Media Outreach

I read an interesting article this morning, although I knew this was coming as the tech blogosphere has been buzzing with this news as they hint at the release of the next gen iPhone next week. AT&T has announced its new data plans, and they have completely obliterated the unlimited data plan. You can read the article here: http://www.mobilecrunch.com/2010/06/02/att-announces-new-data-plans-unlimited-data-nowhere-to-be-seen/

So why is this a part of best practices? Well, it got me thinking. How often does the church have an opportunity to really grow and burst forth, but for whatever reason, we decide to throttle back the availability of our programs/staff/resources because we think we know better as church leaders than what our congregations want?

Hold your horses! I’m not saying we should kowtow to every little recommendation from every comment cards that comes our way. I think as leaders of the church, it’s our mission to evaluate everything against our culture, vision and fingerprint of our ministries. However, I think AT&T blew it in this case, and I think the church has a tendency to do the same.

When my family joined a mega-church in the Austin area when I was 18, before we actually became members, my mom asked for the Senior Pastor to come have dinner at our house because “If he was to be the shepherd of our family’s flock, we wanted to get to know him.” And he came over. He was an amazing pastor.

What would have happened if he had throttled back his time because he was just too busy to come to dinner? Everyone’s busy, and as the pastor of a mega-church, I can appreciate that. But when we become too busy for people, it’s time to throttle back our programs and get back to our “unlimited time plans.”

Photo By: victoriapeckham