Our church office is getting some early spring cleaning. It is a useable space, but it would be more useful if it were organized a bit better and had proper mailboxes and the resources were labeled… and it would be more comfortable if we painted the bland walls and took down the horrid curtains (sorry to whoever put them up)
Today, I threw a lot of stuff away. Like 5 year old cokesbury catalogues, an invoice for candle oil from 1993!, etc.
What I also found were lots of old resources, that I’m sure cost a lot of money in their time. Things like a confirmation cirriculum from 1995, and a 12-week spiritual gifts church wide plan from about the same time, and 20 year old guidelines for ministry, and this youth group stuff called “ONLINE” which, I’m sure back in 1992 sounded way awesome, but in 2009 looks pretty lame.
I haven’t tossed them yet. It pains me to throw away the old cassette and video tapes and the binders full of pages and the projector sheets. But, seriously, are we really going to use them again? No. Do they appeal to a contemporary audience? absolutely not. Is there anything worth saving within them? MAYBE.
I did look through them. And does it make sense to throw away the guidelines for ministry when we have new guidelines for 2009-2012? Partially no, but partially yes. There are things that have changed in how we concieve of ministry in 20 years. There are also really good concepts in the spiritual gifts inventory stuff that could easily be adapted for a more contemporary presentation – but unfortunately, there are only three of the actual inventories to determine spiritual gifts in the binder. We probably can’t order from the same old cirriculum – so if we have to order new inventories, will we have to buy a whole new cirriculum? probably. *sigh*
The garbage gets picked up on Wednesday mornings. And I’m going to predict right now that we will be sending most of those binders out to the curb.