Kill It
If there is one program/event/ritual that your organization could kill in order to place those resources to better use…
What would it be?
Feel free to comment anonymously this time 
Los
If there is one program/event/ritual that your organization could kill in order to place those resources to better use…
What would it be?
Feel free to comment anonymously this time
Los
RAIN IT DOWN
choir. don’t get me wrong. i love choir…BUT! I think a lot of times, the choir is filled with two types of people.
1) People that are not gifted enough to be on the Worship Team
2) People that are looking for a social club, and don’t mind singing as well.
I was thinking and thinking and then grateful that I couldn’t think of anything. Our community is pretty good at putting the fundage toward the most appropriate causes.
This is a hard question for me, because I’m an event planner and most events could/should be cut and are a waste of money (but then I’m out of a job)…I plead the 5th…
we have nothing left to cut…except me, i suppose. this question hits really close to home. sorry i don’t have a better answer.
DEREK
Sunday morning worship.
expense accounts
BOY SCOUTS! please.
youth ministry
Our ” Fall Festival”. We didn’t start it till another church up the road started to really take off with their’s. Would love to partner with them to make it a huge community event but some folks here are standing firm. We do partner with this church for tons of other things. Maybe next year.
Decon boards
Are you serious Vince?
Stop the Weekly Mass Email Newsletters. They aren’t interactive and as informative vs. using a blog or even text update system for the information I need when I need it.
Comment cards of any sort – it’s like you’re asking for criticism. If something’s a big enough deal that people need to know – you’ll know. But having one person out of thousands who thinks something should be changed… kind of a waste of time and resources.
And Vince you’re crazy… then again I’ve never been to your church – but every church needs a youth group. We are the youth of the nation. The people who are youth now will be the leaders soon enough – hopefully we taught them well.
Oh, no problem giving my name on this one, BULLETINS, waste of money, time, and voluteers to stuff them. And on another one, moving our Upfront team to pray with people to the side of our worship center instead of right in front of the stage where music is playing.
mens and womens ministries
After reading “Simple Church” we decided to really focus on a few things and do them well. So what did we kill? We killed Adult Sunday School…for good! YES! We’re pushing everything toward small groups. It’s been a fight at times but luckily a large portion of the church members trust the staff. So, rather than “what would” we got our way with “what did”
Brook Sarver
http://www.two10eleven.com
alhpa male leadership – replace with servant leadership
personally, I would like to kill the “now, all the members stand up and if you are our guest, stay seated!”
this is always uncomfortable for everyone involved. Forced interaction.
and about the youth ministry? I think we should spend MORE on that, and we have a really big part of our budget for that. it is critical to reach the teenagers.
I’m at a fairly small but wealthy church. It’s full of people who give lots of money. But our church does not – as a whole – get involved in anything outside. I would rather kill all the stuff to which we give money (local charities, etc) and get these people out there working.
Individually, some folks do a lot of work. But our particular body is not represented at anything outside the building.
I honestly can’t think of something. We’ve spent a lot of time thinking about this. We have a really good balance of discipleship and evangelism going on right now.
Whoa! Sounds like the church at large could clean house a bit and get back to some core basics. We people have a great way of complicating God’s simple ways heh?
I would love to see “missions” transition out of a heavy focus on missionaries and really focus on global awareness, child sponsorship, AIDS, etc…
Handbells. Please, kill the handbells!
Handbells, Singing Christmas Tree, Sunday Evening Worship (40 out of 700 people in attendance).
We are just about to begin looking at everything and swinging the axe. Watch out.
The Bulletin
Coffee Sundays in that teeny room. I like the idea of fellowship but it needs to be someplace less crowded.
The format
3 songs
Announcements
Offering
3 songs
Message
Let’s shake it up a bit people…
I agree with Mike Dalton. I know our bulletins rarely have anything new in them, they pretty redundant. They usually feature one event that we have a video for anyways. I think the effort of creating a bulletin could be refocused to creating a better web experience.
About three years ago we took to the axe to our engorged list of ministries. It was painful, because they are all “good”, but we were overtaxed, feeling a bit schizo, and not able to work with excellence (oh, and I’m not sure the Spirit’s leading was a part of any of that).
I’m at the point that I’m about ready to cut everything and start from scratch. I just want to focus on being Jesus to our neighbors.
I completely agree about the bulletins. They are very wasteful. With church website and overhead projections screens, they just aren’t necessary anymore.
