One of the things a leader must do is define the win. Its one of the 7 practices of effective ministry that Andy Stanley taught us all. (If you don’t know, get the book and pretend you knew.) Defining the win just means this: what do you measure to know if you are winning or not. How do you keep score? That’s really for another post. One I will leave up to someone smarter than myself.
This post is about defining the “WOW”. (Sorry youth group, this has nothing to do with World of Warcraft, we will not be having scheduled raid nights.) One of the bedrock points of my ministry philosophy is making the kids say “WOW”. I am taking beyond just entertaining them. I do believe in having fun with the kids and that things should be exciting for them. We ought to have all the best stuff to assist in our worship experiences.
Kids ought to have an earnest expectation of what is going to happen next in our programming. When their parents ask them what happened today they ought to say “WOW”. When talking to their friends about their weekend worship, it ought to make the friends say “WOW”. Even leaders should say “WOW, that went better than we even planned!”
We serve a “WOW” God. When I read the Bible and see how God moved in people’s lives, I say “WOW”. When God shows up in my life, it makes me exclaim “WOW!” When I experience His grace, my whole being cries out “WOW!” When I observe His creation in all it forms, from mountains, plains, deserts, jungles, forests, rivers, seas, lakes, oceans and even frozen tundras my souls exclaims “WOW!”
I want to be just like my daddy God. I want to imitate Him. He didn’t create boring things, He created amazing things. He went overboard too. He put not just a few stars in the sky, He put so many that scientists are constantly discovering ones you can’t even see. When He finished creation in Genesis 1:12, even He saw it was good and said so. He impressed Himself. If what you are doing isn’t WOW-ing you, it probably won’t WOW anyone else. There is nothing wrong with saying “WOW” at the end of the day. Try it.