1) Don’t plan your program, just wing it. Everybody loves spontaneity. Just throw together something at the last minute. Carefully preparing a weekly program with your audience in mind is overrated. You’ve got better things to do with your time than find ways to engage your church members in the program.
2) Make sure to share how tough your week has been before you start your program. Everyone should be able to relate to that. Let them know how difficult it was for you to even get to church in the morning. Convince them that following God is hard and there is little to rejoice about from the week.
3) Talk and talk and talk and talk and talk. Remember, you are the superintendent. You were given this position in the church because of your superior abilities. No program – just talk. Problem solved. Plus, the members love hearing the sound of your voice, and you do too. Don’t you?
4) Do not single out visitors. No one likes to be recognized. Just treat them like everyone else. You don’t want to give them the impression that they are special in any way. Plus, they might not ever come back so why put in the effort to single them out? Once you recognize one visitor, someone might get the impression that visitors are appreciated and you will be stuck welcoming visitors every week.
5) Have the same people on the program every week. It’s too much trouble to recruit new people to help in the weekly program. I mean, who needs to go around asking people to be a part of the program of their church? Stick with the same people to make sure you get the same results.
6) Allow anyone who asks to sing. It doesn’t matter if they can’t carry a tune or barely know the words. It’s what’s in the heart that matters. Your members can listen to quality singing later on in the service. Everyone knows that the standard for quality is lower during Sabbath school. Duh.
7) Make sure you only read the mission story in the most monotonous tone possible. You don’t want to excite anyone by making the stories come alive and show their relevance. Just read the words and leave it up to the member’s imagination to make the stories come alive. Save your energy for what matters.
8) Allow your teachers to arrive late each week as long as they get there before their time to teach. Sure, some may think that teachers’ arriving late indicates the lack of importance of the program but as long as the members are there on time, who cares about the teachers?
9) Never monitor your teachers and evaluate their teaching ability. They are called teachers for a reason. Surely the title alone indicates that they need no guidance or training. Just because all other segments of teaching inside and outside of the church demand ongoing training, who’s to say that the weekly teacher in the church needs any?
10) Don’t think outside of the box and be creative about new ways to conduct the weekly program. Change is scary. Someone might get the impression that you are thinking in advance about your program. And just who gives you the authority to change the sequence of events for the weekly program? Isn’t there a church law somewhere that forbids that anyway?
