How to Focus a New Ministry Team: Start With Why

How to Focus a New Ministry Team: Start with Why

As my church member Rosie and I prepared for the first meeting of our new theatre group I was filled with anticipation. We had invited 22 people to the first pot-luck gathering to discuss how we might change the world through our love of theatre and doing theatre. Rosie, an experienced director and mature Christian leader, peered at me over her Starbucks cup and said, “Now, Cheri, as we lead this first conversation we need to remember who we are dealing with. This is a group of really creative theatre people. They are going to have ideas going in a million different directions. We need a plan to keep the group on task.” I laughed because Rosie and I have a habit in our conversations of jumping from one topic to the next at lightning speed. We are both dreamers. I got her point.

So at the meeting, rather than starting with “let’s do a play” and letting them take off in a million directions with what show we might do, who could do the sets, the costumes, what venue we might use, and then start casting the show….we tried another tactic.

We started with why. We asked the sixteen eager people gathered in a living room, “Why would a group of church folks want to do theatre together?” Here are some of the answers we got:

•  To deliver a positive message in a creative way
• There is a place for everyone in the theatre, some are actors, some make costumes, some work behind the scenes, some take tickets, everyone can contribute; 
• People might come to a theatre production before they would come to a church
• Theatre is a context that is free from judgment (unlike the way some of us have experienced church); everyone is welcome in the theatre community
• To expand our presence in the community

Starting with the question of “Why do theatre?” helped us to find a grounding for what we are going to do. Notice that we did not spend agonizing time crafting a perfect mission statement. Yet we still got some great content by asking the question “Why are we going to do this?”

Simon Senek in his book, Start with Why, thoroughly explores the idea of starting with why we do what we do rather than starting with what we are going to do. If you are not one of the 14 million people who have watched his TED talk, you can see a 5 minute condensed version of it here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IPYeCltXpxw. Our Village ARTS (A Revolutionary Theatre Society) is off to a great start, in part, because we started by asking “why.” 

Why are you doing what you do? Do you know? When starting a new group, I encourage you to start with "why?"

Asking "Why?" will give great focus to your group as you begin.