Who Should Design, Part 2

Teams, Stages, Personas, Surrogates

As I continue the story of my discussion with Pastor Tim from my previous post, I observe that we now have established an important element that must pervade our rethinking of our church’s discipleship ministry; namely, faith stages.  The question is, what’s a good way to assure this?  There probably are plenty of answers to this question, but the one we both liked was this: if we want the design to include certain features, we’d better gather a team of people to help us who can represent and advocate those features.  In other words, a good ministry design activity, regardless of its organizational setting, can be served well by involving a team of people, specifically, a team of the right people.  I contend that this is not only a good way to proceed; it is the best way to proceed.

So, how should we choose that team?  Who should be on it?  Depending on the organization’s polity, it might consist of just pastors or a combination of pastors and lay people.  To Tim a good part of the answer is to get people of a wide variety of life stages to be involved in the design.  This way the ministry has a better chance of reflecting the whole spectrum of people for whom it is intended.

I have no argument with Tim.  I agree — not from a theological point of view (though I share it), but from the perspective of good methodology.  Every ministry, no matter how narrow its scope, depends on consideration of – input from – the full spectrum of the people to whom it is intended to minister.  How can designers from a narrow part of that spectrum think viscerally about parts they have never experienced?

So, a good ministry design process will be performed by a team that includes at least people who represent those who will benefit from the ministry.  This is no surprise. Almost all design processes for anything beyond the simplest of designs, ministry or otherwise, are performed by design teams with interested participants.

The question now, though, is, how do we pick the people to put on the team?  I see a two-step process.  First, to describe the kind of people we need on the team; that is, what they will represent.  And, second, to pick them carefully.  We’ll consider these steps in the next two blog posts.

You can race me to the answers by responding to this post by clicking on “Leave a Comment.”