Avoiding program proliferation

When I was a school principal we had an annual fundraiser in which our small army of 800 elementary school students sold hundreds of dollar candy bars. You know the ones, those one dollar, delicious, long bricks of chocolate and almond kids used to sell door-to-door but which today get sold by helpful (often eager and overfunctioning) parents in their offices and workplaces. While I suspect that I’ll be doing hard time in Purgatory for that shameless and unconscionable use of child labor I must admit that it was our most profitable fundraiser. We consistently cleared around $10k after expenses. As any private school bookkeeper will tell you, that’s nothing to sneeze at.

One year a mother made an appointment to see me about the annual chocolate bar fundraiser. I thought it was going to be the occasional complaint from a harried parent about having to sell candy bars for the kid (usually as a result of feeling like she had to compete with other supermoms who took to selling with a frenzy). As it turned out she just needed to vent her frustration about having to pay for two cases of chocolate bars. It seems her son had eaten rather than sell them! On top of which, to add insult to injury, that little episode of gluttony had necessitated a trip to the doctor for a bad case of constipation (apparently two cases of chocolate bars can do some serious bowel obstruction on a 10-year-old).

All that to say that, sometimes, too much of a good thing isn’t a good thing

On occasions congregations will get to a stage when they are tempted to engage in a round of program proliferation. Usually as a result of a long-range planning process, congregational surveys, or the result of a particularly enthusiastic staff planning retreat somehow a list appears of a dozen new programs various church groups think they should start within the year. Often this is a mix of in-house programs for various populations within the congregation and for outreach to identified populations outside of the congregation. New programs are begun–usually under leadership from professional staff and enthusiastic and committed laypersons. The problem arises when within a few months these news programs cannot be sustained due to various factors: lack of (or competition for) funding and resources, waning interest and commitment on the part of the leaders, a lack of support from participants, a lack of integration with the larger life or schedule of the congregation.

A congregation that lacks intentional program planning will eventually wind up with the same old people moving from one program to another with no gain of results in program effectiveness. The fact is that the most committed people in your congregation are already as busy as they can be participating in current programs.

When to start new programs:

• If your average Sunday morning worship attendance is 200 to 350 start a new group every two years
• If you can identify a population that has particular needs not currently met by existing programs, start one for that group. Appreciate that it takes about two to three years for a new program to “take” so don’t make attendance the gauge for success.
• If a church member feels called to a particular ministry that does not duplicate what current programs are doing and meets a need, then encourage and facilitate that new ministries’ success
• Assess which existing programs are floundering, stuck, or ineffective. Rather that trying to resuscitate them, allow them to atrophy and put your energy in creating a new program to take its place. Appreciate that the new program will have its own lifespan
• In a congregation with average Sunday morning worship attendance of 350 to 500 you should maintain a balance in the ratio of programs that are focused for in-house ministries and those that provide opportunities for ministries outside of the congregation.
• Starting at the 500 avg. Sunday morning worship attendance mark you should strive for a 2-to-1 ratio (two OUTSIDE ministry programs or groups to every one in-house program or group).

Before starting new programs and ministries do a program audit. Determine:

• How many programs (classes, groups, ministries, etc.) currently are running?
• How many attend and participate in these programs?
• How many non-members or prospective members participate in these programs?
• Which population groups participate (and which do not)?
• How well are the programs funded?
• Where and when they meet?
• How effective and stable is the leadership for these programs?
• Is current staff sufficient for providing oversight and support for existing programs plus the new?
• Will you need to make adjustments to your church structures and processes to accomodate new programs?

Take these things into consideration when starting a new program. If you make no adjustment to the ministries or programs budget, or increase the level of resources, leadership development or support, you run the risk of shortchanging all existing programs.

“It’s not enough to be busy.”