SIMPLE CHURCH, p. 5: FOCUS

Simple Church, Part Five: Focus

I want to keep sharing with you what I have been learning from the book Simple Church, by Eric Geiger and Thom Rainer (which you can now buy from the HPR site under "Books"). This is a great book, because it really makes you think about church systems.

In our final look at the book Simple Church, we look at what is probably the most controversial part of the book; I know it is in our church.

The chapter is entitled, “Focus: Saying No to Almost Everything”. And THAT is a hard proposition in most churches.

The book flows like this: Clarity ⇒Movement ⇒ Alignment ⇒ Focus.

Focus means eliminating everything that doesn’t fit in with your discipleship plan. Geiger states, “People assume the more that can be squeezed into the menu, the better.” But as they make abundantly clear in the book, that is not always true.

They spend some time talking about the “one thing” principle, quoting various Scripture (Psalm 27:4; Phil. 3:13-14 “But one thing I do…”; Heb. 12:2 to “fix our eyes only on Christ”)

Focus is defined as “the commitment to abandon everything that falls outside of the simple ministry process.” And that ministry process has already been clearly defined as the church has worked on Clarity – defining what they are trying to achieve; and Movement – making a simple process to move people through the discipleship process; and Alignment – brining everything to work together toward that goal. That just leaves this final step, which is eliminating those which do not apply to the discipleship process.

This is backed up by research: “According to our research there is a highly significant relationship between church vitality and the church’s focus on the process” (Simple Church, p. 203). They also quote a doctoral study (Travis Bradshaw, University of Florida) which assumed that the more programs a church had, the healthier it would be. But what the researcher actually found out was that healthier churches had LESS program than non-healthy churches.

So how do you achieve focus?
1. Eliminate – “While eliminating programs is difficult, the data indicates that vibrant church leaders have the discipline to do so” (Simple Church, p. 205). You can eliminate programs by emphasizing stewardship. To be a wise steward of your people’s time, money and energy requires that you eliminate programs which consume too much of any or all three of these commodities. Simple Church is your church’s means of safe-guarding your resources for that which is truly important.

2. Limit Adding – as hard as it is to eliminate existing programs, then make sure you do not easily add new programs.

3. Reduce Special Events – These are the events that do not fit in the normal church calendar, nor in the streamlined discipleship plan, but someone is just so excited about them that the church decides to squeeze it into the calendar. But don’t do it! Rather decide how to use the event strategically by maybe combining it with another event or tying it together with the discipleship plan. With a little work this can be done.

I’ll close by quoting the German poet Goethe who said, “The key to life is concentration and elimination.” -- German poet Goethe

Eliminate the non-essentials, and concentrate on the most important aspects of making disciples, and your church will do OK.

Later,
Dr. Bill