Think Process, Not Program

Volume 272
March 17, 2008

I am inviting you to climb Mt. Everest with me. I can tell you with absolute certainty that despite the altitude, the cold and the danger, we will make the summit. We’ll experience the satisfaction of standing on top of the world, and then we’ll return safely. Would you come? Of course you would!

What if, after that first experience, I invited you again next month? You’d surely come.

But if I invited you month after month, by the fifth or tenth or twenty-fifth time you would be thinking of the long flight to Nepal and the football game you would miss on TV.

If climbing Mt. Everest can get old, imagine what will happen with the ministries or programs of your church.

Don’t ever let men believe that it’s about the activity or program. Sometimes we are hurt by our own success – a great annual BBQ, a killer weekly Bible study (like Men’s Fraternity or Top Gun), or a great annual event like Promise Keepers. If guys begin to think it’s about the activity then they will ultimately get bored. It may take a year or two or five, but ultimately programs for the sake of programs always fail.

These are great tools God has given you for ministry – don’t waste them. Make sure that your activities are always cast in terms of the larger process and vision your church has for men. What will we accomplish together as men in our community and world by being a part of this study for the next 24 weeks? Celebrate tangible changed lives and demonstrate how things are different because of what your men are doing.

Keep the vision in front of them so they are thinking about the process of becoming a disciple and helping other men, not the short-term excitement of an inspirational program.

With you in the battle for men’s souls,

President, Man in the Mirror