A church tradition of ours that I hate? The bell that rings signaling that sunday school is done. It’s loud, obnoxious, and I’m almost always under one of them when it gets rung. Scares me right out of my skin.
I agree with Scott!
I too want to kill the 5 worships, announcements, message service programming format.
Stop calling that “creative!” We get it! You REALLY love Chris Tomlin!
I know it’s different for everyone, but how about some of you take the bulletin and make it a part of the worship experience? Make it more interactive. It doesn’t have to be useless.
I can comment on this one. and not offend anyone I don’t think…
Women’s Ministry.
OK OK I’m Kidding. Seriously though, I 100% agree on the bulletins. Waste of time and earth. (But, they are fun to draw on.) Also, we are moving most of our focus to small groups, and studies. I figure, if we cut everything and focused on a few words and phrases, we’d be in good shape. “Community” for real community, not our church community and “Justice For All” It would be a beautiful day.
Ditto the bulletin (‘cept we call them “programs”). Nobody reads them as evidenced by all the surprised exclaimations of “I didn’t know we were doing [blank]!”, after it has been in the program for 4 weeks and announced from the platform! Geez, why can’t people just pay attention? (or arrive on time!)
Waste of time to stuff, un-stuff, only to pick them up off the chairs or floor between and after services. Cost is not really a problem (we have a sweet deal) but the man-power hours are such a waste, not to mention the poor trees…
OK, rant over.
Sorry, don’t mean to sound insensitive. I really do care about reaching the unchurched (our whole congregation does too) but adults should really act their age and not expect to be lead around by the hand for the rest of their lives.
(deep cleansing breath)
SUNDAY MORNING SERVICES.
monthly e-newsletter
bulletin as it stands (I’m with you on the creative push, Brent)
adult Sunday School
family mailboxes in the hallways
blast. i have several, but i just go with this one:
midweek worship – huge strain on our people resources with very minimal fruit.
Bulletin, the way we do it
Vacation Bible School
Bookstore/Cafe
Paid Childcare
Some of the technical elements of worship
to name a few.
first of all all the talk about the bulletin makes me feel worthless. i create and format the bulletins in my position… but i get what you’re saying.
i too actually have to say, bulletin, the way we do it anyway
Vacation Bible School
Some of the technical elements of our services (cameras, control room equipment)
Bookstore/Cafe
Children’s snack shop
i’ve tried commenting twice, now your blog keeps eating my comments. maybe its a sign that i’m not supposed to say anything.
I am a consultant so I would love to see our dead beat clients get sued sooner than letting it gone on and on!
Super Bowl Evangelical Parties
Bulletins, Bulletins and more Bulletins. What a huge waste of money and trees that wind up in the trash
Hmmm, probably wouldn’t kill anything where lives were actually being changed. I like the idea of killing the handbells though. We don’t have handbells to kill, or I might be murderous.
I do think a narrowed focus is awesome. When you have so many “ministries” that you can’t name them all…there’s most likely a problem.
@the visitors (“guests”= more pc)…do you know at one time we asked them to come forward?? oh how i cringed. thankfully we’re back to having them raise their hands.
“thankfully we’re back to having them raise their hands.”
Is it bad that this just made me laugh out loud
Seriously, changing the battery in 2 of our wireless mics every sunday. Just because not everybody checks the mics every week we have to be wasteful.
really? cut Sunday morning worship? wow. maybe like Scott wrote, you need to shake things up a little. ask for a move of God to blow through, be willing to step out in more radical worship. Or find somewhere that does? I don’t know.
That time of community infilling via Spirit-filled worship and Word (along with the personal interaction through the week) is what my spiritual tank needs.
Agree, bulletins.
Also, the community events. Never been effective for us, and when I think of their cost and what those resources could do for core ministries . . . man.
I would rather focus on creating a culture of life-as-message to reach people rather than having big parties to attract the community (which in case you didn’t assume, have not been very effective, another reason to stop doing them).
argh. if you cut bulletins, i wouldn’t have much of a job.
We’ve gone through the Simple Church process and cut many things at our church, except one that really needs to go – Sunday School.
More churches need to do away with VBS too. Thank goodness we axed that one a few years back.
FAB ministry (Fifty and Beyond)
To solve the bulletin waste our church does a quarterly really cool looking mini-magazine. It has how to get connected to the body, ways to serve, a message from one of the pastors, and features big events during that quarter and then some of the main life groups. We call it the Life Magazine. It is really cool and the creative team does an awesome job in designing it. I am not on staff so I am not sure how much they take from the budget, but I know they do not seem to be wasted and they do work as to getting the word out. Otherwise, I am not sure what I would cut from our church, I love that we reach to the hurting, the poor, and broken. I love that we reach to build relationships and build people. I love that we serve and we are not a take church. I totally trust our staff and lead pastors in making the right decisions that are led by God.
