excellence

efficiency - doing the thing right
effectiveness - doing the right thing
excellence - doing the right thing at the right time

today pst kong spoke about knowing the purpose of our ministries and excelling in that purpose.. what is the purpose of the usher ministry then? we are to be friendly and meet the needs of the people.. above all, it is the people that matter the most. it doesn't matter if we run a technically perfect service in terms of flow and filling and giving out stuff.. what matters most is that people feel their needs are met. people with special needs get them attended to. and we do not end up so busy with ushering things that we forget to usher people.

it blows my mind, too, that in order to be an excellent ministry we need to both grow bigger and smaller at the same time. I.e. we need to see the BIG picture, yet attend to the needs of every single person. how can this happen? 1. we need more ushers 2. we need the ushers we already have to be more senstive, discerning and mature. we are really the frontline ministry of the church and therefore those most likely to offend others / soothe over offences that have been committed. how to put mature ushers at these positions then? there are SO MANY different places in the church! answer, obvious: train people lor! that means more time discipling them n talking to them. which brings me back to the point that 80 told me i need to improve on at the beginning of the year.. building and maintaining relationships with ushers so that i can disciple them. which means i need to spare more TIME (ouch, always my weakest point).

besides spending more time communicating with my ushers, will also have to spend more time in ushering.. things like traffic 2 understudy, door ushers for the service when not on duty etc. oh dear. understand pastor's concerns and understand the need for people to take on these positions. thus, understand why i need to sacrifice more time. but it is *so* hard. need to lean a LOT on God's strength.. i can foresee that every weekend subsequently will be a fri-sun fully occupied in church affair.. haha..