Last week I was helping my wife with a project by printing out some family pictures when the printer started acting up. The first pictures I printed were great, and then they started coming out with the colors messed up. I downloaded different photo editors thinking I could fix the problem, but that didn't work. Finally, I gave up after several hours of trying to fix the problem and decided to print off a document I needed. Nothing but a blank page came through the printer. I was convinced that I had done something with one of those programs that caused my printer to mess up.
I Googled how to solve the problem, and none of the suggestions made it any better. I removed the printer from the computer and then had the computer load it back in to the system. I unplugged the printer. It didn't fix the problem. I turned off the computer hoping that it would restart with everything back to normal. Another blank page. I watched some videos on YouTube and tried some of their suggestions. Then I had a thought: Could the cartridge be out of ink? I did not have a warning saying it was low on ink like usual, but maybe putting in a new cartridge would fix the problem. It did and the printer is working fine now. All that work, and all I needed to do was replace an empty ink cartridge.
How often is church work like that? We come up with all types of evangelistic programs to help us reach people for Jesus Christ when maybe all we need to do is simply talk to people about Jesus and how He has impacted our lives. We try various gimmicks to boost our Sunday school attendance, and perhaps we just need to develop some alternatives to Sunday school that might be more attractive to people. Preachers seek new ways to preach "relevant" sermons when maybe they just need to preach the Word of God which is relevant for all time. We create new flavors-of-the-month to draw more people to our churches when maybe what we should be doing is doing ministry where they are. Maybe we are just making church ministry more complicated than it needs to be.
In 1961 the Green Bay Packers gathered together for their first day of practice. The year before they had lost a heart-braking game for the NFL championship when they gave up the lead late in the game. The players were ready to work on the details that would allow them to win the championship that year. However, their coach Vince Lombardi began that training camp by holding a football in his hand and said, "Gentlemen, this is a football." He and the coaches then led the players through the most fundamental aspects of the game. When the season ended the Packers were the NFL champs.
In football, computers, and church work the little things can make the difference. Before we spend a lot of time trying to figure out new ways of doing the work God has called us to do let's make sure we have the basics down, and we're doing them. That may be all it takes to turn our ministries around.
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