I was reading through Gizmodo’s review of Snow Leopard, the new Mac OS X that releases in a few days. In describing the new operating system, Brian Lam said:
“Challenging 30 years of ever more bloated software tradition, the changes here are about becoming a more effective middleware between the media and the hardware, reducing friction while becoming more useful by, well, being lighter, less visible.”
We have that same bloated tradition in the church. Somewhere between the outreach and our desires to help people experience spiritual maturity (however you define that) is the “middleware” – it’s everything we ask people to do once they connect with our churches.
Might be a good idea to talk about the middleware in your church and decide if it’s useful and actually generating the outcomes you desire or if it’s really just creating friction.
Generally speaking, I think we have a tendency to get too bloated in our ministry programming. May be time for us to update the middleware and reduce the friction.
Tony, that’s a brilliant picture and really analogous to the tension that exists in the Church today between those whose strong focus is the unreached and those whose focus is discipling believers.
What a great word, “middleware”. And it’s true. The connection between middleware and some churches is unbelievable. Why have we gotten this way?
Like the term and the concept.
Want to stay on course, progressing, but not complicated
totally agree, especially if the body itself is having growing pains…we’re adding young families to an older body…middle-ageware?
[...] read this on Tony’s blog yesterday about “middleware” and a quote from another [...]
BAM! :)