My friend Vince Miller once commented to me that the ministry he was working on needed some “wins.”
I didn’t quite get it at first. What’s a win?
Through our discussions I learned that a ministry win is an event or program or curriculum that draws people in and leads to an increase in their commitment to the work.
For example, let’s say two female leaders — Becca and Rose — decide to hold a weekend retreat for women in their church. Married or single, it doesn’t matter — all women are invited.
So they publicize the retreat around church and 17 women sign up.
This is feeling like a win . . . until four women cancel two days before the weekend, two others arrive late, and three more cut the weekend short in order to beat traffic on the way home.
Out of the original 17, only eight showed up for the whole retreat.
Not quite a win. But Becca and Rose still feel good about the retreat because it was an “open” event where anyone could attend. They took whomever God gave them . . . they saw God change lives . . . they were faithful to the task . . .
Let’s call this approach the Inclusive-Faithful-Model.
IFM can lead to wins but in my experience it usually doesn’t.
There is, however, another model that does lead to wins. I call it the Hand-Picked-Model.
I’ll talk about it in my next post.
Image courtesy of Stuart Miles at FreeDigitalPhotos.net
