Last week I shared a graphic about decentralizing youth ministry. I thought it’d be fair to unpack that a little more and challenge you to think about where that leads us.
Inverse Relationships
A direct relationship is more like cause and effect. The more I invest in my 401k before I turn 40, the more I should expect to withdrawal in retirement. Or in our bodies, a direct relationship is that if I drink too much water I’ll have to pee more.
An inverse relationship is when doing more of something results in an negative, often unintended consequence. It’s when you think you are doing something good but in effect you are doing something to your detriment. For example, brushing your teeth once or twice per day is good for your teeth. But thinking that if some if good than more will be better is false… you’ll scrape the enamel right off your teeth.
In economics we see that sometimes when we invest a lot in one line of business we overcook the market and everyone has to lower their price because supply outpaces supply. (This is why condos struggle to gain in value at the same rate as traditional homes.)
In ministry, we know that we have to make some level of financial investment to see something work. (Direct relationship) We know that to make a new small group ministry fly you’ll need to invest some stage time, some resources, and lots of relational investment from the leadership. So once that works you start to think, “How do I get ____ to be part of our small groups?” So you invest more money, time, and resources. Eventually you hire a person dedicated to small groups in the church and start increasing their budget.
That’s a direct relationship. And, to a point, it totally works. You invest X and Y and you expect it to result in XY.
What we have going on in the American church is 30-40 years of that cycle escalating and escalating and escalating. You can visit churches with $20 million in property or churches of 400 people and 5 full-time pastors. Those things seem like they will impact lots and lots of people. But that’s just not happening.
What we’ve done is spent unlimited billions of dollars investing in bigger buildings, more professional programs, and more staff because we believed in the direct relationship between investment and return on investment was unlimited.
Unfortunately, there is relatively low peak, fiscally, on people movements. (Not just in church movements, by the way.) If you think about it what has happened is that churches want to reach more people. So instead of asking why they aren’t interested we just keep trying new things, spending more money, investing in more staff, and ultimately taking on more overhead. The net effect is that churches are raising lots of money, investing in lots of staff/buildings/programs and reaching fewer and fewer people.
So what do we do about the 427: 1 ration of teenagers in America to paid, vocational youth workers?
My thought is simply this. It can’t be more staff, resources, programs, or buildings.
It has to be less.
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