Leadership
Student Ministry
4 Things I Learned From A TV show
12:38 PM
In my personal humble opinion the greatest show on TV that
never made it was The Unit! I know I know. You probably never heard about it.
It was on CBS on Sunday nights. I loved this show. Every season it got better
and better.
It was a show that revolved around a Special Forces unit for
the Army. The basic premise was that these guys could never ever tell anyone
who they worked for and who they really were. They went on the missions that
never got talked about. They were the guys who performed the missions that no
one really talked about. I got totally wrapped up into the show and loved every
minute of the three and half seasons it was on.
So several weeks ago, I decided that I really wanted to
watch the reruns. So I found a website where I could watch every episode. And
over the next month or so I systematically went through every episode. I
remember thinking as the last episode aired that I couldn’t understand how this
show didn’t make it. The last episode was the best one I had ever seen. It had
me on the edge of my seat and I had seen it before.
I was left with one haunting question. Why didn’t it make
it?? How were more people not in love with this show?
Then I thought about how is it that some churches and
ministries don’t make it. Or they never really reach that level of success that
they should. I know this is an unusual comparison, but it struck me ever so
clearly.
Here are 4 things that cost the unit and 4 things that will
cost the church!
Too many false assumptions
- The unit assumed I knew a
lot of things that I did not know. It made a lot of assumptions that I would be
able to keep up with their lingo and that I could relate to the Army way of
life. This wasn’t a huge deterrent for me, but totally could be for others. How
many churches do the same. We make assumptions that people know something about
the bible or that they understand why we worship. So of the most talented
people in the world are beating their head against a wall because they have bee
making very false assumptions.
The audience became
to narrow – over the period of the show I could see them begin to get more
and more laser pointed towards one audience. I did some research on why the
show went off. And this is a quote I found. “While The Unit had an extremely
loyal Audience of core watchers they were not reaching the heights we thought
they would” how familiar does that sound. There are some loyal people in our
lives but we have narrowed our focus towards them and now we aren’t reaching
anyone but them and people like them. Do consistent things but fight the urge
to lean toward insiders.
They listened to the
wrong Voices – It was evident that they were listening to people tell them
we want more of the same. Keep doing what you are doing. How many times have we
gotten trapped in that deal? We have to be willing to listen to the voices that
aren’t “in” yet. If we want to reach people that we aren’t reaching we need to
ask THEM why. Putting the wrong
voices around you can and will be detrimental to progress.
Lack of willingness
to change course – I read another article about The Unit that talked about
the fact that the producers of the show were unwilling to change course. People
were telling them that their audience was too narrow but they wouldn’t listen.
They weren’t willing to go in a different direction even if it cost them
everything. And eventually the show got cancelled. Are we willing to change
direction or will we settle for watching the walls cave in around us?
Would you add anything to my list??
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