Now allow me to break my own law of blogging by copy and pasting material:
Alienating the 2%
When a popular rock group comes to town, some of their fans won't get great tickets. Not enough room in the front row. Now they're annoyed. 2% of them are angry enough to speak up or badmouth or write an angry letter.
When Disney changes a policy and offers a great new feature or benefit to the most dedicated fans, 2% of them won't be able to use it... timing or transport or resources or whatever. They're angry and they let the brand know it.
Do the math. Every time Apple delights 10,000 people, they hear from 200 angry customers, people who don't like the change or the opportunity or the risk it represents.
If you have fans or followers or customers, no matter what you do, you'll annoy or disappoint two percent of them. And you'll probably hear a lot more from the unhappy 2% than from the delighted 98.
It seems as though there are only two ways to deal with this: Stop innovating, just stagnate. Or go ahead and delight the vast majority.
Sure, you can try to minimize the cost of change, and you might even get the number to 1%. But if you try to delight everyone, all the time, you'll just make yourself crazy. Or become boring.
That perspective is provided by a guy named Seth Godin (linked below) who, by all accounts, has no ministry experience. All the same, I was struck by how directly this information related to church work on a near daily basis.
I find that a big part of what I do is based on evaluating programming and performance and purpose and just everything I am involved in here. It isn't because I am hyper-critical and don't believe myself or those around me capable of doing a job well. It is because I know that we can steadily improve ourselves and everything we do. I know that with every new idea and effort come some weak points and failures. If we merely accept that we are doing a decent job that everyone is content with and move on, we are missing a never ending abundance of potential.
For me, the example is Vacation Bible School. I will readily admit that I am no fan of VBS, but it gives me some comfort to sharply critique and painstakingly mold the program into something that bears some semblance of productivity and purpose.
Over that last few years almost everything about how we do VBS has changed. It wasn't bad in the past, and people were doing great stuff, but it also wasn't evolving. We have changed the scheduling, the time of day, the way we do music, snacks, decorations, registration, name tags, recruiting, minister involvement, facility utilization, and on and on. Not all of the things I have tweaked have worked, but each year the program gets better and more functional. Each year it gets closer to something that has the special Seth stamp of approval. When I am no longer in charge, it may finally receive it.
If you know me well, you know that I don't have much fear of making people unhappy. I like to say that I seek to please God rather than those around me, and to a large extent that rings true. The other half of it is this - doing the right thing doesn't mean that everyone will be happy with you and those who are unhappy are often the only ones who speak up.
I hear criticisms and often take them to heart, adjusting accordingly. I also basically ignore many criticisms when I know where it is coming from. A person cannot function effectively if they are trying to please the two percent who refuse to be happy! If you do things the exact way they ask, it is unlikely they will be happy and it is quite likely that the other 98% will become disgruntled.
Innumerable meetings that I have been involved with have spent massive amounts of time straining to find a way to accommodate everyone. It is a well-meaning and good-hearted intention, but it is destined for failure. It is hard for a lot of people to accept that some people, often their friends and family, will simply not be happy with their decisions and actions. One must take heart in the realization that they are seeking God's will and acting accordingly, that they are doing the right thing, not just the appeasing the cries from a senseless mob.
Anyone who has attended a high school basketball game should recognize this principle. Cheers and jeers rain down constantly on the players, coaches, refs, scoreboard personnel, and occasionally the cheerleaders. If the refs blew the whistle every time someone expressed displeasure they game would never end. If they reneged on call challenged by the crowd they would never make it to the scorers table. The coach would be fired after every game whether he won or lost. There would be a dozen players on the floor for each time at all times. It would be an absolute mess of chaos and contradiction.
In ministry the goal should never merely be to please congregants. When that becomes your goal, you will quickly find yourself at the wrong end of one of many rebukes Paul offers to church leaders like yourself in his epistles!
When you seek to please God you will generally please congregants, but you will always disturb the 2%.
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