Out of the “Church” Box

One of the volunteers in our children’s ministry is the CEO of a large company. I had the opportunity to meet with him yesterday to talk about the children’s ministry at our church. I thought I was meeting with him to help him understand what we’re trying to do in children’s ministry…


That’s not exactly how it went down.


Instead he spent an hour and a half telling me why our children’s ministry wasn’t as effective as it could be. Now, You have to know this guy to appreciate him. He’s not a jerk. Most guys who try to tell you what your doing wrong are just complaining or trying to grab power. But this guy loves God, loves our church, loves our pastor and I know he wants what’s best for us.


Even though I knew all this I was still a little defensive. Yeah, this guy knows a lot, but he doesn’t know anything about leading a children’s ministry. I tried to do what I know I’m supposed to do in this situation and just listen and have an open mind. But I have to admit I’m not very good at that, so instead I went with the “healthy debate” approach.


At one point as we were “discussing” small group environments I mentioned something about Northpoint church. The response I got from this guy was interesting,


“Who the h— Is Northpoint?”


The thing is, he wasn’t being argumentative, he really didn’t know. At that’s when I realized something, most of my volunteers don’t know who Northpoint is either, and they don’t care to. I think it’s easy for us to get caught in the church box. If you’re in ministry it’s where you spend most of your time. We go to church conferences, read ministry blogs, buy “church leadership” books. We become experts in field that doesn’t always relate to the people we’re leading. Just because I know what I’m doing it doesn’t mean my volunteers know what I’m doing. I think it’s possible that we become blind to this because when we start spouting off all our “church knowledge” to our volunteers they just assume we’re right and back off.


Fortunately, the guy I was talking to isn’t the type to “back off.” He didn’t have all the answers.  Some of his ideas we’re way off. But he did have a very different perspective and he asked some questions in a way that I hadn’t thought of before. At the end of the day talking to this guy who knew nothing about ministry helped me learn a lot about how to do ministry.


I’ll wrap this up with a few of questions for you. How do get out of the “church box?” Who are you talking to that challenges your ideas and perceptions? Who has a completely different outlook on life that could challenge your status quo? If you don’t have someone like that I’d encourage you to seek them out.


Also let me hear from you. What are some of the ways you’ve found to get an outside view of church and ministry?