Land Lines

We still have a land line in our house. The truth is that we get far more junk calls on that line that calls from friends and family. My kids have asked why we won’t get rid of our land line, and I don’t have a very good answer. I can say that land lines still work if a hurricane knocks out power or that I don’t want to sleep with a cell phone beside my bed, but these are just excuses. The reality is that we’ve had the same number for many years, and I just don’t want to change. Are you holding on to any “land lines” in your church or ministry? You know what they are – those programs or traditions that you’ve had for a long time but that don’t serve a useful purpose any longer. If the organization is more than just a few years old, I’m sure that your answer is “yes.” Should you get rid of these land lines? That’s the question that’s harder to answer. In my case, it’s easy to count the cost or keeping my land line – I get a monthly bill from the phone company. If I want to get rid of it, it’s possible (but unlikely) that I’ll need to navigate my wife’s objections, but that’s the only downside. In your case, the potential costs of eliminating a cherished program are much higher. You don’t know all of the people that may object, nor do you know how intense their resistance will be. It’s also much harder to quantify the costs of keeping these programs, but that doesn’t mean that it’s cheap to do so. The visible cost in actual dollars may be low, but the real cost is often significant. This cost shows up in the time spent by staff and volunteers, “air time” to communicate low value events, lack of energy or resources to launch new initiatives, and confusion about the organization’s real priorities. Even in my case, my land line has the hidden cost of the time and aggravation to answer junk calls. I haven’t decided what to do about my phone line, and I’m not saying that you should get rid of all your outdated programs. After all, decisions about these organizational land lines can quickly turn into land mines. But I doubt that any of my kids will ever have a land line, and I suspect that I will eventually get rid of mine. Can you say that about those land lines in your ministry? It’s easy to receive my blogs by email. Just sign-up on Feedburner by clicking here.]]>