My son and I volunteer regularly for the National Park Service at the Civil War battlefield in Fredericksburg, Virginia. The story of the Union fiasco that took place here is instructive for ministry leaders, as it illustrates the danger of allowing supporting activities to overwhelm the main effort, whether for an army or for a ministry.

In December 1862, newly appointed Army of the Potomac Commander Ambrose Burnside stole a march on Confederate General Robert E. Lee's Army of Northern Virginia. Burnside rapidly moved his forces south to Fredericksburg, intending to finally seize the initiative from his famously aggressive opponent.Lee was able to respond, however, digging in along the heights above the town while Burnside lay stalled north of the Rappahannock River.

This set up a major confrontation over this sleepy Southern waypoint halfway between Washington DC and Richmond. Once he finally got across the river, Burnside elected to attack the Confederate right flank, where Lee's supply depot at Hamilton's Crossing offered a potentially decisive point for the Union's effort. Strangely, though, due to a confusing and still controversial sequence of orders and interpretations, Burnside's subordinate General William Franklin sent only two divisions against Confederate General Stonewall Jackson's entire entrenched company. The strategy was sound enough, but he had committed too little force to have any hope at success.

Meanwhile, as he waited for Franklin's attacks to evolve, Burnside was gradually feeding six divisions into his "supporting" assault on Marye's Heights. Here Lee held an impossibly strong defensive position, with his artillery on the high ground and his infantry behind a protective stone wall. But with little happening to the south, Burnside felt compelled to keep sending the men forward into this crippling Confederate line. It was a complete train wreck.

Burnside's intended supporting effort had inexplicably morphed into his main effort, and at a horrific cost: over 12,600 Union casualties and an embarrassingly ham-handed and lopsided defeat. Lee famously observed in observing the carnage, "It is well that war is so terrible, or we should grow to enjoy it too much."

This battle holds a cautionary analogy for the church. As ministry organizations grow, they easily become weighed down and distracted by their growing support functions: administration, event management, stage management, social events, buildings and other property, meetings and more meetings ... These become "must-pay" taxes on the ministry's limited resources: time, money, energy, gifts, focus, etc. It's distressingly common for evolving ministries to become so weighed down by these obligations that they essentially forget why they exist. They become preoccupied with--and suffocated by--their supporting activities.

I was recently involved in a strategic planning day for my church's 2009 activities. We began with prayer, asking God to reveal His direction for our ministry. We then asked some fundamental questions: - What is the purpose of God's church in the world? - What are our guiding principles? - For what particular mission has God prepared and equipped this local body?

We then dissected the major functions of church life: worship, discipleship, outreach and caregiving. For each we asked for God to clarify His goals for us, asking hard questions about how we're using the time, money and talents he's made available to us. At each turn, we discovered how quickly our good intentions can be strangled by all of our accumulated obligations, many of which have little to do with our purpose. They just grew on us over time, and have silently been leeching the energy out of our ministry.

It has been often said that "the main thing is to make the main thing the main thing." It sounds simple, but it takes concentrated effort to keep our eyes on the prize. As General Burnside could certainly attest, allowing supporting activities to overwhelm the main effort can lead us to waste our God-given strength attacking the stone wall of futility.