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GOVERNANCE & MINISTRY
by Dan Hotchkiss
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Excerpt
Long ago, a church started a soup kitchen. Years passed, and the soup kitchen developed new and innovative ways to help hungry people. Meanwhile, the church shrank. “Our feeding programs take most of my time,” the pastor told me. “I’m proud my church is feeding people, but all this management and social work is keeping me from building up the church.” This conversation got me thinking about a widespread issue: Churches and synagogues often serve as incubators for soup kitchens, food pantries, nursery schools, retirement homes, arts programs, and other worthy ventures. Congregations sometimes see needs sooner than the government or social service institutions do and can move to address them right away. But no matter how strongly a social-service venture resonates with the founding congregation’s mission, the Parent congregation never is quite the same as its Child—the social-service venture. As with real parents and their children, they develop different
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