Necessity Is The Mother Of Invention

There is an old saying:

"Necessity is the mother of invention."

It's very true, & by adhering to this phrase you can build & improve your church or ministry.

By way of example, when we first decided to start a Spanish service @ FRC-Lima, after having had only an English service for a long period of time, we began to receive teaching DVDs in Spanish to feature in the new Spanish service. We began to do so. Big problem: the teaching DVDs we were receivng had been translated by a Guatemalan man, & he was using Guatemalan slang & phrases in his translation.

In effect, he was using "Guatemalan Spanish."

This did not go over well in Lima, Peru.

After an initial burst of excitement, people stopped coming to the Spanish service. Their main complaint was that they did not like the "Guatemalan Spanish" translation. They didn't understand the Guatemalan slang and phrases used. So they stopped coming to the service.

Spanish, we quickly learned, is different from country to country in Latin America, just as "USA English" will different a bit from "British English" or "Australian English" - in various words, phrases, & slang.

What to do?

We remembered that necessity is the mother of invention.

Thus, we "invented" our very own translation team, & we took over all of the English-to-Spanish translation - in "Peruvian Spanish" - and we also took over the translation and captioning of all on-screen Bible verses, titles, graphics, announcements, song lyrics, etc. We even added little touches of "Peruvian flavor" to our translation, such as inserting the names of well-known Lima stores & restaurants, when & where appropriate.

Result: people started coming back to the Spanish service.

We had been faced w/ a challenging situation when people @ FRC-Lima spoke w/ their feet & left the Spanish service b/c they didn't like "Guatemalan Spanish."

We fixed the problem by embracing the fact that necessity is the mother of invention.

We became inventive. We had to. It was a necessity.

What necessity exists right now in your church or ministry?

What can you & your team invent to make it better?