I am probably going to date myself a little, but I grew up during the age of arena rock shows. Every act aspired to perform in arenas. The size of those shows eventually grew in to stadium shows and as you can imagine every act aspired to have a stadium show.
In the late 90’s the industry went through it all again. In the early 2000’s everyone pulled out and pulled out quickly. Acts that were playing to scores of people inside stadiums went straight in to theaters and clubs basically overnight.
What happened was a series of things. Itunes changed the buying habits of listeners and the record industry didn’t (and still doesn’t) know how to respond. Creativity started lacking in the shows. It became cookie cutter. One of the biggest things that happened was the fact that the bubble burst. The costs of keeping a show in a stadium made them far less profitable. There was a ton of money coming in, but what it took to keep it going wasn’t worth it.
A show that might profit $150,000-200,000 in an arena after expenses might profit $275,000-325,000 in a stadium. More money right? Not exactly…it takes 2-3 times the man power, expense, and effort to put on a stadium show than it does an arena show. So while on paper it looks more profitable it’s really not sustainable. You have to maintain a larger staff, more hotels, more meals, extra production, more security, etc…so more is not exactly more.
The church world always has been and still is about 15 years behind. One thing I think we are seeing is that more is not always more. Churches are building larger and larger buildings and adding more and more staff. My question is, are they more effective? Some would say yes and some no.
I think churches should in fact grow. There are scores of lost people in the world who need to hear the message, but are churches growing smart and are they growing healthy? I have seen up close examples of some that have and some that haven’t.
We celebrate explosive growth, but that same speed of growth can also be the speed of your undoing.
Business has countless examples of both as well. In the early 2000’s we saw a boom in mortgages and refinancing. Today we are reaping what was sowed. The mortgage industry handed out bad loan after bad loan (a lot of good ones too) and they had more business. I am curious if they had it to do over again if they would have been so anxious to write every loan or if they would have been a bit more strategic and taken the time to write better paper?
Again, the church has much to learn from this. Otherwise we will see in the church world more of what’s happening in corporate america. Just doing good business is not going to exempt the church from feeling the pressures of the economy, but it sure will help it cope effectively.
Smart growth is smart growth…as is smart reductions.
A good friend of mine nearly lost his company 2 years ago. They were doing more business than they ever dreamed and had more money flowing in to the company than ever before. The problem they had was sustaining what they had grown to. More was not exactly more. It wasn’t until they went through the organization and did some timely pruning that they were actually able to grow in a healthy manner.
Starbucks realized that this year. They had added more stores to hopefully increase their profit shares. The problem was that it wasn’t smart growth. More stores didnt exactly equal more profits. They had to cut back in order to see more profitability.
As you are growing it’s important to ask the question…can we do this? It’s equally important to ask…should we do this? Growing an organization to a certain size isn’t the hard part….sustaining it is. It’s funny how growth can actually cost you your organization if you aren’t careful.
So I ask again…is more always more?