by Exec. Director Glenn Reph :: I live and breathe to get more done - even better in ministry. I enjoy quantitative and qualitative operational ministry management. God wired me to enjoy the challenges of complexity but recently I have been fascinated by the efficiency of simplicity. My thinking has been influenced heavily by two authors.
Here are two books I recommend to those who wonder how we can “get more done – even better.”
- Simple Church: Returning to God’s Process for Making Disciples by Tom Rainer & Eric Geiger
- Deliberate Simplicity: How the Church Does More by Doing Less by Dave Browning
Many of you may not be aware that in early summer of 2008, prior to my arrival here at BAPC as Executive Director, I was retained as an operational ministry management consultant for Dave Browning @ Christ The King in Burlington, WA. ( www.ctkonline.com ) Dave’s book was not yet in print. Over the summer prior to my coming on staff at Bel Air Presbyterian Church I had multiple meetings with Dave to build (complexity) some internal infrastructure for the expansion of the global ministry of Christ the King Ministries. The core challenge was to build systems that were simple not complex; expandable and collapsible; inexpensive and adaptable. This idea appeared more oxymoron than visionary leadership. Can you actually build a growing deliberately simple church without the complexity of management systems (infrastructure)?
The challenge is still before me here at BAPC. As I write this blog, the team and I are getting ready to do Easter at the Hollywood Bowl in seven weeks on April 12th, 2009. There is nothing easy about doing an Easter service at the bowl: Union workers, decorating, orchestra, choir, tickets, parking, budgets, audio, etc. We will invest plenty of time, money and management cycles to do Easter in a venue for one hour. The Good News will be brought to about 10,000+ people at one worship service. Worth it? You bet. Simple? No way.
The question that always seems to lingers in my mind (after each ministry event) is this: What part actually made a difference in peooples lives? Or to put it another way: What parts are superfluous? or just not all that necessary? or what can we remove and yet not reduce the number of changed lives?
Pray for me, I seem to be cursed with a complex mind trying to do simple. I really want to do simple, and this time I really mean it.
Glenn Reph, Executive Director: glenn.reph@belairpres.org
