Category Archives: Change

Relational Intentionality

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Part 4 of a series on the book “Transformational Church“

The second transformational loop described by Ed Stetzer and Thom Rainer is labeled Engage. It contains three elements, the first of which, Vibrant Leadership, was covered here. Today, a look at Relational Intentionality.

A relational approach to reaching and developing people is woven throughout every ministry and practice. Relationships are the substance of the church culture.

We Are a Friendly Church

  • Transformational Churches intentionally build platforms to create relationships
  • The purpose of relationships in the Transformational Church is to see lives changed through the power of Christ

The Look of a Relationally Intentional Environment

What are the challenges within your church environment to cultivate relationships, and how can you address them?

What are the challenges in your church environment to intentionality, and how can you address them?

  • Produce family
  • Practice one-on-one relationships
  • Provide space for difficult people

Every member must be willing to minister because when God really moves, broken and hurting people show up. The outcast and marginalized need the compassion of Christ.

Systems and processes are present and must be aligned

  • A system is an environment, a way of doing things, providing the “how”
  • A process is a path with a purpose, a destination, providing the “where”

God’s delivery system for the gospel is relationships with people who have met Him

The excerpts above are from the book “Transformational Church” by Ed Stetzer and Thom Rainer. TC is the result of a comprehensive study of thousands of churches where truly changing lives is the standard set for ministry.

Other posts in the series:

Next: Embrace – Prayerful Dependence

Vibrant Leadership

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Part 3 of a series on the book “Transformational Church“

The second transformational loop described by Ed Stetzer and Thom Rainer is labeled Embrace. It contains three elements, the first of which is Vibrant Leadership.

Transformational leaders let God shape their church. The Transformational Church is Christ being presented to the community. Transformational Churches are tenacious about the vision and are people focused.

Understanding Transformational Leadership

  • Transformational Leadership understands that the church exists for the mission of God, and God gives leaders to help churches focus on the mission
  • Transformational Leadership focuses on leveraging every life for the kingdom of God around the world
  • Transformational Leadership is focused on the outside of the leader’s world
  • Transformational Leadership is missional in perspective and action-oriented in decision

Shift in Thinking

  • From one to many leaders
  • From “me” to “we”
  • From personal power to people empowerment
  • From church to the kingdom of God

Whether from bricks and mortar, programs, or just the inward pull of self, the church can become distracted from the mission of the kingdom. It did not take long in the early church for the epicenter of God’s activity to move away from house to house and life to life. With the advent of church buildings, the temptation was to become building-focused, inward, self-absorbed congregations. People became spectators. Scattering throughout the community as the church was replaced with the sacred, passive gathering in one place. When church is reduced to that place on the corner where we go on Sunday, we reduce the church and kingdom to something smaller than God intended.

The Leadership Structure of Transformational Churches

  • Traditional committees gave way to affinity-based teams
  • Membership is encouraged to discover strengths, spiritual gifts, and talents
  • Churches had less structure as opposed to more structure
  • Structures reflect confidence in their pastor and positional leaders
  • Congregational members did not vote on every issue
  • Small advisory teams and accountability groups worked alongside the pastor and staff

Jesus, Leading Transformation

  • Jesus invested in people
  • Jesus saw long and far
  • Jesus sent people away from Him on mission
  • Jesus grieved for communities
  • Jesus led a balanced life
  • Jesus embraced other cultures
  • Jesus gave up His will
  • Jesus surrounded Himself with lost people
  • Jesus’ harvest vision was leveraged by prayer
  • Jesus felt the needs of the people

Transformational Leadership Environments

  • Value a team approach to ministry
  • Values a sharper mission focus
  • Values new leadership priorities

Transitional Leaders advance through the following steps:

  • I join Him on mission or the “encounter” level
  • I lead others to join Him on mission or the “influence” level
  • I lead others to lead others, to join Him on mission, or the “leading leaders” level
  • I lead others to lead others to lead others to join Him on mission, or the “movement” level

The excerpts above are from the book “Transformational Church” by Ed Stetzer and Thom Rainer. Transformational Church is the result of a comprehensive study of thousands of churches where truly changing lives is the standard set for ministry.

Next: Embrace – Relational Intentionality

Previous posts in this series:

 

Missionary Mentality

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Second in a series of posts from the book “Transformational Church“

The first “transformational loop” in the transformation process is Discern – Transformational churches live out the essence of disciplemaking in their activities through worship, community, and mission. But they do so in the context of their culture.

To do worship, small groups, mission, leadership, prayer, and relationship effectively, you have to know the story of the people to whom God has sent you

Unfortunately, Christian leaders are often more in love with the way they do church than they are in love with people in their community.

Transitional Churches empower and release people to live on mission, with a missionary mentality, where they are right now – at the right time, following God’s activity and obeying His assignment.

The Missionary Mindset

  • Restless to look, learn, and live out the gospel
  • Activate ministries that are on behalf of the people to whom God has called them
  • God has called you to a people first and then to the task

Three Default Modes to Avoid

  • Deconstructionist – discontented tribe of leaders who obsess with what they will not do anymore
  • Methodologist – obsessed with what they will do better than the rest
  • Impressionist – students of conferences and successful leaders

Transformational churches demonstrate a passion to touch the world. They have learned to address the need to work both locally and globally.

