The Study Corner    

Churches quite often put themselves under unreasonable pressure and expectations. In the pursuit of excellence, they overextend themselves or push themselves to the brink of burnout.But they don’t have to. They can use Kurt Johnston’s “Cheap and Easy” philosophy. Kurt is the Jr. High Youth Pastor at Saddleback Church (Lake Forest, CA), and his new philosophy is the result of evaluating years of elaborate big events and realizing that what little fruit these events had did not warrant the time, money, and energy used to regularly pull them off. In Kurt’s words, “Cheap and Easy” means:

We still do a big event now and then, but the VAST majority of our events are now what we consider cheap and easy events. By cheap we simply mean low budget activities that cost us little to put together and cost little or nothing for students to attend. By easy we simply mean that they don¹t require a ton of our time to plan and are easy for students to attend (they can just show up instead of signing up ahead of time).

Instead of chartering busses for an Angel’s game, we decided to sell tickets to families and ask the families to meet us at the stadium. An event that used to be a headache (how many busses will we need?) has now become super easy and more affordable.

We created a weekly event called “Meet Us” where students simply meet us at the mall, the skate park, a swimming pool, etc.

Your church can find excellence in simple things. If you lose some valuable volunteers, you do not have to burn yourself out trying to cover the holes they leave. Instead, learn how to simplify things but still maintain excellence. That may mean cutting programs and adding something “Cheap and Easy.” It is a philosophy that will free up your resources for the tasks that really do get results.

You can read more about Kurt’s philosophy at SimplyJuniorHigh.com.

From Baltasar Gracián y Morales:“Know how to sell your wares, Intrinsic quality isn’t enough.� Not everyone bites at substance or looks for inner value.� People like to follow the crowd; they go someplace because they� see other people do so.� It takes much skill to explain something’s value.� You can use praise, for� praise arouses desire.� At other times you can give things a good name (but be sure to flee from affectation).� Another trick is to offer something only to those in the know, for everyone believes himself an expert, and the person who isn’t will want to be one.� Never praise things for being easy or common:� you’ll make them seem vulgar and facile.� Everybody goes for something unique.� Uniqueness appeals both to the taste and to the intellect.”

The Pareto principle (also known as the 80-20 rule and the law of the vital few) states that in many things, 80% of the consequences come from 20% of the causes.

Vilfredo Pareto, an Italian economist is credited with this rule. He observed that 80 percent of the land in England (and every country he subsequently studied) was owned by 20 percent of the population.

Read the rest of this over at Notes to Self

Tony’s latest article, “Sharing the Teaching Load,” in Outreach Magazine is now available. Among other things, he shares the following strategies: