CAPACITY PROBLEMS

This past summer I had a problem – a good one! Our youth camp at Ottawa Valley had grown to the place where we ran out of rooms. In fact, one of our youth pastors had to turn away students from his group because there was no more room. This was a great problem since I’ve had the other problem of not enough people to fill the many rooms! With this problem, we adjusted by turning supply rooms into bedrooms and doing whatever it took to allow the most amount of students to attend.

In our review meeting in the fall, I was reminded that while it’s great to grow numerically, we have to recognize the limits of our capacities. Even with some “creative solutions”, I had to recognize the limits of the cafeteria service, the issues with plumbing, and staffing issues. Unless we expanded the camp in terms of foundational elements, our numerical growth would be capped.

As leaders, there is an inclination to grow our groups numerically. We feel the pressure to get bigger and our ego is stroked the bigger our numbers get. However, the same issue I faced this summer must face all leaders. Do we have the proper foundations in place for numerical growth OR is there a realistic capacity on our growth?

I spoke at a youth ministry a number of years ago in a small setting. The youth pastor had great evangelistic skills and was able to grow the group to around 100 – around the same size as his church. As I watched the masses, I wondered how long this “success” would last. I looked around at the lack of leaders. I recognized that the student this pastor had were so new to Christianity, the depths of their faith was pretty shallow. The next day I called the youth pastor and told him how great he was doing. I also challenged him to make his “next steps” that of discipleship. I shared that I was convinced that if he didn’t take care of the DEPTH of his ministry, the WIDTH would be gone as soon as he was. Six months later, this pastor moved on. I showed up to speak to the group the week after his departure. To no surprise, the group size was less than ten.

While it’s easy to celebrate the WIDTH GROWTH of our groups, we must be careful to understand “capacity issues”…we must have DEPTH GROWTH also.