How to know when the Systems at your Church are Broken

The systems you build at your church can help move you towards your mission or keep you from it.

Building great systems in your church is the art of connecting the values, structures, strategies, goals, and vision to work in alignment that builds a culture that leans towards accomplishing the mission.

Systems are made up of complex independent parts that work together to perform a specific function. Think, for example, about the solar system, muscular system, or skeletal system.

In a church an example of a system is the weekend worship (all of the independent parts that work together to create a great weekend worship service), communications (all of the independent parts that work together to create a strong brand), or assimilation (all of the independent parts that work together to help people move from a guest to connected).

But sometimes systems don’t work, or you begin to outgrow them. Here’s a couple of indicators that may be happening at your church.

Work Arounds

When you staff team starts building their own work-arounds or implement their own supplemental solutions to your system the tendency is to believe that the staff is being obstinate. That may be the case. However, they may need more training, or the system you’re using may no longer work in your context.

Neat Freaks

The objective of a good system is not having a good system, it’s the mission. It’s possible to become hyper focused on a system instead of what the system is designed to do. If your system can’t tolerate a certain amount of chaos, then you’ve outgrown your system. A growing church has a certain level of chaos and mess to it and that’s okay.

Poor Returns

If things begin to slow down at your church one of the things you may want to look at are your systems. It’s possible for your systems to become a lid to growth.