Restarting Ministries? Don’t Overdrive Your Headlights

By David Manner

Overdriving your headlights is when you are driving so fast that the stopping distance is farther than you can see down the road with your headlights. Moving faster than you can see can also cause you to miss or misread important road signs.

Some churches are moving quickly to determine when they might fire up all of those pre-pandemic ministries again without slowing down long enough to ask if they should. They’ve realized during this season that those ministry programs they previously thought they couldn’t live without, they actually could. So, before restarting all of those ministries, maybe they should first reevaluate to potentially repurpose them.

Reevaluate

Reevaluating is the contemplation or examination of something again in order to adjust or form new opinions about it. Reevaluating helps us audit what we did in the past while considering the circumstances of our present for potential adjustments in the future. Reevaluation reinvestigates and revisits.

So, before moving too quickly ahead with a ministry, we should first ask if it is going to help us fulfill our new mission. If the answer is yes, then we should proceed at a safe speed. If the answer is no, then we should ask if it could help us fulfill our new mission if we were able to reevaluate and repurpose it. If the answer to that second question is no, then why would we consider starting it again.

Repurpose

It is popular to reclaim and repurpose old wood for new building projects. Reclaimed wood has a rich history and character that newer wood products haven’t yet earned. The beauty of its durability and seasoned strength tells a story that only time can replicate. Using reclaimed wood keeps the past alive even when rebuilding in the present is necessary.

As churches are considering the future in light of our strange present, they will inevitably need to renew and reimagine the past. In doing so, the assumption is that it will require incorporating something completely new. But it is possible by reclaiming and repurposing what we were already doing that the only new necessary will be to do what we were already doing better.

This article first appeared on David’s blog, WorshipEvaluation.com. It was reposted here with permission.