“I can’t afford it”

That’s not true.

 

At least it’s not true almost all the time.  This is another thought from the excellent blog of Seth Godin. Very few people who say this literally can’t afford it. What they are really trying to say is, “it’s not worth it.” As in, it’s not worth reprioritizing my life, not worth the risk, not worth what I’ll have to give up to get or do this, not worth the time or expense.

 

Seth is looking at this from a business point of view but equally you can look at this from a church point of view as well, whether its financial generosity , time or embarking on a ministry we hear the same thing, I can’t afford it, I don’t have the time, I don’t have what it takes.

One response to repeated cries of “I can’t afford it” is to lower your expectations. A better response is to tell a better, more accurate and articulate story, and to tell it to the right people. The best response is to make something worth paying for.

embrace

Two thoughts on welcoming and stewarding

I am doing something at the moment to look at the churches welcoming policy, first impressions are really important an we need to set a great example, as I have been looking at this here a two small thoughts on the whole issue

What Seth says

Marketing guru Seth Godin makes the point on his blog today concerning how we treat people, siting a post office envelope that has been returned to sender because the postage was 1p short, Seth goes onto explain while big organisations can treat it’s customers like this churches cannot, we have to tolerate it when someone parks outside the lines in the car park. He is right of course we are in a bit of a conundrum, we want to attract more people to church yet so often we have to face the fact that people don’t always behave the way we want them to, seeing and working through this problem is the difference between giving lip service to putting others before ourselves and actually doing it. It doesn’t mean we allow others to walk over us but it does mean that sometimes we need to cut others a bit of slack.

Naturally speaking

I took my girls to Starbucks the other day and had a great conversation with the guy getting my latte, what impressed me was that he went beyond the “have a nice day, enjoy your beverage” script, He was actually a real person “how’s your day going fella” it was a real conversation. It is not good to get no customer service, you know when you walk into a shop and the person serving doesn’t even look up at you, but I find it just as disappointing to get false customer service. Lesson for anyone in church looking to welcome people, be real, be yourself.