The Ministry Buffet: A Game-Changing Tool for Strategic Church Leadership
"For everything there is a season, a time for every activity under heaven... A time to keep and a time to throw away." - Ecclesiastes 3:1, 6
Picture this: You walk into a Las Vegas buffet and are overwhelmed by endless options. Three hundred dishes, dessert bars, gelato stations—it's overindulgence and too many choices. Now imagine your church's ministry offerings. Sound familiar?
If you're like most church leaders, you've accumulated ministries over the years. Each seemed like a good idea. Each had passionate advocates. But now you might wonder: Are we doing too much? Are we doing the right things? How do we know what's actually working?
The Ministry Buffet Problem
At Intentional Churches, we've worked with hundreds of churches and seen this challenge repeatedly. We call it the "Ministry Buffet"—that long stretch of programs, each claiming importance, yet many failing to live up to their Great Commission potential.
Here's what happens when churches operate with an unchecked ministry buffet:
Legacy ministries drain resources without impacting the One
Consumer Christians engage with favorite programs but stay disconnected from mission
Ministry bloat leads to unsustainable budgets and overwhelmed staff
Confusion for the One who can't figure out where to start
Silver-bullet thinking that assumes more programs equal more impact
The result? Sacred cows roam freely, resources get scattered, and mission gets diluted.
Why This Matters
As church leaders, we are stewards—of people, time, money, effort, and attention. There is no innocent yes. When we say yes to one thing, we are saying no to something else. Before starting something new, we need to stop something old.
This isn't about being harsh. It's about being strategic—making sure every ounce of energy and every dollar is invested toward making more and better disciples.
The Ministry Buffet Tool
We want to share one of the most powerful tools from Intentional Churches that can revolutionize how your team makes strategic decisions. It's simple, visual, and creates healthy tension that leads to courageous choices.
How It Works
The tool puts two critical factors in tension:
Vertical Axis: Life Change & Double Impact
How effectively does this ministry contribute to making more and better disciples?
Horizontal Axis: Resources Required
What's the investment of time, effort, money, and attention this ministry demands?
When you plot your ministries on this grid, four distinct categories emerge:
The Four Quadrants
FOOLISH (High Resources, Low Impact)
Resource drains that consume significant investment but produce minimal impact on the One. These are strangling your mission.
GOLD (Low Resources, High Impact)
Golden opportunities that produce significant life change without massive investment. Pour fuel on these immediately.
BOLD (High Resources, High Impact)
Strategic bets requiring significant investment but with potential for major kingdom impact. Choose carefully.
SAFE (Low Resources, Low Impact)
"Ho-hum" ministries—easy to do but not particularly fruitful. Not necessarily bad, but not yielding significant fruit.
Putting It Into Practice
Here's how to use this tool:
List every ministry that receives any resources
Discuss and plot each ministry honestly
Identify top items in each category
Ask crucial questions:
Foolish: Should we stop this?
Gold: How do we accelerate this?
Bold: How do we prioritize this carefully?
Safe: Is this for the ninety-nine?
The Bigger Picture
When you clean up your ministry buffet, you:
Free up resources for high-impact opportunities
Clarify your mission for the ninety-nine and the One
Reduce volunteer burnout by focusing efforts
Increase capacity for double kingdom impact
Remember, your impact extends far beyond weekend attendance. Every person in your church represents a network of relationships. If you have 500 attending regularly, you likely have 1,500 in your broader church family, representing potentially 15,000-30,000 gospel impact opportunities.
But to maximize that potential, you must be strategic about where you invest limited resources.
The Courage to Change
The hardest part isn't the mechanics—it's having courage to act on what you discover. Some "Foolish" ministries may have passionate advocates. Some "Safe" ministries may be beloved traditions.
But here's the truth: yesterday's solutions often become tomorrow's problems. As stewards of Christ's church, we must make tough decisions for the mission's sake.
Your Next Step
Gather your team and work through this exercise. Download our Ministry Buffet tool. List your ministries. Have the hard conversations. Make the tough decisions.
The goal isn't to do everything. The goal is to do the right things—things that help you make more and better disciples and move toward double kingdom impact.
It's time to clean up the ministry buffet. Your mission depends on it.
At a Glance:
The Challenge: Churches accumulate too many ministries that drain resources without impacting the One.
The Solution: The Ministry Buffet Tool - plot ministries based on Life Change Impact vs. Resources Required.
The Four Quadrants:
Foolish: High resources, low impact → Stop or pause
Gold: Low resources, high impact → Accelerate immediately
Bold: High resources, high impact → Prioritize carefully
Safe: Low resources, low impact → Evaluate necessity
The Result: Strategic focus that frees resources for maximum kingdom impact.
Next Step: Download our Ministry Buffet tool and have the hard conversations with your team.
The Ministry Buffet Tool is one component of our comprehensive approach—helping churches run with clarity, focus, and kingdom impact. Click here to learn more about our upcoming Activator Trainings where you'll access the complete toolkit.