Change (what corporate America is wrestling with)

Many of you know that I work a full time job in addition to my part time church job (an oxymoron none the less). The company I work for is a technology company. We have to take classes occasionally like Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, and Diversity in the workplace, but recently they are mandating a class called New Reality.

Interestingly, the whole class, about three hours of instruction, is all on managing change.

Here's some interesting stats: In the 1950s an organization, on average, experienced one organizational change in a decade. Implication: You have 3-5 years to prepare for the change, and 3-5 years before the next one took place. In the 60s it became two organizational changes a decade. In the 70s three. In the 80s a change every 18 months. This significantly began to reduce the amount of time an organization had time to prepare for and recover from change. Currently an organization can be undergoing multiple changes at the same time.With every change there is a loss in productivity from the workforce. The organizations that can transition faster tend to be the most successful because they limit the amount of time their people stay in transition.

So, why am I bringing this up? It reinforces for me what Gene Appel said in my class about planning the transition being the oft overlooked, but most significant part of leading through change. I also bring it up because this movement to rapid rates of change in the workplace, translates to rapid changes in the culture.

Now I used to say that churches must remain aware of the direction of culture, and at one time this may have translated, for me, that the church would need to be able to change just as rapidly. While I still think that we need to be able to continually predict where culture is going, and even plan to head it off and redirect its path, I also think it is even more critical to supply the anchor of the unchanging message of the hope we have in Christ to the masses. We should be the beach to the the shipwrecked that offers stability when everything else around them seems to be changing by the moment. It's also why I see that the churches who will be available to provide a way to celebrate Sabbath regularly will have the most impact in the coming years. I sense a cry in the culture for rest, and there is no better rest than to unburden ourselves at the feet of Christ. Churches who begin to be sensitive to the need we have of exchanging yokes with Christ I believe will be the ones God grows in the next ten years.

Machiavelli says...

"There is nothing more difficult to plan, more doubtful of success, nor more dangerous to manage than the creation of a new order of things...Whenever his enemies have the ability to attack the innovator, they do so with the passion of partisans, while the others defend him sluggishly, so that the innovator and his party alike are vulnerable."  - Niccolo Machiavelli

I've not only seen this play out in real life, but personally experienced it.  People really are slow, even sluggish, to come to the defense of the innovator.  They don't mind that she is sticking her neck out and they even strongly encourage it, but out of a desire to preseserve themselves the encouragers of innovation fail to show the same passion publicly.  

People must be willing to put their signature on the line, and be called out by name to all who would hear that the innovation has their full support.

I think back to the 2008 Consumer Electronics Show.  The Blue-ray and HD-DVD war was still hot, and there was much discussion about which format would win.  The day before Toshiba was to make a big announcement that a major film production company had signed an exclusive agreement to put their films on HD-DVD, they publicly backed out.  The big party Toshiba had planned was instead cancelled at the last minute, and within weeks they had cut all research and development and production into HD-DVD.  I believe the cost to the company was one billion dollars.

From that moment on Blue-ray has been the only format mentioned, and while HD-DVD may still have some other applications you will not find a movie at Blockbuster or Netflix in HD-DVD format.

HD-DVD was indeed an innovation, and Toshiba led, but because they failed to partner with others willing to allow their necks to be at risk it cost them a billion.

The church won't lose a billion dollars, but as innovators we must continually be as cunning as a snake when it comes to promoting and implementing all of those good ideas.  We should never be deceitful, but should always make sure we're not the only ones willing to die.  Otherwise the church will suffer from the loss of an innovator, and from the growth the change would have catalyzed.

Send a letter to President Obama via IJM

Dear Robert,

The inauguration of President Barack Obama has historic significance that citizens across the political spectrum can appreciate and celebrate. With at least nine new Senators and 52 new Congressional Representatives coming to Capitol Hill, change is in the air in Washington.

But there are some things that haven’t changed. Beyond our borders, the poorest of the poor are victimized by violent crime – sexual violence, slavery, trafficking, police brutality, and property theft from widows and orphans. And justice systems in poor countries are ill-equipped to protect victims of violent oppression and apprehend and prosecute perpetrators. Add your name to a letter bringing these important issues to President Obama’s attention.

IJM works in twelve countries to investigate and prosecute exploitation of poor and vulnerable children, women and men, but we alone cannot provide relief for all the victims who desperately need it.

WHAT YOU CAN DO: Make sure that the Obama Administration and the 111th Congress help make public justice systems capable of protecting the poorest of the poor, and the most vulnerable among them: children and women.

Please add your name to a letter bringing these important issues to President Obama’s attention – and share this message with others. Thank you for raising your voice.

Warmly,
Eileen Campbell
Director of Justice Campaigns

Changing the world...

"People don't want to give anything to a church just to help them flush the toilets and turn on the lights.  But if you can show them that you are changing the world, then they will make substantial sacrifice."

Reflecting on something Chuck Booher said while at the Londen Institute I believe that Sunday's Serve Gathering was a tremendous opportunity for people to see how Harmony is changing the world.

I only hope that we can take parts of the stories that were shared Sunday and bring them to the entire congregation over the next year.  I guess it will be my job to make sure that happens.

In a pit...reflections on the rest.

Reflection on the last 82 pages of "In a Pit with a Lion on a Snowy Day"

In Chapter 6 for whatever reason I was struck by a verse of scripture Mark quotes Matthew 11:12 , "...and forceful men lay hold of it."  I don't know why but it never grabbed me like it grabbed me today.  The Kingdom of God forcefully advances and is not some kiddie ride at the theme park, but involves life and death circumstances and only those whose intent is to forcefully advance the Gospel should be included.  However, this forceful advancement is not with violence or vengeance, but is often at the cost of willing to be beaten to death.

Over the last decade I wonder if we just made being a Christian look way too easy.  We failed to offend for the sake of the seeker.  We failed to confuse for the sake of the prideful.  We failed to be willing to fail for the sake of living in the known instead of the unknown.  We cannot accidentally stumble into the Kingdom of God, but we must forcefully resist the evil in the world at every second of every day.

In a Pit With a Lion on a Snowy Day - Reflections on the first 100 pages

I'm reading several books for class and in the context of that class I am to write an interactive discussion with some of the things the books highlight.  I felt like that since I'm writing them for class I might as well share them with the world.  So, here it goes.

My first 100 pages of "In a Pit with a Lion on a Snowy Day"

In chapter 2 Mark writes, "When it comes to God there are no degrees of difficulty."  This truth resonates deep within me.  It begged the question, "How often do I excuse the likelihood that God will intervene, solve the problem, heal the sick person, because it's just a really big problem."  

In December, Mom discovered that she had some spots on her lungs and her liver.  Today we know it to be a recurrence of her uterine cancer, which was thought to have been contained and removed three years ago.  So many times before as I have prayed for people who have been infected with such a serious disease my prayers were soft.  They would begin with qualifiers like "God if it is your will" or "God I know you can, but if you don't."  In some way I was trying to give God a way out just in case what I asked for was not given.  

With this perception that there are no degrees of difficulty with God then I realize that I'm not making a list for Santa Clause with a smattering of really big gifts and a few small ones just so I got something from him.  If God is God, then I just need to wear Him out with my requests until He gives me what I desire, or until He reveals to me what my heart should really be asking for.

In chapter 3 Mark shares a story of Sarah when faced with fear was able to face her fears because of one reason, "I was called."  Recently I've had conversations about calling.  I've asked questions about how old one has to be to know they have been called to do something.  Should we limit short-term mission participation to only those who feel like they have been called to go? 

While these questions aren't necessarily addressed in this chapter I felt like Sarah's one reason to go is really the only reason we should ever have for going to do anything.  Many times we answer a general call like "Go and make disciples of all nations," or "pray without ceasing," but some times there is a specific call of God on our lives meant solely for us like Moses being called to go back to Egypt, or me being called to preach and lead the church.  I believe we need to spend a lot more time quietly discerning our paths into ministry.

The last thing I want to mention is in Chapter 5.  Mark summarizes the parable of the talents by saying, "The reward for good work was MORE work."  I often sense in churches that there is a tendency to want to sit back and enjoy the fruits of our labor.  Pastors will lead a church to grow even beyond their own expectations and then prepare for retirement and try to ride the momentum as far as it will carry them thinking the reward for their hard work was rest, relaxation, full time vacation.  In reality, we who lead should expect the workload and responsibility to increase.  While that actually excites me I think that it might exhaust others I work with, and even one I live with.

Reproducing Churches: Dave and Jon Ferguson, Community Christian Church

Instead of thinking about growing in order to reproduce we need to switch into realizing that when we reproduce you will grow. You add a service and you will grow. You add a small group and you will grow.

2 Timothy 2:2

Greg Nettle - The Greatest Challenge in the next decade

We are going to be forced to deal with questions surrounding loving homosexuals. With California now inviting couples to come and be married it will involve recognition by government, and the church must be prepared to speak truth in love into this situation.

We need to answer questions like:

Do you baptize a same sex couple who has been legally married if they confess faith?
How do you teach scripture without generating homophobes?
How can you best minister to people who have a pro homosexual lifestyle?

More of Chuck Booher

Book or Resource:  CEO Toolkit, a measurement tool called the T12 has been very effective.

They track baptisms, offering, attendance, decisions to rededicate or 1st time.

Tithing...

Tony Evans sermon on Tithing is off the charts.

24% of their people tithe

They demand that the staff and elders tithe, and they check.

How do you attract level 10 leaders

1.  Train and Raise up Leaders from within.

2.  Have BIG Goals

3.  Be super transparent

4.  Manage well

After Chuck came in they purged the rolls and had everyone sign a membership contract.  Four things people agreed to do were tithe, in Word every day, serving in a ministry, and in a small group.  Went from 22,000 to about 1,000 on rolls.

Quotes and summary

"We live in a world today that desperately want to see the church be the church."

"People don't want to give anything to a church just to help them flush the toilets and turn on the lights.  But if you can show them that you are changing the world, then they will make substantial sacrifice."

They are not building a church that "is for everybody."  They are building a church of sold out followers of Christ.  They seek God, and want seekers to see them seeking God, but they want the guy cheating on his wife to be uncomfortable, and the unbeliever to feel like something out of this world is happening at Crossroads.

Chuck Booher - Crossroads Christian Church

The church had over $500k of unpaid bills when Chuck took over and were 6 months from closing the doors of a church of over 2000 in attendance.  Water and electric were threatening to cut off service. Worship pastor was having an affair.  Another staff person was living with her boyfriend.  It was an overwhelming problem.

First 3/4 of Chuck's first year they baptized 480 people.

In 40 days they raised $640,000

Paid off all past due bills in a year.

In the next year they baptized 738 people

Have highest attendance in church's history

Worship pastor had an affair, fired him, then offered him restoration.  He's been restored in ministry in another church.

It's hard to tell this story in writing.  I wish you all were here to hear it, because a miracle really happened here and it is continuing.

More quotes from Gene Appel

Churches that don't change die.

Churches can become over-managed and under-led over time.

At the peak of the Organizational S-curve it is critical to make a change.

89% of American Christians asked the question, "Why does the church exist?" answered, "To meet the needs of me and my family."

Acts 2:42 Churches sometimes don't experience Acts 2:47 results 

Attendance and giving may go up but when asking the question, "How do we measure up to the Biblical principles and purposes of the church?" they (Central Christian in Las Vegas) realized that the Kingdom was not growing because most of their growth was through transfer.

You never want to step back to look at your ministry and realize "I built a crowd, but I did not build a church."

When we fear change sometimes we forget the eternal significance of unchanged lives.  And everything is worth the risk when we take that into account.

A quote for all of you "Change Agents"

If you are called to be a change agent you will never please everyone. So, be ok with just pleasing the One who sent you.

More Leading through change with Gene Appel

How to Kill Your Church...without Changing

1. Naively assuming that churches are as resistant to change as other organizations
   
2. Neglecting to sell the problem first.  If people don't understand that there is a problem they will never buy into the solution.
   
3. Ignoring the emotions of change.  People will leave if you make change and they will leave if you don't.  You will never have 100% of people on board with change.
   

    Types of church people: 
    Like Change                    Will help        Resist Change
    Creatives, Progressives     Builders         Foundationals, Anchors
    4.  Launching without a supportive leading/Sr. pastor.  In their research they found that chance for failure was 100% when this happened.
    5.  Focusing on the change instead of on the transitions.  Need a transition plan so that you take into account where you are and the people involved.
    6.  Over-accelerating the rate of change.  All change is stressful.  Size of change dictates the rate.

How to change your church...without killing it

1. Prepare the soil - Need data to be informed, so that you can raise the urgency, and identify and sell the problem.  Be honest about your data (Where is the growth coming from?)  Form the Dream Team (4-7 people) that plans, cultivates ideas, etc.  Getting away for 2-3 days can help make progress that would typically take 2-3 years.  You must form a compelling vision.  It is strategic to affirm the past in order to build the future.
2. Plant the seed (initiating change) - transformational change takes 4 years.
   
3. Cultivate with patience and persistance- Celebrate every win.  Share stories of transformation.
   
4. Harvest 

Generate - a midweek worship service for 12-30 year olds?

That's right.  Crossroads Christian Church in Corona, California has gone through some major turmoil in the last year or so, and the team that was brought in to sustain it has a midweek service that ministers to 12-30 year olds.

I went last night.  And it was amazing.  There were 9 baptisms that ranged in age from middle school girl to college graduate.  The worship team was phenomenal, and mostly because they were really trying to lead people to the throne of God and not just display their talent.  It helped that the lead of that group is a young lady with a seriously penetrating voice.  The service is held in the main sanctuary, and there were over 2000 people in attendance. They have a room right off of the sanctuary, called the "Living Room," where people are directed to go for the invitation. 

But that wasn't the most affirming thing.  The most affirming thing was that everything they did was in your face and unashamedly bold.  They used a hymn to close the service, before the talk they broke up the congregation into groups of 2-3 people to pray for one another, at the invitation somewhere between 10-20 people came forward, they took up an offering, they shared two stories about people in their congregation and while the talk was all over the place it was impactful because of the transparency of the speaker.

It's without question where I feel like worship will need to go in the next ten years in order to be relevent to the maority of unchurched people.  Why ten years?  Because I'm in California, and it'll take that long for the culture in Central Kentucky to be where it is now in CA.  :)

So, I think Harmony should be expecting Andrew to begin to need to use the main sanctuary, and I think that service may need to eventually become a combo of Journey and what we were trying to do with the Arcade.

I'd love to see comments on that. :)

Gene Appel - How to change your church...without killing you

How to Change Your Church...Without Killing You

Four C's that can kill your spirit

1. Conflict 

    Guard your over-reactions (2 timothy 2:24-25)

2. Confusion that leads to a loss of Courage

3. Comparison

    Joyfully celebrate who God made me to be to help confront the thoughts of not measuring up.

4. Crushes - personal crisis comes along as first three are happening.

    Allow God to work in you during the crisis

    Know that if I have Jesus Christ, then I have enough.

    Don't be afraid to allow God to work through you during your crisis.

Models of Church Planting

Tim Goddu, World Impact 

Models of Church Planting

• Franchise Model - Denomination attraction
  
• Parent Model - Mother starts a daughter church
  
• Partnership - two or more churches combine forces
  
• Satellite- Video venues
  
• Unplanned pregnancy - split
  
• Parachute drop - left alone
  
• Beachhead model - community development 
  
• Organic Church - high on discipleship and outreach and meet in established businesses or residences
  
• Missionary model - A missions organization ministers to unchurched, often cross-culturally, and plants churches.

WI's Model is a Volcano.  

At the base is Evangelism:  live in the community that you serve, minister to the whole family and to the whole person (spiritually, physically, emotionally) through establishing camps, clinics, tutoring, housing, schools, job training, clothes, etc.

World Impact has established three schools.  Typically $50/month, kids wear uniforms, families go to the church plant.

Next Level is Equipping, teach people to lead

Third level is Empowering, allow people to lead

Times Article: "As an atheist, I truly believe Africa needs God"

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From The Times

December 27, 2008

As an atheist, I truly believe Africa needs God

Missionaries, not aid money, are the solution to Africa's biggest problem - the crushing passivity of the people's mindset

Matthew Parris

Before Christmas I returned, after 45 years, to the country that as a boy I knew as Nyasaland. Today it's Malawi, and The Times Christmas Appeal includes a small British charity working there. Pump Aid helps rural communities to install a simple pump, letting people keep their village wells sealed and clean. I went to see this work.

It inspired me, renewing my flagging faith in development charities. But travelling in Malawi refreshed another belief, too: one I've been trying to banish all my life, but an observation I've been unable to avoid since my African childhood. It confounds my ideological beliefs, stubbornly refuses to fit my world view, and has embarrassed my growing belief that there is no God.

Now a confirmed atheist, I've become convinced of the enormous contribution that Christian evangelism makes in Africa: sharply distinct from the work of secular NGOs, government projects and international aid efforts. These alone will not do. Education and training alone will not do. In Africa Christianity changes people's hearts. It brings a spiritual transformation. The rebirth is real. The change is good.

I used to avoid this truth by applauding - as you can - the practical work of mission churches in Africa. It's a pity, I would say, that salvation is part of the package, but Christians black and white, working in Africa, do heal the sick, do teach people to read and write; and only the severest kind of secularist could see a mission hospital or school and say the world would be better without it. I would allow that if faith was needed to motivate missionaries to help, then, fine: but what counted was the help, not the faith.

But this doesn't fit the facts. Faith does more than support the missionary; it is also transferred to his flock. This is the effect that matters so immensely, and which I cannot help observing.

First, then, the observation. We had friends who were missionaries, and as a child I stayed often with them; I also stayed, alone with my little brother, in a traditional rural African village. In the city we had working for us Africans who had converted and were strong believers. The Christians were always different. Far from having cowed or confined its converts, their faith appeared to have liberated and relaxed them. There was a liveliness, a curiosity, an engagement with the world - a directness in their dealings with others - that seemed to be missing in traditional African life. They stood tall.

At 24, travelling by land across the continent reinforced this impression. From Algiers to Niger, Nigeria, Cameroon and the Central African Republic, then right through the Congo to Rwanda, Tanzania and Kenya, four student friends and I drove our old Land Rover to Nairobi.

We slept under the stars, so it was important as we reached the more populated and lawless parts of the sub-Sahara that every day we find somewhere safe by nightfall. Often near a mission.

Whenever we entered a territory worked by missionaries, we had to acknowledge that something changed in the faces of the people we passed and spoke to: something in their eyes, the way they approached you direct, man-to-man, without looking down or away. They had not become more deferential towards strangers - in some ways less so - but more open.

This time in Malawi it was the same. I met no missionaries. You do not encounter missionaries in the lobbies of expensive hotels discussing development strategy documents, as you do with the big NGOs. But instead I noticed that a handful of the most impressive African members of the Pump Aid team (largely from Zimbabwe) were, privately, strong Christians. “Privately” because the charity is entirely secular and I never heard any of its team so much as mention religion while working in the villages. But I picked up the Christian references in our conversations. One, I saw, was studying a devotional textbook in the car. One, on Sunday, went off to church at dawn for a two-hour service.

It would suit me to believe that their honesty, diligence and optimism in their work was unconnected with personal faith. Their work was secular, but surely affected by what they were. What they were was, in turn, influenced by a conception of man's place in the Universe that Christianity had taught.

There's long been a fashion among Western academic sociologists for placing tribal value systems within a ring fence, beyond critiques founded in our own culture: “theirs” and therefore best for “them”; authentic and of intrinsically equal worth to ours.

I don't follow this. I observe that tribal belief is no more peaceable than ours; and that it suppresses individuality. People think collectively; first in terms of the community, extended family and tribe. This rural-traditional mindset feeds into the “big man” and gangster politics of the African city: the exaggerated respect for a swaggering leader, and the (literal) inability to understand the whole idea of loyal opposition.

Anxiety - fear of evil spirits, of ancestors, of nature and the wild, of a tribal hierarchy, of quite everyday things - strikes deep into the whole structure of rural African thought. Every man has his place and, call it fear or respect, a great weight grinds down the individual spirit, stunting curiosity. People won't take the initiative, won't take things into their own hands or on their own shoulders.

How can I, as someone with a foot in both camps, explain? When the philosophical tourist moves from one world view to another he finds - at the very moment of passing into the new - that he loses the language to describe the landscape to the old. But let me try an example: the answer given by Sir Edmund Hillary to the question: Why climb the mountain? “Because it's there,” he said.

To the rural African mind, this is an explanation of why one would not climb the mountain. It's... well, there. Just there. Why interfere? Nothing to be done about it, or with it. Hillary's further explanation - that nobody else had climbed it - would stand as a second reason for passivity.

Christianity, post-Reformation and post-Luther, with its teaching of a direct, personal, two-way link between the individual and God, unmediated by the collective, and unsubordinate to any other human being, smashes straight through the philosphical/spiritual framework I've just described. It offers something to hold on to to those anxious to cast off a crushing tribal groupthink. That is why and how it liberates.

Those who want Africa to walk tall amid 21st-century global competition must not kid themselves that providing the material means or even the knowhow that accompanies what we call development will make the change. A whole belief system must first be supplanted.

And I'm afraid it has to be supplanted by another. Removing Christian evangelism from the African equation may leave the continent at the mercy of a malign fusion of Nike, the witch doctor, the mobile phone and the machete.

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