Church Outsourcing

I was reading Sunday's bulletin from church this morning (I had stayed home with a sick boy) and noticed that they are hiring someone to do publication work. Tonight I was going back and reading a bunch of blogs that I've fallen behind on when I came across this. Interestingly, the writer is making the point that if a church continues to do everything in-house, they lose out on the smarts of people who are outside of the church. The comment that struck me was, "Churches that 'reach in' to staff on hand or well meaning volunteers understand 'in reach,' which is basically going to take you as far as you've gotten until now." Even large churches, such as mine, only have so much knowledge in-house, especially when you consider that even many Christians don't donate their expertise to their church, and many churches are reluctant to ask for that expertise.

Interestingly, I think para-church organizations/ministries are much better at asking for help. They are much better at realizing that they aren't as smart as the experts in the field. This is a huge benefit for ministries, and something that churches need to learn. Churches might just find that ministries are using expertise that they haven't tapped, even though it sits in the pews every Sunday.