YOU DON'T GET WHAT YOU EXPECT

We have had some really great worship times at Cocoa lately.  Yesterday there were fourteen children for the Children's Message and, once again, Sarah and Heidi were outstanding.  I hate that the 12 Days of Christmastide are over and we will take down all the gorgeous decorations.  But that will indeed help us to enjoy them fully next year. 

So you know the adage that you don't get what you expect but what you inspect.  The word for churches, and especially sessions, in this is DON'T RECEIVE REPORTS from your committees or staff.  Rather SAY WHAT YOU WANT REPORTED.  Sessions should say what measurable results they want to see for the church (and this is really tough work that often gets avoided by getting absorbed with daily maintenance details -- hugging the trees instead of climbing the ladder to look at the forest).  For example, you can have an evangelism committee and they give a report to the session once a quarter that says something like, "We put an ad in the newspaper for $35/week."  But if you have said that the most effective, cheapest, fastest way to get more people to come to church is to increase the number of times each member invites someone, then that is what you ask to have reported.  "Please, Evangelism Committee, report to us the average number of times each member is inviting someone to church."   Or, more simply, report to us if the average number of invites per member is up, down, or the same.

Sessions need to say what they want and know why.  Then they need to ask for reporting on that.  If they do not, they have delegated and abdicated at the same time.