You face issues, complications and problems all the time in your church. It’s not a question of whether they will be solved; you have to solve them for ministry to go forward. It’s a question of how they will be solved.

A New Issue Arises

Here’s an example. I just got off the phone with a great team member at Pushpay, Andrew S. He was incredibly helpful in ironing out some of the details of their app which we use for the XP-Seminar. At one point he asked, has anyone told you about the migration to Developer Accounts that will happen over the next year?

The Complexity Factor

That is just like things at your local church—things change all the time. Simple systems get complex. New features are added and your life gets complicated. The rules change and now you have become an expert, in such arcane areas as HR and Ministerial Housing.

Andrew with Pushpay went on to explain that XPastor would be the owner of the app on the Apple and Google App Stores. Hmmm, is that good or bad? Do I want to be the owner of the app or will that add another layer of complexity to my life—and I’m all about simplicity. I learned that:

  • Transition—There are 10 steps to become a publisher on either App Store. That’s 20 steps total—at a minimum.
  • Fees—The annual fees are not excessive. But, every penny counts, even if Uncle Sam isn’t minting new pennies anymore.
  • Issues both Expected and Unexpected—Have you ever set up a significant software account without something cropping up? There are going to be time-wasters that will arise. How about all the new emails from Apple & Google: Read this. Do that. Read this and do that in a few months. Ugh.

I want things to get simpler, not more cluttered with perhaps a score of new emails each year. 

Ingenuity and the VW Bug

Recently I read A.J. Baime’s Wall Street Journal article, One Man’s Quest to Reunite With His First Love: A 1971 VW Bug. It was a fun read about his car named Rudolph:

Jeff Siegrist was a student at the University of Tennessee when he first set eyes on her at a Knoxville dealership. Siegrist pounced, handing over his father’s old Ford Falcon and $2,278.54 for the Bug. He kicked in $67.45 for an AM radio and $5.95 for a cigarette lighter.

Siegrist sold the car 24 years later in 1996. In 2022 he wanted that exact same car back in the family! After some work, he found the current owner: They agreed on a price (he says “many times over the original cost”) and the car showed up on a truck in Siegrist’s driveway days later. He even got the Rector of his church to help in the restoration!

This was a great story and the photos of his pristine, now restored Bug, are amazing. One photo caught my eye.

The Bug’s air-cooled engine is in the back, leaving the front trunk for the spare tire. At first I thought that someone had done some AI retouching of the photo. There was an air line going from the spare tire to a storage bottle. This was über strange. Why would anyone connect an air line from a tire to a storage bottle?

It turns out that for years the engineers at VW used this trick. Instead of spending money on a windshield washer pump and a wiring harness for it, they overinflated the spare tire to about 40 psi. The tire’s air pressure gave force to the windshield washer fluid. There was even a little pressure switch that shut off air outflow so the tire wouldn’t deflate beyond a usable level. You can read more about the device in The Spare Tire Windshield Washer System In Old Volkswagens Is Both Ridiculous And Clever on Jalopnik.com., but beware, there is some colorful language in the article.

That engineering work was pure genius and saved a few more dollars, keeping the Bug relatively inexpensive. This wasn’t just a bubble gum fix—this was used by VW for many years!

Look for Creative Solutions

When you are confronted with a problem, don’t accept the first-come solution. Think about it for a while.

Suppose that your church’s air conditioning specialist says that you need a new unit—because the old one is undersized for a segment of your campus. One room is too hot or too cold. That fix might cost $25,000. It is simple, it is relatively easy, but expensive.

An alternative might be to add a blower fan in the ducts for $500. Perhaps the one hot room needs its own HVAC unit—a wall unit might run $2,400. Put a $100 timer on it so that people can only set the temperature for two hours. You have just saved $20,000.

You Are Smart, So Use Your Smarts

Here are some concluding thoughts to consider:

  • Beware of bubble gum fixes that don’t really solve the problem.
  • Evaluate your options. Do research online and with AI to explore possible solutions. Read the fine print in articles to see potential plusses and minuses.
  • Take a step backward and evaluate the problem from a distance. Ask yourself, How much am I going to spend and what am I really getting for that price? What are the short and long term costs with the expensive solution? And with a more novel and less expensive solution?

To conclude my story with Andrew from Pushpay, we talked about alternatives. If I really wanted the XPastor logo on the app, there weren’t many solutions for me. However, I could use their My Church app with a generic logo. Then I wouldn’t have all the hassles of being an app owner on the various App Stores. PushPay would take care of everything. I began to think of the VW Bug at that point—simpler, easier, less expensive.

I believe that you are smart and need to continue to unleash those smarts for the issues, complications and problems in your church. Ask your team for their ideas. Get teams of church members who are experts in various disciplines such as HR, insurance, HVAC, and staff enrichment. 

Go ahead and connect that air line to the spare tire! That solution worked for the VW Bug for many years.