KFLCC Kingdom Economics

F INANCIAL S ECURITY IN THE L AST D AYS

or health, then your talent or gift can bring income to you. 4. Prune the Dead Weight

I mentioned that dead branches will eventually pull life and strength from living ones. Thus the lifeless nonproductive branch becomes a liability to the living branches. Nearly every business, organization and church will eventually encounter both living branches and dead branches—or productive and nonproductive projects. Know when to cut your losses and either close or sell anything that is draining the life and money from the productive side of the organization. Even people can drain the life (and sometimes customers and money) from a business. The person who produces no fruit always offers excuses for why they are unable to perform productively. They have an excuse for why they are always late to work, why they cannot return from lunch on time, or why they are talking around the coffee machine when they should be answering the phones. Two mistakes are made in business and ministry. The first is to hire family, just for the sake of giving them a job. Always consider their work ethic before hiring for the sole reason that they are related to the owner or the pastor. Relatives sometimes think they can be held to a lower standard than other employees, and family members can be more difficult to fire once they are hired. The second mistake is to keep an employee who is a dead branch and cannot or will not do the job. If you have a complainer, an employee who cannot get along with others, or a lazy person on staff, their emotional instability and negative attitude will drain the life out of the other workers. It is better to pay a higher wage to one capable and determined worker, than to provide lower pay for two workers who have a difficult time getting the job done. Even volunteers can cause trouble. Ministries and churches depend upon volunteers for particular work assignments, and sometimes they can become territorial. There have been times in our ministry when a volunteer’s attitude became competitive, selfish and prideful. Sometimes they had a hidden agenda or a negative attitude that caused a wedge of contention between them and others. Remember, a staff member or volunteer is representing you, the CEO, the company director or the pastor. It is better to remove a few contentious people from positions than to allow them to corrupt the dedicated and effective employees and volunteers who obediently follow instructions and perform their task with dedication, honor, and integrity.

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