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How to Kill the Sacred Cow in Your Ministry

I probably spent hours gluing, taping, and screwing that stupid ping-pong table together, but throwing it away was the hardest thing to do.  The students loved banging on it, playing extreme versions of table tennis, and arm wrestling on its fragile corners.  But, I was done, so one day we just got rid of it.  The response from the students and even some of the leaders was disappointment.  I had taken away from them the one thing that meant a lot to them.  So jokingly I would question them, “Does this mean you aren’t coming back to church?”

Of course, they came back.  Yet, after two years of begging, I finally got another one.  This time I went all in and got the “indestructible kind.”  As soon as the students saw it, you would have thought that I had just released them from prison.  Shouts of praise emerged from their lips; they had their ping pong back.

Never did I worry that the ping-pong table was the central focus of the ministry; but, there are other things and programs that if we eliminate, people go crazy.  Most times people will get over an eliminated program; however, I’m willing to bet there is something in your ministry where if you got rid of it, people would tear off your head.

To them, it’s essential to the life of the ministry; however, to you it’s just their…

SACRED COW

You know what I’m talking about, right?  That event that you spend days upon weeks planning, only the fruit never outweighs the labor.  The fundraiser that’s been a 10 year tradition; yet, it never brings in any money.  The lock-in that never produces anything but strung out, over sugared adolescents.  In most cases you hate it, some people love it, and there seems to be a lot of pressure to kill it.  So how do you get rid of the SACRED COW in your ministry?  You need to build a case by: