Senior leaders: Do you like to tinker with the service? Do you often make last minute changes, or change things between each service? Do you regularly “call an audible?”
Here’s a hard truth: I have found that last minute changes far more often have a NEGATIVE effect on the services, adding stress and lowering the overall quality level for the congregation. The reasons actually should be fairly obvious. Winging something like a worship service that requires many people to be on the same page doesn’t work. Planning allows for excellence. Worship services should NOT get to the end of the week in an incomplete form.
This goes for service prep on the day of, as well. There should come a time when the service is “done,” and that should not be at 8:55am on Sunday morning. By all means, there are instances when things are seriously crashing and burning and really do need to be fixed, and situations where it’s clear that God is doing something in a particular service that needs to be responded to.
However, you need to honestly ask yourself (or better yet, ask someone else) whether it’s truly God guiding the proposed changes, or just the fact that you like to take control and exercise your “creativity.”
Some transparency… I have the same tendency. Just like you, I’ll think “That 9:00 am service was 95% percent great! Now, I have some ideas, and I’m sure if we make these tweaks for the 11:00 am service, that’ll take it to 100%!!!”
When I think that, I’m almost always wrong. We’ll talk tomorrow about what to do instead…
“The more thorough the prep work, the faster it goes and the happier you’ll be when it’s done.” – Donna M. Genett, Ph. D.
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