For Pastors

As many of you know, I travel to dozens of churches each year in my role as a Church Media & Communications Consultant. I also have the opportunity to visit churches as I travel to tradeshows and conferences, so the church denominations, sizes and styles that I encounter vary greatly.

I was doing some journaling when I looked back over previous stuff that I'd written when it occured to me that while most churches face the same major issues, the trend of making excuses based on their size was also a constant theme.

• "We don't have the money to use technology well."
• "We don't have the technical staff able to do what we'd like."
• "We can't find enough qualified volunteers."
• "We let each ministry handle their own marketing and communications because it's too much for one person to handle."
• "Our Pastor can't get his sermons to us (media) ahead of time because God doesn't give him his message until Friday or Saturday night."

Do you know what the honest and accurate answer is to all of those excuses? That's a bunch of bull.

When churches like Ridge Stone in Canton, GA (yeah, like that's a metropolis overflowing with cash!) - which meets in a rented movie theatre (running about 500) and starts setting up staging and light trussing, projection and sound at 5 AM every Sunday morning - use technology better than some mega churches I've visited, I refuse to believe money (or the lack thereof) is the true culprit.

When a church like Crossroads Community in Adrian, MI (another non-urban area where cows outnumber the humans) pulls together a volunteer tech crew of over 120 when the church is running under 1,000 (yeah, over 12% of their congregation is in the media arts ministry!), then not having the tech people on staff isn't the issue, either.

And when I visit churches and find out that they have only 1, 2 or 3 techies involved, it makes me wonder who hasn't been invited into this clique. "You have not because you ask not."

Finally, if your Pastor can't "hear from God until Friday or Saturday", do you really think that's a limitation on God or a limitation on the preferences and priorities of the Pastor? What, God can't talk before Friday or Saturday? I can't find that in the Bible and neither will you.

Pastors: I love ya, but stop making excuses about why you don't - because it certianly isn't can't - get your messages prepared weeks in advance. Suck it up and change. Your church needs you to get ahead of the curve, like it or not, so get over yourself and force the issue.

It's important that churches stop making excuses and force the necessary change from "we've never done it that way" to "hey, we've never done it that way!" Don't tell me what you can't or aren't doing; tell me what you are and will be doing. Anything less is simply an excuse.