Provocative Church: How to Sabotage Your Chruch

Here's an excerpt of a1944 'Simple Sabotage Field Manual' from the US Strategic Services,explaining how to train people to sabotage their workplace. Full of useful suggestions, from the very practical to the less so (i.e. bring a bag of moths into a theater showing propaganda films). It also recommends doing things through channels, making speeches, and referring matters to committee as techniques of sabotage.

What is scary is that this list of subversive and sabotaging acts is so eerily close to church meetings that I have been a part of (none at Big Creek - I truly am referring to other experiences).

So if you want to sabotage your church and their heart for kingdom ministry, then go ahead and implement these simple techniques. (For some of you, your church is already doing it.)

(1) Insist on doing everything through “channels.” Never permit short-cuts to be taken in order to expedite decisions.

(2) Make “speeches.” Talk as frequently as possible and at great length. Illustrate our “points” by long anecdotes and accounts of personal experiences. Never hesitate to make a few appropriate “patriotic” comments.

(3) When possible, refer all matters to committees, for “further study and consideration.” Attempt to make the committees as large as possible — never less than five.

(4) Bring up irrelevant issues as frequently as possible.

(5) Haggle over precise wordings of communications, minutes, resolutions.

(6) Refer back to matters decided upon at the last meeting. Attempt to re-open the question of the advisability of that decision.

(7) Advocate “caution.” Be “reasonable” and urge your fellow-conferees to be “reasonable” and avoid haste which might result in embarrassments or difficulties later on.

(8) Be worried about the propriety of any decision — raise the question of whether such action as is contemplated lies within the jurisdiction of the group or whether it might conflict with the policy of some higher echelon.