Learn to tell your story …

We live out a stories about who we are, not a list of propositions. This may not seem obvious to some of us, but its true. Kaihan Krippendorff, one of Fast Company’s Expert Bloggers, noted the following in a post yesterday about the power of narratives:

When humans first started to communicate with each other, they did so by sharing stories. They kept their history and traditions alive by spinning a tale to connect a sequence of events. Because this has been going on for so long, there is something instinctive in our brains that makes us attuned to narratives and stories.

Stories are how we learn. As Iacoboni explains, “Early on in life we learn a lot of things through stories. As a child, you listen to your parents and teachers and you learn lessons from their stories about right and wrong. When you go to bed, you are told stories. There is something almost primal about our evolution and development that leads us back to listening to stories.”

So to be a great communicator, a person needs to understand the importance of using narratives. To get people excited about a new idea or thought, he or she needs to be a great storyteller.

I appreciate that Krippendorf left us with homework.

1. Does my company have a story? Where did we come from and how did we get here?
2. Can I craft my company narrative in a way that other people can relate to?
3. Can reliving my company narrative on a daily basis make my business stronger and more focused?

I got to get to my homework now, so why are you still reading?

What’s in a name? Mission or Church?

Brad Abare over at Church Marketing Sucks described traveling to Hawaii for a co-worker’s wedding. While there they worshiped at Blue Water Mission, a new church in downtown Honolulu. Brad was struck by the name and it got him to thinking about “Another name for church?” Brad posts the following:

Mission. I think I like it. The word “mission” conjures up all sorts of things in my mind, including:
* Intentionality and focus
* A task or duty to be completed
* Sending out or being sent
* A haven and refuge
* A spiritual place
In other words, mission sounds a lot like church!

Brad left me with the question what defines church? What does the word church conjure where you live? For those who are leaders of other organizations and businesses what words describe what you do? Do they make sense to a broader public? Just wondering …

Customer Service — How Much Is Enough?

Seth Godin challenges me on a regular basis with his leadership and communicating advice. His simple piece, Spare No Expense!, actually is a piece challenging folks to consider sparing some expense on customer service. Consider the following graph:

Seth describes the graph this way:

In the chart, for example, (a) represents the cost of good signage at the airport, or clearly written directions on the prescription bottle or a bit of training for your staff. It pays off. Pay a little bit and you help a lot of people to avoid hassles. The utility per person isn’t huge, but you can help a lot of people at once.

(b) is the higher cost of a bit of direct intervention. This is the cost of a call center or a toll free number or an information desk. You’re paying more, you’re helping fewer people, but you’re helping them a lot.

(c) is where it gets nuts. (c) is where we are expected to spare no expense, where the CEO has to get involved because it’s a journalist who’s upset, or where we’re busy airlifting a new unit out to a super angry customer. The cost is very high, the systems fall apart and only one person benefits.

Here is where it gets tricky. The “spare no expense” desperate attempt to satisfy one can kill the whole enterprise. We often think that if we “spare no expense” we can make a problem or a problem customer go away. And here’s the killer, once we have done this for one person we have set a standard that now must be met for all customers. Organizations need to think this one through. Seth suggests we learn to say internally, “we need to be disciplined and help more people, even if that means that some special cases will fall through the cracks.” It hurts when some people walk away disappointed, but “spare no expense” may ultimately mean destruction.

Leadership Is Exercised in a Context

Norman Wolfe, over at Fast Company, commented today on a colleague’s blog about the context of leadership. His colleague, Paul Walker, looking on the current situation in the USA observed that our nation needs a giant team-building exercise. Wolfe counters that while the intent seems good, we need to pay attention to the context of our life together as a nation state. We exist in a system of checks and balances that create a different game than often happens in successful companies. The following fleshes out his point:

Our government was set up to achieve certain ends; it was designed primarily for control of power. Our three divisions, executive, legislative and judiciary were purposely designed to ensure no one function could gain complete control of our nation. Checks and Balances was the designing objective.

