On Turning Things Upside Down

As a pastor somewhere, somehow you have gotten stuck.  Maybe you could never quite get the sermon you were working on to come together.  Maybe there is a project that hasn’t quite gotten off the ground.  Maybe you have not quite hit a stride in a particular area of ministry.

Try turning things upside down.

For instance, if you have a three point outline that is not quite working:

1. Blue—point about something
2. Red—point about something else
3. Green—point about still something else

Try inverting the order of your points and see if the progression of your thought works better upside down.

1. Green
2. Red
3. Blue

Try turning things upside down.

Maybe you have a project that is slow in gaining support from others.  Make sure that your first step matches theirs and that your next steps are in sync.  Perhaps someone has the order wrong.

Early on I became convinced that the congregation I was serving needed a gymnasium and a classroom wing—in that order.  I worked long and hard to gain support, buy in and approval.  No matter what I did resistance remained.  Nothing budged. 

Then we turned it upside down—not the building, but the order.  “Let’s go for the classroom building first and then the gym.”  The congregation broke ground for a new classroom building not long after that.

Try turning things upside down.

Perhaps your day is not as effective as you would like.  No matter how hard you try it feels like you are doing ministry with sand bags tied to your ankles.

Invert your schedule.  What happens first in the day save until the end.  What you do at the end move to the morning.  Many people waste the best and most effective part of the morning by checking emails.  Save them for late in the afternoon.  Move your sermon prep from the afternoon when the caffeine level drops to the morning when you are at your sharpest.  If you are a “morning person,” experiment with being a “night owl” and vice versa.

Try turning things upside down.

Careful on this one:  maybe turn the Sunday service upside down.  Of course you cannot turn the Invocation and the Benediction around, but you could move Holy Communion much earlier and move the sermon toward the end of the service.  Perhaps some Sunday Holy Communion serves as the crucial spiritual food to prepare people to hear the sermon.  Or start with the Gospel reading, then the New Testament reading and then the Old Testament reading.  Reversing the order may bring particular Old Testament readings into clearer focus.

Careful on this one, too:  maybe the counseling situation is the opposite of what you think.  Consider the situation from the other way around.  Help the counselees turn the situation upside down, and see if there is an insight they have been missing.  Maybe the problem did not start “way back when;” maybe it is really a recent one.  Perhaps the presenting problem is the result and not the cause of the situation. 

And very careful on this one:  if you have a particularly disruptive confirmation student, resist at all costs the urge to turn him upside down!  But having said that, if you experience tough sledding with a class, consider the order of events in the class period and turn them around from time to time.  If it does not keep the students fresh, it will at least keep them guessing which will help them to stay engaged.

Try turning things upside down.

I painted a room for my granddad one summer.   I had already done quite a bit of painting through the years, but I knew he had done more.  So I asked his advice as I surveyed the project, “Grandpa, how would you get started on this room?”

He said, “Well, I would start by putting the ceiling on the floor and painting it there.”  He spoke more wisdom than I realized.

You cannot turn every project upside down, but sometimes you can.  It may prove more significant than you would guess.

Try turning things upside down.