Only 15 Minutes
What a difference 15 minutes makes! This year we moved are second service from 10:45am to 11:00am. You would be surprised how much resistance adjusting one church service 15 minutes later caused. However, I was not alarmed because people are most resistant to change in their programming. We like are routines and we hate when people mess with them. Are situation however was causing a traffic jam in the parking lot resulting in several guests driving in and driving out never darkening the doorway to our church.
When making even the slightest change you have to magnify your WHY or people will assume they know WHY. People thought we were planning to preach and extra 15 minutes longer (that might be because I’m long winded). When you keep your WHY about others, you will keep your people focused on the right thing. I’m looking forward to seeing how many more guests we had because of this small adjustment.
Adjusting the Agenda
We have wanted to adjust some things on our service agenda for quite some time, but with a new hire at the worship leaders position we wanted to give him the opportunity to get his feet on the ground before we started implementing a lot of change.
This Sunday we shifted our agenda from two songs, announcements, offering, two more songs, prayer and the message with a rushed conclusion to moving all our songs to the front end of our service, prayer, announcements, offering, one song and message and extended time in God’s presence. This shift came a little harder than the 15 minute tweak. I suggested the change months ago and it was not received because of the timing, but yesterday I got this text from my senior pastor:
What an awesome day. I am so glad to hear what God is doing and excited how worship changes everything. I heard people saying it was a powerful service. I think there was a great flow (at the front end). The extra worship (at the end of service) is what we need to lean into. It worked great because we didn’t feel rushed with the turn around (between services).
I believe a small adjustment can help bring us into alignment with God’s heart for the season your in as a church. Our services didn’t go longer but it created a much better flow for where we are at in this particular season as a church.
Changing things up gets a lot of resistance when it seems to be monumental. It’s subtle change, little tweaks and adjustments that no one notices that can make a monumental difference.
How are you changing things up this year?
Great to hear you guys aren’t afraid of necessary change despite kickback. I read an insightful article about CHANGE a while back. One of the points was, “people wrongfully think a change in programming means the organization is changing it’s values.” Wow! That has helped me in many-a-meetings and conversations since.
I totally agree with that. One of the things we constantly are telling folks is that our values have never changed just the vehicle. Sometime you have to trade in that old car to get to where you need to go!
How are we changing this year? Well, we are building a brand new facility and moving into it. Talk about change.
Blessings.
That’s so exciting! I call that REAL CHANGE! When will you occupy?
Looks like Dec. 2013.
Awesome! I want to come on the Grand Opening keep me posted!
I want to come to the Grand Opening keep me posted!