And as for organizations who “explore ideas to find the best way instead of playing win/lose games” I have to remind you that our whole society is based on the adversarial principle (a win/lose game). Our founding fathers recognized that we were unlikely to find A Solomon the Wise to discern the truth or the best solution so they set up our system based on the idea that the truth can best be is discovered by opposing views being voiced and through the “jury of one’s peers” truth would emerge. This is the basis of our legal system and it is also the foundation of our Two Party System. It was once said that the political extremes define the issues and the moderates pass the laws. We need a return of the moderates to act as “jury of one’s peers.”

The problem we have is not one of team building but organization design. We designed it to have opposing positions compete with the belief that the best solution would emerge from the conflict. We could of course redesign our system and create one that relied on the same principles of business. However business is governed as much by market forces as they are by leadership team dynamics.
Government was never designed to run efficiently, it was designed to control misuse of power and given that we are dealing with humans playing with immense powers, I am not sure I want to change the design.

As I read his post, I pondered the intricacies of most church structures and find myself asking “do we have clarity about what our decision making structures will produce? Do the rules of the game allow us to align ourselves with God’s kingdom purposes? Where can we learn (and unlearn) from business and government organizations?” More importantly to me, what questions am I not asking?

Ed Stetzer on Equipping for Success

Ed has been at the work of supporting new church plants in the Southern Baptist church for years. When I met Ed several years ago I was impressed by his self-deprecating humor and passion for the hard places in ministry. Surely, like in the business world, one of those hard places is launching a new venture. In his piece Equipping Church Planters for Success he identifies the following components of a support system:

1. Use of a Behavioral Assessment to measure 13 key qualities developed by Charles Ridley helps suggest who has the potential to succeed in this task.
2. Boot camps to teach the skills and energize the candidate make a significant difference.
3. It seems obvious that church planters need mentors and supervisors, but we have failed with some of my colleagues to provide this support.
4. Each planter needs to be in a support group. Friends whatever you are doing, find a posse. My team has been meeting for 15 years and they have seen me through the my ministry successes and failures.

Check out Ed’s article for all the details.

Seth Godin on why there are not more leaders

In Seth Godin’s recent book Tribes (2008) he notes the following reasons that there seem to be few leaders in the workplace. Read this snippet:

Leadership is scarce because few people are willing to go through the discomfort required to lead.

The scarcity makes leadership valuable. If everyone tries to lead all the time, not much happens. It’s discomfort that creates the leverage that makes leadership worthwhile.

In other words, if everyone could do it, they would, and it wouldn’t be worth much.

It’s uncomfortable to stand up in front of strangers.
It’s uncomfortable to propose an idea that might fail.
It’s uncomfortable to challenge the status quo.
It’s uncomfortable to resist the urge to settle.

When you identify the discomfort, you’ve found the place where a leader is needed.

If you’re not uncomfortable in your work as a leader, it’s almost certain you’re not reaching your potential as a leader.

Some of this sounds like Adam Hamilton’s recent description of “leadership by nausea.” That is, if the decision you are making as a leader makes you ill, you are probably on the right track!

Better late than never …

At the United Methodist Church’s School of Congregational Development someone thought to have a conversation about what characteristics are required for a new church’s second pastor. They offered the following insights (after confessing that while they thought to have the conversation, they forgot to invite anybody who had walked that walk. I have been a new church’s second pastor and I could point you to others):

# A Maximizer Strength- Gallup would define it this way, “people strong in the maximizer theme focus on strengths as a way to stimulate personal and group excellence. They seek to transform something strong into something superb.” (Rath and Conchile, Strengths Based Leadership Gallup Press, 2008. p. 203)
# Systems Thinking- is able to build systems that will keep the church on the growing edge of ministry and moving toward multiplication.
# Self-awareness- knows their own unique gifts and strengths for ministry and is not intimidated by the success and popularity of the founding pastor.
# Stick-to-itiveness- understands the dynamics of change a congregation experiences transitioning away from the founding pastor and hangs in there when the waters become choppy (as they will!)
# Better than average administrative skills- helps the church move toward better organization and administrative practices.
# Entrepreneurial traits- is able to help the church think creatively about new venues for ministry. Keeps the congregation from becoming “settlers”.
# Affinity with the Congregation and Mission Field- is a good fit.
# An understanding of the dynamics of new church development- needs to have a thorough understanding of the process or church planting and the uniqueness of this type of ministry.
# Experience in “turn-around” churches- as someone has said, “It is far more difficult to raise the dead than it is to give birth.” The skills gained from helping to resurrect a dead or dying church can prove invaluable to the ongoing development of a newer community of faith.
# Proven fruitfulness in growing ministry- you don’t want a “maintainer” as a second pastor.
# Good Pastoral Care skills- knowing enough about the importance of this to develop systems for pastoral care AND for being someone who has good caring skills.

The item they missed on this list is possibly buried in their fourth point. To be a second pastor in a new church requires first that you have thick skin. After you have checked for their thick skin, check it again, and then check it one more time. It is the first three requirements for a new church’s second pastor. Here’s why. The founding pastor does an incredible work of launching a new church. From inception to crawling, to walking, even running they use their unique gifts to establish a community of faith. Along the way, their congregation comes to see their unique set of gifts, strengths, and even weaknesses as THE qualifications for being a pastor. The judicatory body may be looking at the above list, but the second church pastor will be judged by the congregation by the standard of the founding pastor’s gifts, strengths, and even weaknesses.

I feel pretty confident that I did a good work as a second pastor for the new church plant to which I was appointed. I even embody much of the list above, but consistently I was measured by whether or not I functioned as the founding pastor did. Its unfortunate, but true. It may be the best work of a second pastor to be an interim. Help the congregation deal with the loss of their founding pastor and then transition them to someone with the gifts lifted above. The above list reflects good intents, but it lacks the boots on the ground reality of those of us who have walked as a second pastor in a new church.

George Barna on How Faith Varies by Congregational Size

A new report from The Barna Group, based on interviews with more than 3,000 adults, shows that congregational size is related to the nature of a congregation’s religious beliefs, religious behavior and demographic profile. There are clearly significant differences between the smallest and largest of Protestant churches in terms of the theological beliefs of adherents. The survey results discovered the following:

* On all 9 of the belief statements tested, attenders of large churches were more likely than those engaged in a small or mid-sized congregation to give an orthodox biblical response – e.g., the Bible is totally accurate in all the principles it teaches, Satan is not merely symbolic but exists, Jesus led a sinless life, God is the all-knowing, all-powerful creator of the world who still rules the universe, etc.

* On seven of the eight behavioral measures, attenders of large churches were substantially more likely than those of small churches to be active. (These included behaviors such as attending church in the past week, reading the Bible in the past week, volunteering at their church in the past week, etc.) The average difference related to these seven behaviors was 17 percentage points.

* There were significant differences on six of the ten demographic attributes examined. Specifically, larger churches were more likely to have college graduates (a 22 percentage point difference between those who attend churches of 100 adults or less and those who attend congregations with 1000 or more adults), affluent attenders, and children under 18 living in their home. Adults attending Protestant mega-churches were also more likely to be registered to vote and to be registered as a Republican (a 16-point gap compared to adults attending churches of up to 100 adults). Those who attend small churches were more likely to home-school their children.

Barna adds that the significant transition barrier is found at around 200 persons in worship. The variations from congregations with 50-100 and over 1000 in worship were significantly different from those congregations that averaged about 200 in worship. As Barna points out, congregations with less than 200 in worship are where about 65% worship with larger congregations serving about 35% of a typical Sunday’s worshipers. Barna closes with a disclaimer that is unclear whether or not the beliefs and practices were taught in the churches currently being attended or formed at an earlier stage in one’s spiritual formation.

The Toughest Size Transition for Congregations

Alice Mann, consultant with the Alban Institute and author of Raising the Roof, speaks here about the toughest size transition for most congregations. The transition is from the Pastoral to the Program size transition. Churches that plateau between 150 and 250 in worship attendance in a growing community need to pay attention to this video.

If you want to know more you may want to join Alice Mann at Raising the Roof seminar at Lake Junaluska. The dates are September 15-17 and click here to learn more from the Alban Institute.

Andy Stanley & Stuart Hall on “Being an Influence without Being Influenced’

(1) The Standards Principle – Gaining the High Ground:

Principle: You must develop, be able to personal articulate, and live by personal standards.
Critical Question: Are you developing and living by standards that you can clearly articulate to others?
Key Passage: Beloved, I urge you as aliens and exiles to abstain from the desires of the flesh that wage war against the soul. Conduct yourselves honorably among the Gentiles, so that, though they malign you as evildoers, they may see your honorable deeds and glorify God when he comes to judge (1 Peter 2:11-12).

(2) The Priorities Principle – Putting Your Own Spiritual Health First:

Principle: You must establish your own spiritual health as a priority over the spiritual health of the friends you are attempting to influence.
Critical Question: Are you prioritizing your relationship with Christ over your relationships with friends?
Key Passage: But strive first for the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well (Matthew 6:33).

(3) The Accountability Principle – Making Sure Someone Has Your Back:

Principle: You must maintain effective accountability relationships with other Christian students.
Critical Question: Are you accountable to other Christians.
Key Passage: My friends, if anyone is detected in a transgression, you who have received the Spirit should restore such a one in a spirit of gentleness. Take care that you yourselves are not tempted. Bear one another’s burdens, and in this way you will fulfill the law of Christ (Galatians 6:1-2).

(4) The Unconditional-Acceptance Principle – Out-Loving the World:

Principle: You must love and accept your unbelieving peers unconditionally.
Critical Question: Do you unconditionally accept your lost friends?
Key Passage: Welcome one another, therefore, just as Christ has welcomed you, for the glory of God (Romans 15:7).

(5) The Sustained-Influence Principle – Sustaining the Influence You’ve Gained:

Principle: You must sustain the influence you gain with your unbelieving peers.
Critical Question: Are you sustaining your influence with your lost friends?
Key Passage: You are the light of the world. A city built on a hill cannot be hid. No one after lighting a lamp puts it under the bushel basket, but on the lampstand, and it gives light to all in the house. In the same way, let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father in heaven (Matthew 5:14-16).

(6) The Leverage Principle – Using Your Influence Wisely:

Principle: You must properly put into practice the leverage you gain.
Critical Question: Are you using your wisdom to leverage your influence for the sake of the gospel?
Key Passage: Now if Christ is proclaimed as raised from the dead, how can some of you say there is no resurrection of the dead? If there is no resurrection of the dead, then Christ has not been raised; and if Christ has not been raised, then our proclamation has been in vain and your faith has been in vain. We are even found to be misrepresenting God, because we testified of God that he raised Christ-whom he did not raise if it is true that the dead are not raised. For if the dead are not raised, then Christ has not been raised. If Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile and you are still in your sins. Then those also who have died in Christ have perished. If for this life only we have hoped in Christ, we are of all people most to be pitied. But in fact Christ has been raised from the dead, the first fruits of those who have died (1 Corinthians 15:12-20).

BEING AN INFLUENCE WITHOUT BEING INFLUENCED

Andy Stanley and Stuart Hall, MAX Q: Developing Students of Influence, (West Monroe, LA: Howard Books, 2004).
Andy Stanley and Stuart Hall, MAX Q Student Journal: How to Be an Influence without Being Influenced, (New York: Howard Books, 2004).