Ten Suggestions

Quit feeling bad about not having a Lutheran book on strategic planning. Turn your attention to creating material on adapting resources. How about a rack near the entrance to your resource center with a series of handouts on "adapting Methodist resources" or "adapting African-American resources." On each handout, list people in that tradition who could be contacted. This would both help with specific questions and serve to honor different traditions using the center.


2. Don’t apologize about the resources you have but be willing to help people who may be struggling with perceived limitations. You can often do this by asking people about what has worked for them in other areas and what authors or publishers they have previously found useful.



3. Develop policies. To the extent that there are theological or ethical limits to resources you collect or the issues which you engage, it is best that these be articulated in writing by the governing board center. This helps to eliminate issues of personal prejudices among the staff and provides an opportunity for points of view to be expressed and balanced.



4. Don’t hesitate to counsel someone out. After you have heard and acknowledged what someone wants, and after you have listened actively, don’t hesitate to say that the resource center has decided not to collect resources expressing a certain viewpoint, endorsing certain practices, or discussing certain subjects. This is done most graciously when you can also direct someone to a place (and if possible a person) that can assist.



5. Don’t allow yourself to get stuck in a tug-of-war match with someone saying "yes, but" to your resource recommendations. When someone has said "yes, but" to more than two of your resource recommendations, shift the conversation to inviting the person to articulate what has worked previously, what might work, and where such a thing might be found or how it might be adapted from somewhere else.



6. When in doubt, be an active listener. Remember that the ticket to a resource center is a question about resources. Sometimes people most want assistance thinking through an issue or challenge. Often when they get this assistance through active listening, the original resource question changes greatly or even disappears entirely.



7. Don’t cover up for the religious specificity or minimize the denominational specificity of resources. If that is what you believe, observe how to you it seems that Rick Warren’s Purpose-Driven Life is shaped by Baptist sensibilities and invite the person to consider how it might be best used or adapted for use in another faith tradition.



8. Understand that your skill is as much in helping people to use well as it is in helping people to choose well. In most cases, how a resource is used is equally important as the quality of a resource. A great book on outreach read by the pastor and never discussed is not as useful as a mediocre book reach by the congregation’s board and discussed chapter by chapter.



9. Pick your battles. Realistically using resources well, and especially adapting or recreating them, takes time and creative energy. These are in short supply in a tired, harried world. Recently I heard of the term "steering wheel curriculum" to describe a curriculum that you could prepare to teach by reading it on the steering wheel of your car while driving to church. As people with passion for using resources well, we will naturally find ourselves at war with these trends. We need to pick our battles.



10. Find ways to do resource work from your personal faith center. Sometimes this may mean recommending resource from your own faith tradition, but more often this will be manifested in the question you brought to the use of a resource. If you find a way to be articulate about this you will invite the other person to be similarly articulate from a centered faith perspective.