Let’s see…
Saints Alive (seniors)
Deacon’s meetings
Steward’s ministry (guys who just missed the cut to be a deacon)
Outdoor Ministry (an excuse to go hunting or fishing)
men’s breakfast
nominating committee
personnel committee
Sunday School
and I could go on and on…
sunday school could go.
vince (from earlier) had a good point about axing youth ministry.
But mostly, I would do away with TPS reports…
If you took bulletins away, how else will people be able to save front row seats for people who probably aren’t going to show up anyway?
Oh I would kill Meet and greet. It is so uncomfortable and serves no purpose. NONE! H
My work has this annoying computer program tied into the teller program (I’m a bank teller). when you bring up an account number, it starts blinking, and when you open it (And you HAVE to open it, Big Brother Banker is tracking) it wants you to offer the customer other products, like a savings acct, credit card, etc. They spent all this money on this program and it’s supposed to offer client specific products, but most of the time it offers a home equity line of credit to people who DON’T OWN A HOME or things that are totally inappropriate for that customer. Lately, it’s been offering savings accounts to EVERY CUSTOMER. And it has a lame script with it, too!
“Mr Customer, are you aware of the many great savings products we have available for you?”
“Yeah, I already have a savings account with you.
“oh…um…great!Just wondering! Have a nice day!”
Totally unhelpful.
They should scrap it and work on getting our guide to work better. The Guide, supposedly has instructions on how to do anything in the branch. If I ask a manager a question, their first response is “Did you check the guide?” And the Guide is rarely helpful. Like the Help Desk.
I call them the “Unhelpful Desk.”
Adult Sunday School
Christmas production
Youth Ministry ?????
Vince and Petey —- Please Explain
I would get rid of our 3hrs Sunday Service
Do people count?
There’s a few of those I could kill…
Ok, somebody’s gonna have to explain axing Sunday School and VBS. Those are two of the most effective things our church does. What doesn’t work at your church?
mid week service
I get tired of us always having a sermon series with some kind of theme that needs some kind of specially decorated sanctuary. The reasons being–often a lot of time and a lot of money is spent on decorations, and also I find all the decorations rather distracting to worship. I tend to be kind of ADD, and I sit up front so that I can pay attention and not be distracted, but there is no escaping the visual smorgasbord in front of my eyes and this is even worse if any of the decorations have words…I can’t stop my eyes from reading them.
Three letters: VBS!
1) Group Publishing hasn’t come out with anything innovative in years. All they do is repackage the same songs, same stories and same ideas into a new overall “theme” (mountain climbing, going to space, and this year…THE LAB!) Not to mention, they charge you an arm and a leg for all their materials (and that is not including the cost the church incurs running it: electricity, A/C, staff OT, resources not provided by Group, etc.). That money could be used to fund missionaries, feed the needy, etc.
2) It’s no longer an outreach. How can it be when EVERY church in a 30-mile radius of Dayton is doing the EXACT SAME VBS! By the time our church gets around to doing it at the beginning of August, every church in our area will have already exhausted the idea, and what kid is going to want to come to ours when they already went to the one just down the street from them.
3) A little over 3 years ago, our church model started drastically changing, moving towards community outreach based house churches. Ministry is supposed to be happening in our neighborhoods on a daily basis, and be de-centralized from the building. Now, we’re supposed to invite and lug all of these kids across town to our building for 4 nights. It is entirely counterproductive and against everything our model is supposed to be about. Backyard Bible Clubs would be such a better option. There would be so much more personal interaction with the kids, it would happen right in the neighborhoods where we live, and would allow us to reach out into our communities instead of expecting them to step into ours.
Announcements. Boo. Hiss.
Wow, sounds like I am not alone…
Probably all of our printed material (especially bulletin). Very few read white paper anymore, at least in church.
And then our OOS (order of service)
2 songs
meet and greet
2 songs
(insert drama or video),
message
2 songs
Give the Holy Spirit a chance to move….
