Dead Horse:

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.

The KELLYGRAM 12/02/07