Transformational Churches fully embrace missional without losing the mission:

  • They recognize it is God’s mission, and they are passionate about the mission as He describes it
  • They understand and obey God’s call to serve the poor and the hurting and are not afraid of a stronger engagement in social justice
  • They share God’s deep concern about His mission to the nations – that His name be praised from the lips of men and women from every corner of the globe
  • They are serious about joining God on His mission and obey His commands to disciple the nations

Transformational Churches are truly Acts 1:8 churches. They have a mindset to be a missionary in their community and ultimately to the entire world.

The excerpts above are from the book “Transformational Churches” by Ed Stetzer and Thom Rainer. Transformation Church is the result of a comprehensive study of thousands of churches where truly changing lives is the standard set for ministry.

Next: Embrace

The 7 Step Road Map to Being All In

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To have any hope of succeeding as a leader you need to get your team “all in.”

No matter the size of your team, few things will have a bigger impact on your performance than getting your people to buy into your ideas, your cause, and to believe what matters.

– All In, Adrian Gostick & Chester Elton

Best-selling authors of The Carrot Principle and The Orange Revolution, Adrian Gostick and Chester Elton’s new book All In answers one of the most overlooked leadership questions of the day: Why are some leaders able to get their employees to commit wholeheartedly to their culture and give that extra push that leads to outstanding results?

As with their previous works, a huge (in this case, 300,000 person) study led to a groundbreaking finding: leaders of the highest performing groups create a “culture of belief.” In these distinctive organizations, people believe in their leaders and in the organization’s vision, values, and goals. Team members are engaged, enabled, and energized (the authors use the term Three Es).

Based on the extensive interview process and combined with their years of experience, the authors created a seven-step road map for creating a culture of belief:

  • Define Your Burning Platform – define the mission with great clarity and instill a sense of urgency
  • Create a Customer Focus – focus on customers and mandate a pro-customer orientation
  • Develop Agility – learn to see the future and position your team to meet both seen and unseen challenges
  • Share Everything – create a culture that is a place of truth, has constant communication, and exhibits marked transparency
  • Partner with Your Talent – success is direct result of your teams’ unique ingenuity and talent
  • Root for Each Other – high levels of appreciation and camaraderie create a tangible esprit de corps
  • Establish Clear Accountability – teams must be held accountable for goals, but have the responsibility and tools to ensure their success, with appropriate rewards at completion

All In is a book about culture, but more than that it is the story of how great leaders create unique, inviting, and rewarding places to work – or serve.

What about you – are you ready to lead all in?

Defying Gravity

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The “rocket ride” comment in yesterday’s post reminded me of some remarks by Andy Stanley when he came to Elevation Church in Charlotte NC for one of our leader training sessions. They are an appropriate reminder as we consider changing change.

Recalling the dispute in Antioch and the resulting Jerusalem Council in Acts 15, Stanley developed the following thoughts about what the church should be vs. gravitational pull of culture.

1. There’s always a gravitational pull toward insiders and away from outsiders

  • You must continue to create empty seats at optimal worship times for the unchurched

People who were nothing like Jesus liked Jesus

2. There’s always a gravitational pull toward law and away from grace

  • Have as few policies as possible and as many conversations as possible

With conversations you can always extend grace

3. There’s always a gravitational pull toward complexity and away from simplicity

  • Do what you do well and do it better than anyone else

Complexity always slows things down, is expensive, and makes you lose distinctiveness in the community

4. There’s always a gravitational pull toward preserving and away from advancing

  • When you start preserving, you are building walls instead of bridges

Back when we had nothing, what would we have done?

If you want to defy gravity:

  • You must be a raving fan publicly
  • You must be an honest critic privately with the right people in the right environment for the right reason
  • You have to be extraordinarily generous

That’s how you keep the church in orbit.

History Being Made

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Today, in all likelihood, the Southern Baptist Convention will elect an African-American as its first president in its 167 year history.

That says a lot about a group that has its roots in the politics of slavery.

The Southern Baptist Convention began in 1845 largely due to the refusal of Northern Baptists to recognize slave owners as missionaries. For over 150 years, the Convention remained silent on the issue. Over the past two decades, though, the Convention has taken steps to recant its past. At its 150th anniversary meeting in 1995, it passes a resolution of apology and reconciliation for its racist past.

Fred Luter helped write it.

Today, Fred Luter Jr., pastor of New Orleans’ Franklin Avenue Baptist Church, is unopposed for election as president. Perhaps the most eloquent description of Luter was given by Thom Rainer, president of LifeWay – read it here.

I’ve always loved history – but it’s really exciting being a part of it.

Introducing the Scrum to ChurchWorld

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During the course of the past week’s posts I have journeyed from Generation Flux to Adaptability to Nostalgia to Agile Development to a new destination: the Scrum.

