We WERE going to have a garage sale this last weekend. Friday night about 10pm Greg and I realized we really weren't ready. We didn't have the signs ready, I had no change, the cabinets weren't refinished, Greg wasn't going to be around to help. It just wasn't the right time. The funny thing is my contractor came over Saturday morning to have me make a few decisions and the first words out of his mouth were, "I thought you were going to have a garage sale!" Then he laughed and laughed and called me by his wife's name. They had gone through the same thing the last 2 weekends. Should be this Saturday, really!
This situation reminds me of when I worked at my previous job. 99% of the time a manager or director would be given a big project to do and be asked when they could get it done. I had one manager pick the date of his birthday. It was for no other reason than it was his birthday. That put incredible pressure on all of us to get the work done 'by his birthday'. I always thought that was a very unwise thing to do. Just picking a date that sounded good. I'm a planner and his manager was a people person. (He was later let go). It always seemed to me to plan out the steps required for the project BEFORE picking the date. I see it happen all the time. People just guesstimating something should take a few months to pull off, then the project is announced with a date. Then everyone is under incredible stress and strain to 'meet the date'. Why not do all the pre-work then when it is about ready, give a date that it will happen in a few weeks? Depending on the project, that's not always do-able, but often it is.
We're doing the same thing about starting our church. We know we have to train a launch team and know how important it is to train them well and give them time to gel together. That's why we haven't picked a date to start services. However quickly or however long it takes, that's fine. It would be nice to open our doors in the spring, but that's movable. We're not committing to a specific date until we get much closer. We want to do this well. We don't want to stress out anyone on our team, and we want them to have ownership of many decisions.
Just like our garage sale, we picked a date before we were ready. Duh! Still learning this lesson! We've now gotten almost everything ready for the sale, we'll be ready on Saturday.
Blessings this beautiful Monday.
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It is such a blessing to hear about a church, that is doing all the right things before planting. Developing the right team, training, casting vision, finding a place AND then focusing on a date. All to often the plant is the result of a church split and so the date happens first, then comes the rest. God Bless you guys and I am excited to see how God works through this church plant!
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