Church Staffing: Lawn mowing principle

Over the past 3 days we have had our annual staff conference. It’s been a good time. Because we so spent so much time using our brains, I decided to mow the lawn when I got home. This doesn’t require too much brain capacity (just enough to keep your toes on!). However, as I was mowing I was reminded of an illustration I thought of yesterday to do with church staffing.

Our church is not staffed based on the congregational model, but on what I think is a better model of staffing the different areas of church life. So that means we have someone who champions each of the 5 areas of church life (magnification, membership, maturity, ministry, mission) and other staff who look after the lifestyle ministries (children, youth, young adults, breakfast church). In order to not let people fall through the cracks I think that people need to overlap in their ministry areas… a lot like mowing the lawn. To make sure you don’t miss whole strips of grass, you mow over a quarter of that strip that you have just mown. (If you’ve mown a lawn this will make sense… if you haven’t ask someone to draw a picture for you!). The M people need to overlap with other M people and also those working in the lifestyle ministries to help them think about their M.

Guessing competition: Which 2 staff members were the biggest cheats in our game of sic-nuts last night?

7 Replies to “Church Staffing: Lawn mowing principle”

  1. hey jon.
    not sure who your source is… but i definitely didn’t come a close second. ask kizza to verify!

    a distant second would have been rhett and glyn… and then third place would have been everyone else who actually didn’t cheat but were playing the game properly!

  2. sic-nuts?

    it’s a game.

    1) write 3 names of famous people, fold in half and place in an ice-cream container

    2) sit in a circle… and pair up with the person directly opposite you.

    3) round 1 – you pass the bucket around… and the person with the bucket has 30 seconds to explain (taboo style) who it is is… during this time their partner tries to guess as many as possible. then the bucket is passed on… until there are no names in it.

    4) round 2 – same as 1 except there is no speaking… just acting.

    5) round 3 – same – but can say 1 and 1 word only.

    6) game called off because of rampant cheating by senior minister!

    7) play cards instead…

  3. Ah yep…I know that…a much-loved bible study social activity…have never heard it go by that name before though…

  4. there were a whole bunch of different names that we being used for it… so at i think KYC about 3 years ago… grant w from church made a new name for it… i’m all for having names that stick…

    too often people have called it
    [insert name here]’s game…

    so make it global people!

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