When your church tries to do too much

It's not actually a good indicator of flourishing.

Churches are often busy places. A quick glance at their calendars might highlight worship services and formation opportunities, certainly, but also meetings, chili cook-offs, support group gatherings, pickleball matches, senior adult trips, miniature golf outings, times that food pantries and clothes closets are open, and much more. Packed schedules are signs of flourishing, some might say. 

Are they, though? 

Certainly, there’s nothing wrong with any of the activities named above, and there might be good reasons to organize each of them. But I have found that sometimes congregations do a lot in order to avoid reckoning with the realities that they are smaller than they once were and that most people no longer place church at the center of their worlds. Faith leaders and their communities then attempt to prove – to themselves and others – that they are vital and worthy through productivity. 

It’s an understandable response, but it can lead to scattering person-power and resources across a broad array of efforts, leaving everyone tired and discouraged.  

It is possible and good to be more focused and purposeful in planning. 

Author Steven Covey offers a tool that could help. Inspired by a speech delivered by President Dwight D. Eisenhower, Covey’s task management filter allows individuals and organizations to sift possible and actual to-dos into four distinct quadrants: 

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