To accomplish more, do less. To bear more fruit, prune. To see God work more powerfully through you, listen and obey and trust, and quit trying so hard. In our workaholic culture, these words almost always come as a surprise, but they are also almost always welcome words for weary spiritual leaders, according to Eddy Hall, Ray Bowman and Skipp Machmer in their book The More-with-Less Church: Maximize Your Money, Space, Time, and People to Multiply Ministry Impact. Embracing this basic truth that our ministry is more effective not when we do more, but when we do fewer things with our whole hearts, is the first step in becoming a more-with-less church.
The book goes on to describe several ways in which a church can achieve more with less:
- More-with-less ministry: eliminating over-programming to concentrate on a small number of highly effective ministries
- More-with-less staffing: concentrate on achieving more through team work and using paid staff more to equip others than to do the ministries themselves
- More-with-less buildings: re-use existing buildings in multiple ways in preference to investing in new buildings
- More-with-less finances: operate within the income God provides, instead of living by the world’s financial system.
The book contains plenty of advice which challenges common practices, supported by the extensive experience which the authors have had in church building and consulting over many years. Most church leaders will find in the book a range of possible solutions for problems which they are currently facing.