Dangerous Leadership - Losing Money

At this very moment I'm sitting in a Christian bookstore that is owned by the church I used to work for. It's a rather large store, half of the store is a Christian bookstore, the other half is a coffee shop with free wifi (the only reason I'm here). This store moved here from another location a couple of years ago, they actually had two stored that were trimmed down to one really large store. The new store is in an old part of town, with very little foot traffic (the foot traffic is actually not the target customer for the store - they're the kind that actually need the church, not the store). This store has tons of knick knack paddy wack kind of stuff, that very few people by, and the coffee shop takes up as much retail space as the the store, thought there's almost never anyone in the coffee shop. The store is managed by a very nice, too nice lady. Not the kind of lady you want running a store if you want to make money.

Needless to say the store is losing money. It has been for many years. I know this for a fact because of my knowledge of the budget. Maybe this year it will make money, that I don't know.

I have a couple of questions. Why keep a store open that is losing the money. It's not costing the church any money at this point because the store has reserves of some sort, but when it runs out of those what will happen, will the church actually be paying to keep the store open. I'm not sure of all these details. I actually talked to the senior pastor about this subject, and he said the purpose of the store wasn't to make money (I thought that was the purpose of all stores) rather to be a resource to the community.

What would be the right thing to do? I have to solutions. Shut the store down. With the internet, most people probably by their Christian media and even knick knacks online, so business will probably never be good. The other solution, hire a store manager who's going to turn the store around and start making some hard decisions. Some people may have to be let go, others may need quite a bit of prodding. The store may need to shut down the coffee shop, or at least retake half of the space for the actual store where money could possibly be made, get rid of the knick knacks, (at least most of them) and do some research of what people are actually wanting to buy. The customer service is decent, small-townish, though there have been many times when I've had to wait quite a bit of time at the counter, with only two people in line in front of me, and three people at three cash registers.

The store is in a comfortable place, just like many churches. It's not losing a ton of money, but it's definitely not making money. It's not really moving backward, maybe a little - but it's a long way from moving forward. Too many churches are in this place, they're not losing too many people, but they're losing a few. Not enough to put the church out of business. They're definitely not reaching new people. They're not moving backward (though in business if you're not moving forward daily, you are moving backward) but they're far from moving forward.

What many churches need is some dangerous leadership. They need to hire someone who's going to come in and make some tough decisions. They need to focus once again on the customer, the new customer, not the residents. You may have to lose some people to gain more people, but if you're moving forward it will be worth it. If you're reaching more people for Christ it will be worth it. If people's lives are being changed it will be worth it.

Let's stop playing is safe and comfortable, and be in the business of Dangerous Leadership!