Is working for your church like Google?
What Google does is it allows you a fantastic environment to be innovative and to get your product developed quickly…
We always really try to avoid bureaucracy so that people can really do what makes sense in their project…
Should working for the church be like that?
It should be noted that the environment, and lack of bureaucracy, is only half the equation. This only works if you hire the right people in the first place.
The same applies to your church. Hire the right people
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peace | dewde
go away.
I think that level of perks & bonuses would be (maybe rightly) viewed as a poor use of resources in church world.
But I do want people in the church to say: “working for my church is freaking amazing” even if the food doesn’t rival giordanos.
agreed. working for any church should provide awesome testimonies…!
I think one of the reasons Google gives you such great perks (certainly not the only reason though) is because they want you to work 12 hours a day
Can’t ever imagine a church doing that….right?
ouch.
I would have to say that I would love to have this kinda of drive for progress and innovation in my church. However, sometimes churches are ok with ‘arriving’ and sometimes as soon as something ‘works’ they move onto the next thing, even though the reality is that it still needs a lot of TLC. Churches are all about ‘rolling things out in phases’ but more often then not phase 2 never arrives and phase one in it’s incomplete state is left in the wake of the next thing that needs emergency attention.
I love the idea of lack of bureaucracy, but with volunteers who often aren’t professionals in the field they’re volunteering in, they often take some guidance. How many people are ok with crappy fonts, poor design, and ‘graphic artists who use publisher and word and think that’s an acceptable threshold? How do you push that threshold higher?
I agree with Chris that it takes the right people, and google doesn’t hire because the ‘need someone now’ or just to ‘get this person involved’. They hire because people are coming to them wanting to take what google does and make it better and simpler and more incredible. So the real question would seem to be how do we foster a culture in our churches that says “come innovate with us” and then actually be able to back that up with truth rather than actually be saying “come innovate as long as it fits into what we’re already doing”.
Churches I’ve been in are scared to take risks, and innovation takes risk. Failure caused by trying something new isn’t sin, it’s just a learning experience we can use better in the future. And rarely is anything a complete failure, it just likely isn’t reaching the desired critical mass of audience members hoped for.
This turned into a rant, but all to say. I wish, I hope, and it should be as google is. It should, but it rarely is.