by Eddie Pipkin

I have fish.  Or, at least, I had fish.  A whole tank of freshwater tropical fish.  My little fishy friends.  But a couple of months ago, I bought a plant at the local iteration of the big box pet store, and that harmless looking plant harbored an evil seed: the dreaded fish ick parasite.  Ichthyophthirius multifiliis, thy name is death.  It wiped out every member of my beloved aquatic community, except for two hardy souls.  It was a random tragedy.  Except, I had been living on the edge for years, neglecting good practices and subsidizing laziness with luck.  It’s the kind of thing that happens in ministry when everything is floating along swimmingly, right up until the moment it’s not.  Suddenly what was beautiful and successful sinks to the bottom like an upturned, death-bloated guppy.

I wrote about this very incident a few blogs ago.  When I mentioned it then, the point I was making was that when there is evidence of impending calamity, one should act immediately.  This is true on a personal level and an organizational level, but we are all subject to magical thinking, both individuals and groups of leaders.  It’s the troublesome old canard, “Maybe if we ignore it, the problem will just go away.”

Anyhow, that’s the choice we get to make once a problem manifests: how will we choose to react.  There is a deeper consideration, however, which is how we can choose to build robust systems that prevent problems in the first place.  Or if the problem is unavoidable, a good system will lessen the impact or give us the structure to respond effectively.  We don’t have to be exclusively REACTIVE.  We have the responsibility to be PROACTIVE.

In the case of an aquarium full of tropical fish, it’s imperative to conduct regular maintenance, which begins with some studious coursework in what maintenance is required to keep fish healthy, how and when it should be done, and what equipment and supplies a hobbyist should have on hand to make this maintenance possible.  Also, what are common emergencies that happen and what emergency supplies should be kept in stock or where can they be quickly obtained if needed?

If you do these things, a problem doesn’t have to become a catastrophe.  A problem can be managed, calmly and with competence.

Organizations like local churches are remarkably like aquarium communities!

They host complex dynamics of interacting individuals who live in peaceful harmony until – blammo! – some little something gets out of balance, and a cascade of calamities can quickly result.  A domino effect of disasters is at hand for the unprepared and the unequipped.

Local church leadership is famously resistant to developing healthy, robust management and training systems.  This is because the development of systems is hard work.  Such systems require diligence, discipline, and dogged determination to establish and maintain.  It’s unsexy work (versus planning and executing snazzy programming and events), but it consistently pays enormous dividends.   We tend to ride the personality train, defaulting to the strong personalities who present themselves as available and eager to serve, and we distribute responsibilities to those available personalities in whatever way gets us by, getting the necessary work done, though often by shoehorning awkward fits.

Here are some of the systems that can be a game changer:

  • Volunteer recruitment.

It is rare that a local church organization has a dedicated person working on volunteer recruitment and development across the board.  This all-important item tends to be left to individual ministry areas, some of which are better at it than others.  Imagine if we had a steady stream of volunteers entering the system, because that’s just part of our personality and culture.

  • Leadership development.

We should always be developing the next layer of leaders.  We should always be scouting for talent and giving people the opportunity to gradually take on responsibilities and grow their gifts and skills.

  • Feedback.

We should always be soliciting feedback and responding to it.  We should have solid systems in place that give people multiple avenues to make suggestions and let us know how we’re doing (and what we’re not getting done).

  • Professional training.

We should always be training staff and volunteers through interactive resources, seminars, and workshops and bringing in experts who can address their concerns and help them develop the skills sets they need to be productive and fulfilled in their assignments.

  • Emergency response.

We should be prepared for disasters, natural and personnel-related, and we should have clear procedures in pace for responding to them.  This is true of fire, flood, and fraud.  We should be prepared for a financial calamity, and we should be prepared for what to do if one of our staff members or volunteers lets us down.

Think about the volunteer and staff leaders that run things at your local church.  Think about all the traditional categories that they represent, then think about who has responsibility for the infrastructure systems that keep things running and stable.  Volunteer recruitment and leadership development may be the most dramatic examples of what goes wrong on the local campus when things get out of balance.  If you have recruited a super team, and everything is going great, you breathe a big sigh of relief and show up with a smile on your face.  Everything is humming along, then a key leader leaves.  Suddenly, things start falling apart.  The problem is that we skipped the disciplined work of training leaders who were waiting in the wings for their chance to step up.  Now we’re scrambling to fix a mess.  Wouldn’t it be better to have several layers of preparation.  Not only are we ready for chaos, but there are many beneficial spin-off effects from the preparation and regular maintenance of the systems.  Just ask my fish!  They are happier and healthier than ever!

How do you and your team think about the management of your local church aquarium setting?  Do you skimp on regular maintenance?  Are you trained for an emergency response?  Or do you live by the skin of your teeth, assuming things will keep rocking along with a minimum of systemic attention?  Can you think of some other essential systems?  Share our insights and comments below.