It’s actually all part of the same journey: 1) realizing tomorrow is not going to be like yesterday, and 2) What am I as a leader going to do about it?

Back to the Scrum. As a parent of four children, I have been involved in many sports, some for fun, more that were in a league setting. About three years ago, my youngest son-at that time a junior in high school-came home and said he had signed up for the rugby team at school.

 

Okay. New experience, new opportunity for learning.

 

 

In rugby, a scrum is a formalized contest for possession of the ball during a rugby game between the two sets of forwards who each assemble in a tight-knit formation with bodies bent and arms clasped around each other and push forward together against their opponents.

Hold that thought.

Yesterday I suggested that an Agile Manifesto for ChurchWorld needs to be developed. In my research to do just that, what do I encounter but a Scrum – but with a new definition:

In the agile world a scrum is a process framework within which people can address complex adaptive problems, while productively and creatively delivering products of the highest possible value.

I think it’s time to go back to the drawing board.

Learning from the World of Business Bankruptcy and Software Development

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Kodak, the iconic company that was synonymous with pictures, has declared bankruptcy.

When that news came out last week, I knew I would be getting around to connecting it to ChurchWorld. James Emery White, pastor of Mecklenburg Community Church in Charlotte, NC, already has: What Business Are You In? is a great post that every ChurchWorld leader needs to read.

As soon as I had finished reading it, my thoughts went back to the Generation Flux cover story from Fast Company that I posted here, here, and here last week. There were several topics that I had marked in it for future research, and one of them ties in nicely to the bankruptcy announcement by Kodak and White’s post.

It’s about being agile.

I’m not talking exclusively about physical agility, the ability to move quickly and with suppleness, skill, and control; I’m not talking only about mental agility, the ability to be able to think quickly and intelligently. It’s really a combination of the two, and more.

Software development used to be developed by what chaos expert DJ Patil called the “waterfall” process:

One group develops the product, another builds visual mockups…and finally a set of engineers builds it to some specification document.

Think Microsoft and their practice of having a designated schedule of issuing large, finished releases of their products (Windows 95, Windows 2000, etc.). Today that process has given way to “agile” development, what Patil calls “the ability to adapt and iterate quickly throughout the product life cycle.” In today’s software world, that concept follows the precepts of “The Agile Manifesto,” a 2001 document written by a group of developers who stated a preference for:

  • individuals and interactions over processes and tools
  • working software over comprehensive documentation
  • responding to change over following a plan

Maybe it’s time for an Agile Manifesto for ChurchWorld.

If Only Things Were Like They Used To Be

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Nostalgia is a natural human emotion, a survival mechanism that pushes people to avoid risk by applying what we’ve learned and relying on what’s worked before.

It’s also about as useful as an appendix right now.

That quote is from Fast Company Editor Robert Safian, writing the cover story “Generation Flux” for the February 2012 issue. He goes on to add:

When times seem uncertain, we instinctively become more conservative; we look to the past, to times that seemed simpler, and we have the urge to recreate them. This impulse is as true for organizations  as for people. But when the past has been blown away by new technology, by the ubiquitous and always-on global hypernetwork, beloved best practices may well be useless.

ChurchWorld, to a great extent, finds itself in that situation right now.

There are huge shifts occurring in the economic, social, cultural, and spiritual fabric of our lives right now. That’s not new – change has always been a part of who we as humans are. But what’s different is the pace of change. It’s not just getting faster – it’s accelerating along an exponential curve.

And the response of ChurchWorld?

Put a fence around your facility and charge admission to a museum dedicated to the 1990s – or 1980s – or 1970s – or 1960s – or 1950s – or…

Oh, it’s not that blatant – but it is obvious.

It’s time to change.

My absolute favorite quote about change is from Will Rogers:

Will Rogers quote

To survive THRIVE in this age of flux, you have to claim what makes your church unique, what sets you apart from 10,000 other churches, what God has uniquely gifted your people to be and do.  Hold onto that – and change any and every thing else that needs to be changed in order to live out God’s calling.

Efficiency – yes, Adaptability – no…

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…Generation Flux to the rescue!

Fast Company’s February issue has a cover story and several articles about Generation Flux. Read yesterday’s post here for a quick summary. Better yet, go to the website here to read the whole article.

Need a little teaser? Here’s another quote from the lead article by editor Robert Safian:

The challenge they [traditional organizations] face is the same one staring down most of America, not to mention government, schools, and other institutions that have defined how we’ve lived. These organizations have structures and processes build for an industrial age, where efficiency is paramount but adaptability is terribly difficult.

Sound like any institution you know – say, ChurchWorld?

Dev Patnaik, cofounder and CEO of strategy firm Jump Associates adds the following:

In an increasingly turbulent and interconnected world, ambiguity is rising to unprecedented levels. That’s something our current systems can’t handle.

If ambiguity is high and adaptability is required, then you simply can’t afford to be sentimental about the past. Future-focus is a signature trait of Generation Flux. It is also an imperative for organizations that want to survive: Trying to replicate what worked yesterday only leaves you vulnerable.

Can I get an amen to that?