An
interesting Mind Experiment
I’m
thinking this week about a mind experiment that relates to church, but first
some background in education. A few
decades ago higher education was pretty much the exclusive domain of
not-for-profit institutions with sprawling campuses and a large faculty who
“shared the governance” of the institution. Then along came John Sperling who thought he might be able to run an educational
institution more efficiently like a business than an educational institution—and
make some money doing it to boot. Sure there were problems: a college run for
profit would have to pay taxes and people couldn’t give tax-deductible
donations to it, but this man thought his efficiency program would make up for
these things. His plan was four-fold:
1. Target a group missed by
traditionalists (in his case it was
working adults who were stuck if they couldn’t go in the daytime to traditional
classes).
2. Invent a new delivery system to
reach this group (in his case hold
classes in the evenings after they got off work, and later Internet classes).
3. Save bezillions
of dollars on staff (in his case
using mostly part-time adjuncts to teach instead of expensive full time
professors).
4. Advertise so aggressively they can’t
ignore you (in his case with
multi-million dollar media blitzes).
The
result is the University of Phoenix with a half-million students that is a
for-profit company that competes briskly with the non-profit cartel of
educational institutions and in the process makes hundreds of millions of
dollars for its founder and its shareholders.
When the University of Phoenix started, traditional educators scoffed
and predicted collapse in a few years.
It did not collapse but became the pioneer and model for other
business-run educational institutions like the Christian Grand Canyon
University that makes money for their owners.
OK,
that’s the background in education, now to the church and the intriguing mind
experiment: If you were to invent a private company to plant and grow a church, and
named yourself President, what sort of changes would you make in the way you’d
do church? Don’t freak out—this is
only a mind experiment, but play along and you’ll have fun and maybe we’ll gain
some great insights. If your church was a business and you were the owner, what
would you do differently regarding staff, delivery systems, finances, and
operations? Now, don’t skip to the “what
we can learn” part too fast—do the experiment first… if you were the church’s
owner instead of the people what would you do differently?
So, what do you think?
The discussion of this column is on Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/home.php?#!/profile.php?id=161502633
Keith
Drury February 1, 2011
www.TuesdayColumn.com