our Bibles as often, and missing our prayer time. So, we did it – we called in some experts to give us a hand because our sound team has been stretched too thin lately to assist, especially with another satellite service and main campus. Did I hear you gasp? Well, you should know – we’ve done this before and will do it again!
In the end, our sound was great, we got some more folks trained, and everything came together much better than if we had struggled and kept our problems in-house. So, as a lesson to you, consider the need to outsource some work. Whether its for your media team, marketing, or some other need, sometimes you have a large need and just need to outsource it. In the end, you may determine that it is something you want to outsource permanently. Maybe not. Either way, you may reinvigorate your ministry or even your church by a simple step like this. We did!
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Interesting article, and I like the idea. The heart of the title “Outsourcing your Ministry” is a bit concerning though. Do you really feel as though you’re ‘outsourcing your ministry’? I think there is a huge difference between hired hands supporting your ministry and outsourcing your ministry to hired hands. Am I being a little too sensitive to the semantics here?
John,
Each church/ministry must make its own decision as to how much is strategic for it to maintain in-house, and how much should be outsourced. If your church can afford to hire professional sound people full time, will that harm or help your church overall? Does it make sense to place volunteers into a areas of service that require highly-trained volunteers and/or mission-critical response and support?
Does it impact your message, your mission, and your vision to utilize experts for specific or all services? Or, does it help you get to your purpose there faster by freeing up those that would otherwise be tied up performing duties that don’t directly impact your purpose?
Basically, I’m trying to break the spell of “everything has to be done in house because we are a non-profit church.” Obviously, you can’t outsource everything – we see corporations trying to do that now with all of their IT dept, and it doesn’t work. But prayerful, tactical outsourcing can free up people to focus on the strategic offerings of your church.