I have a dog who likes to poop in my backyard. Actually, she only likes to poop there because I am too lazy to take her on walks more regularly. So, normally I don’t mind her doing that except when I have to mow the lawn. When I mow the lawn, I have to usually take that extra step to pick up all the dog poop in the grass before I mow the lawn. If I fail to take this step before (or anytime in the days prior), something unfortunate happens quite regularly – I get poop on my shoes. That’s right, brown, mostly wet, slick poop! UGH! I hate it when that happens. When that happens, which again is a lot more than it should, it actually takes me much longer to mow the lawn as I have to sit for a while afterwards so I can get all the poop off my shoe and/or the wheel of the lawnmower.
You may be wondering right now, “Is this post really just about poop?” Well, no. But I started this way because the other day I got poop on my shoes while mowing the lawn and I was so annoyed with myself that I didn’t take that extra step before I mowed the lawn to actually pick up the poop! That made me think of TAKING THE EXTRA STEP in ministry.
Taking the extra step in ministry is anything you can do that will help you pull off what you are trying to accomplish completely without forgetting or sidestepping a step to achieve your goal. I am embarrassed to say, but sometimes I have skipped steps in ministry that have proven to be costly. Whether it was not fully prepping on a talk or forgetting an item that I needed to pick up for an event, I did things without thinking through all that need to get done. And because of that I was scrambling to adjust at the end. When I have done this I feel that I have let students and the Kingdom of Heaven down because I have failed to provide them the best.
Taking the extra step is doing everything fully and appropriately so that you don’t step in a poop landmine while you are doing ministry. For instance, it could mean:
- talking to all your leaders before scheduling an event to make sure you have adequate leader support for that day, rather than finding out after you schedule and promote it that you will be the only leader, thus causing you to scramble for help.
- giving your message to 1 or 2 other people a day or two before you give it to the people you are ministering to so that you can make sure it sounds good and that you are not missing something.
- checking over all the details on a flier to make sure you have the correct information on it.
- calling a parent back rather than simply emailing them your response.
- planning far enough in advance so that you can make your events and messages the best they can be so that the people you are ministering to can hear about Christ in the best way possible.