Thursday, August 20, 2009

Churches can maybe learn from software development

Way back in the year 2001, a group of software developers saw that the way development was being done was not working well. They came together and agreed upon a set of priorities called the Agile Manifesto that should govern successful software development.

Church leaders observe that most churches are stagnant at best and often in decline. Religion doesn’t seem to appeal to most people. Perhaps churches have prioritized the wrong things…

Perhaps what we need is an Agile Manifesto for churches something like this (with apologies to the Agile Alliance…):

We are uncovering better ways of revealing the true God to the world and helping others to do it. Through this work we have come to value:

Individuals and interactions over policies and organizations.

Loving (respecting and accepting) one another over doctrine and creeds.

Trusting members’ judgments over detailed job descriptions and artificial boundaries.

Responding to change over following a plan.

That is, while there is value in the items on the right, we value the items on the left more.

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