Vince and Petey, dropping Youth Ministry would be a SEVERE wrong. Not only am I a youth pastor and passionate about youth, but if you drop a ministry to your future church…who are you going to have? Maybe you need some fresh blood and fresh ideas, but NEVER drop it. Please. That’s like the disciples in Acts saying: We can handle it guys, we don’t need you young followers…
to drop: Adult Sunday School…basically a club and is not really effective, nor does it follow our vision…hmmm
Since I’m a youth director, Vince and Petey, I’m with Kenia. I would also like more definition of the comments about cutting youth ministry.
When I met with our pastor before they voted us in as directors, I told him that I was there to help equip them to handle life – not to entertain them. Having fun is the by-product of us being together outside of regular youth meeting as well as during regular youth meeting. That’s out stand. We’re more concerned about their spiritual life than entertaining them. We have fun nights, but the focus is spiritual. There’s already enough entertainment and too many kids committing suicide and cutting and living in depression. That’s why our focus is totally spiritual.
So, I’m curious about why you would think that youth ministry would be the “program” to cut??
BTW, I agree with the bulletin thing.
7:22
sunday school – lets move to small groups.
the bulletin.
the order of service.
the choir.
heck, the whole traditional service.
the unspoken dress code.
our cheesy music minister (he goes if the traditional service goes.)
im sure there are many more. i just want to redo our entire church sometimes.
the soft keyboard music at the beginning of the sermon. I absolutley hate it. So distracting, I keep wondering when that relic from the Swaggart years will be let go of.
hierarchical big-business leadership/organizational structure!!
i see let’s all cut down that old tree…
Oh boy…where do I begin?
- The Traditional Service – Our Church has both traditional and contemporary and while I don’t mind the traditional service, it makes our stage look so cluttered. We have a huge stage and we can’t even walk on it because it is crammed with music stands, orchestra platforms, choir risers and my personal least favorite, a giant grand piano smack dab in front of the drum set.
– The Service Order – Ours is basically 2 or 3 songs announcements, 2 more songs, teaching. The person who does announcements is really cool and funny but he says the exact same thing every weekend…Literally! It’s like he’s following a script (I practically have it memorized)
– Making the stage look like a theme park – I agree with the anonymous comment above that decorating the stage differently for every series can be super distracting…especially for newcomers! As cool as it is to make your church auditorium look like a spaceship, a jungle or a pirate ship, is it really necessary? Will it really help the newcomers connect with God and the church? Sure, if your newcomers are Neil Armstrong, Tarzan and Jack Sparrow!
- POWERPOINT – Seriously people, there are many other programs out there that are much better (for both mac and PC).
– Using 300 different backgrounds per song – If your church has indeed made the switch from powerpoint to some sort of alternative and better program, volunteers sometimes have the tendancy of going nuts with it. I’m not sure if anyone else experiences this but the volunteers on the tech team at my church absolutely love seeing how many different video backgrounds they can play while projecting the words to the worship songs. Seriously people, it is very distracting to sing along to “How great is our God” while watching the matrix flashing numbers in the background, then that really fast camera shot that goes through new your city, then that space wormhole thing all in a matter of seconds. I must admit it is pretty cool to be able to play moving videos behind the words but you must be careful. In the words of the late Ben Parker, “With great power comes great responsibility!”
Well that’s it for me!
Sorry, Carlos, for making my comment look like a SCL post.(seriously didn’t mean to do that)
VBS! (The obvious answer 1/2 way through summer) An unoffical core doctorine of the evangelical church. My advice – cut it and then expect to answer the question “why” for at least 5 years.
I’m going to go out on a limb here and say that Petey probably think he’s a pretty funny guy….
…and Vince for that matter.
I would say we would need to pick one type of worship style. Because we have the “classic” worship for first service. And for second service we have “contemporary” style. Its great to have both and yes you can just pick the one that best fits you, but i am a big believer that there should just be one. Know who your church is and who your reaching. We are for the most part a younger genereation church. We reach alot of people between the ages of 18-32 so i think we need to move in one accord towards one worship style. Preferably the contemporary style. I mean the pastor doesn’t change his teaching style so why should i worship be different in the two services??
I’m a big fan of youth ministry and have served as a youth pastor.
Perhaps those who would cut “Youth Ministry” are simply in favor of a more intergenerational approach that connects believers of all ages.
Why don’t you guys explain to Vince and Petey why their answer is so crazy….
Explain why the current youth ministry model is effective or biblically appropriate….(I don’t think that simply saying that “they are the future” constitutes them having their own deal at the other end of the building….implying that participating in corporate worship with their parents can’t achieve the same end…)
Now don’t get me wrong….The church i work for has a youth ministry and I am great friends with the directors….I am just very interested in keeping the conversation going…
thanks Duane….
