CHAPTER ONE
Over One Billion Served: Effective vs. Efficient Churches
I (John Mark) rubbed my eyes and did a double take. There on the billboard off of I-35 was an advertisement I couldnât believe. Emblazoned on the white background, an advertisement for 30minuteworship.com promoted a service with âyou in mind.â I didnât know if I should marvel at the remarkable efficiency of the church to squeeze another service into its Sunday morning routine or the fact that this congregation believes a thirty-minute Jesus fix is enough. I guess if you can get a pizza in thirty minutes or less, why not church?
The allure of a thirty-minute church seems attractive to Christians frustrated with the rut of the traditional service. Still believing that church attendance is important for their Christian life, why not consume it fast-food-style? Everyone is short on time, so why shouldnât Christians be able to consume the little bit of church they need to get them through the next week? At least it would be an efficient use of their time.
The Challenge of Efficiency
The guys working the grills flipped the burgers faster than I had ever seen. The motion was seamlessâinsert spatula under meat, flip the wrist to toss the burger in the air, and then press the patty as soon as it hits the grill. As demand rose, they would take one of the hot bur-gers and place it on a bun, allowing the next person on the assembly line to add the appropriate toppings the customer ordered. Wrapped in what seemed like milliseconds, the order was placed on the heating tray until the cashier could place it in the bag along with the fries. Fast. Custom. Efficient.
George Ritzerâs concept of McDonaldization began here. And for good reason. Efficiency is the process of McDonaldization most of us are able to experience and quantify. In fact, consumers demand efficiency. We are unlikely to return to our local Starbucks if the baristas take forever to make a grande caramel macchiato. We expect service to be fast, efficient, and consistent. When the checkout lines at my local Wal-Mart were consistently understaffed, leading to long lines, my family willingly paid slightly higher prices at the local Target. With four young preschoolers, we wanted to be in and out right away.
Businesses are also concerned with making things as efficient as possible. It helps their bottom line. When I worked in the fast-food industry, the goal was to wait on the customers and have the food in their hands in under one minute. Our manager timed performances at least once a week and adjusted schedules, breaks, and workflow based upon what would produce the maximum benefit for the consumer (hot food served quickly usually meant a repeat customer) and for the store (more clients served in a more efficient manner equaled greater sales-per-hour margins).
People also experience this on the Web. When I purchase a product on Amazon.com or Apple.com, I have my account set up for one-click purchasing. I put items in my shopping cart, and when I am finished shopping, I click one button to buy it all. Since I set up an account with Amazon.com in advance, the company stores my information in a secure database. It reuses that data every time I click the purchase button. One click and Iâm done. No worries about parking at the mall, walking to stores, or standing in line. The Internet is quick and efficient and usually cheaper.
Efficiency experienced in this manner is positive for both the consumer and the business. Efficient systems work. Our Western economies are built on it. By utilizing principles of efficiency, we maximize our profitability and increase revenues for shareholders. In business, you want happy shareholders.
Efficiency in the Church
Can the church be efficient? Should it even matter? Does the church have a clientele to impress? Do we have shareholders we want to make happy?
The short answer isâit depends. There is a sense that churches need to recognize that efficient systems can aid a congregation. You have probably visited congregations that could have used an efficiency expert to make things work more smoothly. Frequently, the use of educational space or even the order of services could be changed to maximize time and resources.
Even more so, businesspeople who serve on boards and committees will want to see efficiency in operations of the church. Were visits logically grouped to cut down on excess mileage? Is the church purchasing the right technology to accomplish its task without spending too much? Are staff members multitasking so the church gains the biggest benefit from the services they render? Are reporting structures in place to give accountability for how the pastor spends his time?
There are some areas where efficiency can benefit a congregation (easy-to-find nurseries, restrooms, information, etc.), but ministry as a whole is not necessarily efficient. When James, the pastor of a small church in the Detroit area, was informed by his church board that he needed to keep a daily log of his activities, he wanted to pull out his hair. Every day, he started a new worksheet tracking his phone calls, visits, and time spent with people. Nathan, the chairman of the church elder board and a prominent businessman, railed against Jamesâ inefficiency. It was either too much time spent on sermon preparation, too much time reading, or too much time spent with individuals in the congregation.
âYou could do so much more if you limited your time to ten minutes per person,â Nathan suggested. Nathan could not understand the world of ministry. He saw the church in terms of the business he ran on a daily basis. Sermon preparation can take significant hours of a pastorâs time, not to mention prayer. Of course, ministry focuses on people. Certain aspects of ministry will never be efficient if we are to have meaningful relationships with those inside or outside of our congregation.
One of the issues we face in regard to efficiency in the church has to do with the nature of the church itself. Beyond buildings, beyond the trappings of religious practices lies a reality that is often not stressed enoughâpeople are the church. When Jesus talked about the establishment of the church, He was not discussing the property a congregation might possess (Matt. 16:18). The apostle Paul, writing to the Colossian church, reminded them that Christ is the head of the body (Col. 1:18). Maintaining a living organism is messy business and, quite frequently, defies efficiency.
Effective vs. Efficient
If the church is designed to be God focused with reaching people as the end goal, perhaps we should draw a contrast between what is effective and what is efficient. Effective organizations work in the manner in which they were designed. They consistently produce results that reflect the aims, goals, and mission of the organization. In the process, effective organizations attain the greatest amount of production because their structures and organization work toward the stated goals of the whole.
Efficient organizations also work toward attaining results. Their production of results will reflect the aims, goals, and mission of the organization. The difference is that where the effective organization emphasizes how the organization works together as a whole to achieve the stated goals, the efficient organization strives for rapid attainment of the goals, sometimes at the expense of the totality of the organization. Even people within the organization may be sacrificed in order to attain the stated goals more rapidly or efficiently.
As you can tell, a fine line exists between effective and efficient. In the case of our churches, we are called to be effective. When congregations tip the scales in favor of something efficient, they begin to lose track of the goals and aims of building the kingdom. On the flip side, churches working together according to their stated design become very effective. Letâs look at how this plays out on a practical level.
Where Effective Churches Win
Effective churches manage their resourcesâbudgets, schedules, personnelâto accomplish the work of God in their communities without making efficiency the ruling principle of the congregation.
The relationship equation here is simply that of stewardship. How do we take care of the things entrusted to us in order to impact a lost and dying world? There are at least three areas where this matters in the life of churches.
Budget
How we spend our money relates more about who we are than just about anything else in our personal lives. The correlation remains when we talk about our churches.
Perform a simple analysis of how a church spends its resources. Churches spending heavily on staff have made that a priority. In staff-heavy churches, you usually find a couple of scenarios: (1) The church is overstaffedâperhaps the congregation hasnât been growing or is even losing ground, and the church holds on to staff positions that are no longer needed; (2) the church is staff dominatedâthe congregation relies more on paid leadership to accomplish its goals than on the people in the church itself. Churches must support their staff financially so the pastors do not have to worry about providing for their families. A church that does not take care of its leaders demonstrates a lack of faith and is a bad testimony to the community.
Some churches spend most of their resources on buildings. Whether the buildings are old and demand maintenance or the church is busting at the seams and needs a new building to accommodate growth, congregations must balance their needs and resources to avoid becoming overly committed to buildings. As stated above, the church is not a building. New church plants are discovering the reality that many cities and towns are not allowing churches to zone land because of the loss of revenue. They become creative, utilizing schools, YMCAs, or renting other spaces in order to have a...