Clearing Things Up

Let me state this clearly: I am not opposed to children's church. I am not opposed to children's choir. I'm not against men's ministries and women's ministries and single parents' ministries and car ministries and bus ministries and living Christmas trees and Easter pageants and Sunday night services.

I'm really not.

But you better be ready to make a compelling case for why those things accomplish what your church is supposed to be accomplishing. If you can show me how children's handbells and old lady sewing circles help you get from point A to point B, I'll jump on that bandwagon.

But if it doesn't get you there -- if you can't legitimately prove how that program helps people become more like Jesus -- you'd better be ready to kill that program.

We do not have enough resources, time is too short and the stakes are too high for this to be about not hurting someone's feelings. This isn't about your ego or mine. This isn't about who gets offended. This isn't about who might leave or who is threatening to withhold their contribution.

This is about being as effective as we can. This is about a church actually having some integrity and doing what it says it's supposed to do.

There. I just felt like I needed to clear that up.