Grow Small Before You Go Big

The best ministry leaders are dreamers. Huge visionaries. Think-ten-years-ahead kind of people. They know what the end result should look like, and they stack strategies and fund budgets and build teams to move the dream down the field.

Leaders think big. They can’t help it. It tends to be hardwired in their DNA. But leaders also know that the strongest vision is cast to the smallest audience. They know that they receive a greater return on investment if their pitch goes to five rather than 5,000.

For example, I can ask a crowd of 1,000 to consider serving on one of our weekend volunteer teams. Once they fill out the card and reply to the email and sign up for the training and commit to a team, I might have ten that stick.

Or, I can go to ten people that I know. Ten people that I’ve done life with. Ten people with whom I have some relational collateral. Same question. Same ask. But often it’ll be a much better response. Ten one-on-one conversations may yield an 80 or 90% return, while one blanket announcement to 1,000 will return about 1%.

The point? We have to grow small before we go big. We have to invest in real-life relationships. We have to cast vision one person at a time, one cup of coffee at a time, one friendship at a time. And over time, those one-on-one conversations yield radically committed people who are just as driven by your vision as you are. And those people become team builders right alongside of you.

Grow small. Go big.

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