When the church goes corporate (part 6)

Best Practices
Another element of metrics is best practices. Corporations, driven by efficiency, constantly seek to discover best practices for a particular process. The purpose of best practices is the standardization of processes to ensure predictability of the desired results. Identifying and implementing best practices has had a profound impact on corporations’ productivity and profits.

The concept of best practices does not find clean application in the church. Identifying and implementing best practices for the standardization of processes is not a relational pursuit. Borrowing another church’s idea for expressing a value like hospitality by promoting Dinners for Eight is not a best practice, but simply a creative idea.

Also, just because Dinners for Eight has been a successful relationship-building tool in one church does not mean that Christ will direct every other church to implement it. Making that assumption gets us into trouble. We avoid the work of prayer and listening to God and simply grab what seems to be working in other churches. Then we wonder why the idea failed at our church. We chase success rather than the relationships God seeks.

©2009 Rob Fischer