_maybe a glorified babysitting service sucking down crazy resources may not be the same as the church in Acts including younger people…
_and I’ve been working in young adult and college ministry for a while and we’ve all heard the stats about kids who don’t make the leap from these youth groups into college ministries or church-wide involvement…and I’m tired of all the “blame” being put on the multigenerational churches, college ministries, etc…perhaps the youth ministry which resembles nothing like the rest of the real world needs a reality check…
Inefficient, territorial ministry committees, without a doubt.
Seriously – if you MUST have a Chess Outreach Ministry or a Dairy Farmers Ministry, find a person with a passion for it and let them flow with it. They’ll generate excitement and vision if you give them the chance. Really.
Just don’t block their productivity by creating committees so that every Joe Smith can say that he’s ‘over a ministry’.
Teamwork? Yes, please. Bureaucracy? Negative.
/rant.
Oh, and definitely ditto, ditto, ditto on the paper waste we print and pass out each Sunday!
I’ll go with the bulletin.
and VBS? really? I had the opportunity to lead a 7 year old kid as he accepted Christ first time (along with 40 others) at our VBS this year. about 600 kids there.. so ill stick with the bulletin.
I can sacrifice the bulletin easily. When I attended a traditional UMC it was useful for knowing how many more things there were to do before the watch alarms started going off at noon. At my current church it’s like others have said. Same stuff, different week and anything THAT important is on the video screen.
Second, do we really need the miniature mission control, sound/light/dopler weather neighborhood skytrack 2,000,000 set up in the “sanctuary” AND the “theater” (which is not even being used for the Summer?
ANYTHING THAT BEGINS WITH “40 DAYS OF____”
Petey and Duane: Maybe you have very poor ideas or models of what youth ministry is. What it should be is a ministry that reaches youth, but is ALSO involved with the larger church, to be a large part of the body. Sitting in church may achieve the same end for your “churched” student but try and get a non-Christian teen to go to that…sorry to tell you it won;t happen for your average teen. Youth Ministry Duane is very Biblical…there are different models. I currently work in an Outreach, service model. Where we get kids in, introduce them to Christ, disciple them, and then allow them to serve along side the adults.
Petey, the babysitting sucking down resources sounds like you re pigeon holing your own church and honestly I think you’re bitter. Maybe (not meaning to be a jerk or anything) but maybe you should pray and seek why you’re so bitter.
Or, maybe it has nothing to do with my church. Maybe I think the church should be helping youth become ministers rather than hiring a bunch of people to “minister” to the youth. But it’s not just youth ministry, it’s the entire church. Youth ministry just seems to be the most common area of churches where it’s the polar opposite of that…
Marvin
I appreciate you fleshing out your disagreement…
Just to clear up…
I did not mean to imply that I have a problem with youth ministry or a problem with any church having age specific ministries…
I simply wanted to make sure that we fleshed out our arguments and disagreements with more than…”they are the future so therefore it is ridiculous for someone to think that youth ministry should be axed…”
yeah, and I really don’t mean to be so snarky. Sorry. It’s the result of the nature of short comments. I think youth ministry is valuable when it’s mode is good.
No problem guys, just sharing my heart and passion. Petey, it’s all good. and Duane, thanks for the prod to flesh out…it’s important!
This is getting interesting!
Petey and Duane ,
Thanks for explaining
I really do appreciate it .
You are all more than welcome to come and see what God is doing with the youth in New York City.
Well, Petey and Vince,
I just have to say that I feel kind of sorry for you.
It’s apparent from your comments that you are genuinely frustrated with the nature of YOUR Church youth programs.
Your error is in assuming that ALL churches are this ineffective with their youth ministries.
MY CHURCH has an awesome youth ministry where our youth not only learns the word and experiences great worship, but they are:
*working in the inner city: painting houses, mowing lawns, handing out groceries, picking up trash.
*traveling to foreign countries to work as missionaries for 1-2 weeks at a time.
*Handing out bottled water on the hot streets of Baton Rouge to drivers who are wary from sitting in traffic
*Witnessing to students on the college campus
*Working in our Dream Center warehouse, sorting groceries and paper goods to give to the homeless and poor
*Participating in our homeless breakfast outreach each Thursday morning
OUR Youth ministry (Pathfinders & Refuge) are anything BUT a “babysitting” service!
We ARE teaching these kids to become the ministers and servants of tomorrow.
In a world that is so self-serving, I think that is pretty awesome and definitely money well-spent.