We’ve got a problem at our house. We have possums living in our roof. Now before you get all mushy and goofy, they are not cute or cuddly. They are noisy and emit alien-like screams in the middle of the night to compliment all of the WWF-esque thumping that they do on our bedroom roof.
But I had a cunning plan to get rid of these ‘pesky varmits.’ Pete the Possum man told me that all I have to do is to close up any cavity space underneath the house, then the possums can’t climb up the walls into the ceiling space. Problem solved. With a torch in one hand and my ‘no more gap’ spray cans in the other, I took up Pete’s advice and did a long commando-crawl underneath the house to their most likely infiltration point.
You should know, the space under our house is dark, very narrow, full of cobwebs and dreaded Australian spiders such as redbacks, funnel webs, white tail spiders which are all very bad for your health should they bite you.
Knowing the risk, I emptied the cans of ‘no more gaps’ in the cavity space. As I was finishing up, a blob of the ‘no more gaps’ fell on my face and down my neck. It went rock solid and very sticky in about 10 seconds. I had to then commando-crawl back out and hurried up to my bathroom mirror where I saw that half of my goatie beard was covered and the whole left side of my neck.
To cut a very long story short, I had to cut off half of my beard and spent a couple of hours peeling the remainder from my neck (now I know how women feel when they wax). Not a great experience. I didn’t really do the job that well. It isn’t finished, it won’t keep the possums out and I hurt myself in the process.
Churches do the same thing. We try to do things that we aren’t good at ourselves. We often don’t finish what we start. We don’t do it well, and we often hurt our brand/church in the process.
We try to:
- Design our own website
- Create our own brand strategies
- Develop our own social media
- Create our own video
- Design our own logo (by committee)
- Do our own PR
Like me, churches need to understand where its strengths lie—what they are good at, and what they aren’t good at. We need to lead with our strengths and get help in the areas of weakness. If that means hiring a graphic designer, a brand strategist, a videographer, a PR specialist, etc., then so be it. If it means that it will cost us money, so be it.
We must remember to lead with our strengths and stick with that. In every other area we need to surround ourselves with those who are brighter, smarter, and more talented at what they do. In the end we will be better off because we did it.
What areas are you weak in? What areas are you strong in?
