Ministry-willy-nilly-ophobia

Stephen Wareham always seems to inspire me.  In a recent post on the ChMS discussion list he included this little tidbit:

Ministry-willy-nilly-ophobia - n. The fear of communication and/or connection between Church members which occurs outside the bounds established by the Church's vision, mission, and goals.

The full thread is here is you want to dig deeper.  (You'll have to wade past all my rambling)

Wouldn't it be great if churches really did proactively foster connection amongst members?

Comments

[Stephen Wareham]

My definition is lacking in the one area we tend to forget about when tackling data management issues: time.

We understand the relationships between the "nouns" in our system. We know that one small group can have many meetings. Sure. And one person can be in many small groups. No sweat. What we often fail to record is *when* a person joined the group and *when* they left. "So, what groups was Johnny involved in when his giving started to decrease? Hmmmm." Making sure we acknowledge and embrace the dimension of time is critical for converting data into information.

What does that have to do with allowing our ministries to go all "willy-nilly"? Well, perhaps we should look at ministries with a time dimension perspective. Perhaps ministries, like children, need the protection of their "parents" for a period of time. As a ministry matures, leadership evolves and autonomy increases.

With God's grace, perhaps the apple won't fall too far from the tree.