Thinking Orange | Tear Down the Silos
As if you needed another reason to think about integrating your family ministry staff, I read this paragraph this morning:
“Today almost everybody in modern organization is an expert with a high degree of specialized knowledge, each with its own tools, its own concerns, and its own jargon. …Each of these has to be understood by others before he can be effective.
“…The man, however, who takes responsibility for his contribution will relate his narrow area to a genuine whole. He may never himself be able to integrate a number of knowledge areas into one. But he soon realizes that he has to learn enough of the needs, the directions, the limitations, and the perceptions of others to enable them to use his own work.”
~ Peter F. Drucker The Effective Executive
When we talk about child retention from preschool to elementary to junior high to senior high, what I do in children’s ministry is only as effective as it prepares fifth graders to enter our junior high program. If they don’t have what they need to succeed in student ministries when they leave our program, we have to a degree failed them.
A key way to insure that your family ministries team is running on the same track is to tear down some of the silos and begin communicating across boundaries. Be sure that your strategy is not so individualized by department that parents and kids are left confused about the end you have in mind as they head to college. Work together and the results could be exponential.
For some ideas on where to begin, check out some of my previous posts on integrated structure from Orange Week:
