Life. Shared.: June 2009

Here's my relationship with books: I like them, I collect them, and once in a while I actually get around to reading them. At one point I had hoped to read a book a week this summer, with the included expectation that I would write a review here on the blog. I might have picked the wrong book to get started, because it's one that's challenging me to find a lot of application.

Right off the bat I want to acknowledge that a book like this may be a bit controversial in a ministry setting. Some folks aren't fond of taking a popular business book or concept and trying to apply it to the church or some other ministry. While I agree that the church is not a business, I think it would be foolish to ignore wisdom or ideas that could help us serve the Lord more effectively. While I do believe the Bible is the infallible authoritative word of God, I don't think it's the only place we can find useful knowledge. With that said, here are a few thoughts I have regarding this book and its author.

I got to hear Seth Godin speak in person at Catalyst last fall and was very impressed. He's not the most striking or dynamic speaker, but he understands that. So instead of his face on the video screen, he had the best powerpoint presentation I've ever seen. I don't know how many slides he had, but it definitely numbered in the hundreds. They were all (as far as I can remember) images, and if there was any text it would be a single word. The images were gripping, interesting and illustrative. In this particular book he includes some advice for making quality powerpoint presentations on pages 102 to 107 that would probably be worth the price of the book for a lot of people.

For anyone in the realm of business, especially in a non-leadership position, I think this would be a very useful resource. The second section of the book is all about championing an idea and getting those above you to buy into it. Well, I don't personally have to deal with that, since I have a great deal of freedom in my job to try all sorts of new things. The third (and final) section goes into great detail about finding the edges you can exploit to make your product remarkable. Again, I had a bit of a tough time finding a lot of application here, although it probably best serves as a long series of examples to help you better assess your own situation.

But I'm probably getting ahead of myself here. What is the main point of the book? Quite simply it is to make your product remarkable. By remarkable he means that which causes people to make a remark, something that people will talk about. His idea is that you do that by having a free prize inside, an unexpected extra, just like you used to find in cereal boxes as a kid. (Do they still do those today? We just buy cheap bagged cereal...) And when they get that free prize, they'll tell others.

I've seen this in action and know that it's true. Nowhere was this more evident than in our Dollar Dinner ministry last year. Getting a cheap meal isn't a new idea, and there are several churches/ministries in town where you can do that. But what started drawing in larger-than-normal crowds was the free prize: excellent homemade food. I found that we didn't have to advertise the event at all, because the food itself was the advertisement. It went above and beyond their expectations, which led them to tell their friends and bring them along. A second, lesser free prize was the amount of food that was provided (variety, not necessarily quantity), also much more than you'd think to get for a dollar.

The idea of practicing excellence in our ministries shouldn't be a new or difficult concept. The Bible says as much in Colossians 3:23, "Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart, as working for the Lord, not for men." The Lord is certainly worthy of the very best that we can give (and much more!) A similar statement would be that "if something is worth doing, it's worth doing right." Ministry is certainly worth doing! But some times we're so busy doing a bunch of things okay that we're not doing any of them with excellence. For some, it might be best to cut out what's just getting by and focus on hitting a home run with a smaller number of things.

While that's the primary thing I got out of this book, there were a few other ideas that got my attention. Here's one: "We buy what we want, not what we need." I think that statement has some pretty radical implications for ministry. How do we best meet people's wants in order that we can ministry to their (in our eyes) more important needs? And how do we do that without compromising what really matters? To not simply become a fun club for people to be a part of? I think it's a tough balance to strike, but one that we must seriously consider since all that ministries do is based on volunteer attendance and involvement.

Another big idea for me was this simple statement: "Fix what's broken." Sometimes the best way we can make something excellent (and therefore remarkable) is to simply remove the barriers that block its way. After all, we seem much more likely to remember that one thing that went wrong than the ten that went right. Maybe it's parking or a bad flow of people traffic. It could be as simple as the buzz in your sound system. It shouldn't be too hard to find out what needs fixing, just ask around or have a non-regular come and watch with a fresh set of eyes.

The last thing that I'm still working on is the idea that people have been trained their whole lives to do what they're told. He makes the statement that, "the easiest way to avoid pain is to follow someone else's lead." As a minister I want to empower others to make decisions, embrace their ideas and take chances. This isn't natural for very many of us, so I need to figure out how to help students do this more and more. Any advice or thoughts on that?

So all in all I found the book to be very interesting and somewhat helpful and challenging. For those in the business sector I think it would be a great read. For those of you in ministry, I tried my best to pick out the best parts so you could just read this blog post instead =)

Next year we're strongly considering using the book Discipleship Essentials by Greg Ogden as our small group discipleship material. In order to test it out, I'm going through it this summer at a quicker pace with one of our student leaders. Tonight is technically our second session, although the first may not have really counted since we did it via Facebook while I was in Turkey.

The second session is on being a disciple, and it's a very good one. Two separate passages of scripture are examined, using an inductive method of asking good questions and requiring the learner to think. The "right" answers are never given, so there's no chance for peeking or cheating - real thought and prayer must be applied.

It's always good to be reminded that to follow Jesus is to "deny [your]self and take up [your] cross daily, and follow." If anyone is looking for some good discipleship material, this is definitely worth checking out. Thanks to Jason Allen and Brian Lautenschlager for pointing me in its direction.