This from the Church Leaders Intelligence Report (and please, no cracks about that being an oxymoron):
The tribal wisdom of the Dakota Indians says when you discover you’re riding a dead horse, the best strategy is to dismount. However, in professional ministry, because of the relationships and emotional attachments involved, other strategies are often tried with dead horses, including:
* Buying a stronger whip.
* Changing riders.
* Threatening the horse with termination.
* Appointing a committee to study the horse.
* Arranging to visit other sites to see how they ride dead horses.
* Reclassifying the dead horse as “living-impaired.”
* Harnessing several dead horses together for increased speed.
* Doing a time management study to see if lighter riders would improve productivity.
* Declaring a dead horse has lower overhead and therefore performs better.
* Promoting the dead horse to a supervisory position.
Byron Harvey 