"Visioneering"

Having a vision for ministry is one the best things about ministry and also one of the scariest. Sometimes you have such a longing for something special but when you try to put into reality it seems like a daunting task that will never get done. I myself have a huge idea for ministry but when as I sit down and really think about it, the reality of how much money, how many different people it will take to accomplish it seems like its way to much. Andy Stanley’s outline that he provides in this book gives the groundwork for a big vision to come into reality. It seems that the biggest difficulty that may arise is timing. When is the right time to pitch your vision to people, when is the right time to initiate a plan of action, when do you stop developing properties so that you don’t run out of resources. Timing seems to be the key. We must realize as Christians that our vision must be born from God’s leading and its going to get done on His timing.  

Written by:

Shawn Lakey

Legal Issues in Ministry - Pt. 1

Bayne Pounds outlines in his book legal issues to which many of them I have not ever considered.  This is one aspect of ministry that I often fail to heed attention to.  While I know that there are obvious boundaries, I rarely think through all the possible legal implications.  Through this review--it raised much awareness for me to consider--especially in the near future.  Even while working at camp this summer, it is very good to consider and be very aware of the issues at hand. 

Written by:

Emily Lyden

"The Art of the Start" Discussion Pt. 1 - Causation

Recently a classmate of mine led a discussion on the book "The Art of the Start" by Guy Kawasaki. Guy has had much experience in the field of jump-starting businesses from the ground, up. I think it is very beneficial for us as Christians and sports ministers to read literature from people who are not necessarily christians, but have experience as an entrepreneur. I think many times we almost immediately discount any literature that is not written by christians because it is coming from a secular viewpoint. But I think there are many valuable lessons and principles that we can learn and apply to our ministries, as long as we run the principles and lessons through a Biblical grid.

With that in mind, I would like to review a couple points that I found most helpful and interesting in the discussion of this book.
More after the jump...

Guy talks about "Causation" in his book, and he lists 4 things that an entrepreneur must do at the beginning, before they do anything else.
These are:

1. Make Meaning: create something that makes the world a better place.
2. Make Mantra: a powerful statement including what the business model is about.
3. Define your business model: Target the customer, make it simple.
4. Weave a "MAT": Milestone, Assumptions, and Tasks.

I won't talk about each of these specifically, but I think many times when starting something new, ministry or not, we get too far ahead of ourselves. We start thinking about the small details of how we are going to do everything before we actually figure out why we are doing what we are doing. Specifically in sports ministry we might start worrying about where are resources are going to come from, and what facilities we are going to use before we even figure out who we are targeting.

Guy points out here that before we get bogged down with all the small details, we must first give meaning to our ministry. What does this look like?

This means writing a mission statement. It means thinking about who your target audience is. It means, laying out the big milestone goals of the ministry before worrying about how we are going to achieve those goals.

This is just one aspect of many that Guy discusses in order to start a successful business.

I think it is also important to remember that in many aspects our ministry is a business. While we shouldn't treat it exactly as we would a business, in many respects we have to, and causation is just one way in which we should treat our ministry as a business.