5minutesORLess

Talk About A Long Pause!

2011-09-13T20:21:25-07:00

The interesting thing about life is you never know what's around the corner. I stopped blogging 2 1/2 years ago feeling a little overwhelmed with all that was going on at that time. I had just formed another business consulting practice with a good friend and there weren't enough hours in the day for everything.

In doing so I put a lot of my passion for spiritual leadership training on the back burner for a seeming lack of traction and interest. Well, that wasn't my choice to make and I now feel like I abandoned my first love.

Where I'm going with blog topics will follow the topics we are covering in the leadership training we are doing in our church. This training reflects a renewed commitment to spiritual leadership training by our pastor, Jim Ladd at Evergreen Christian Community in Olympia, WA. With an impressive faculty of 11 leaders in their own right, we will begin investing in about 40-50 people and doing all we can to ignite a fire of calling, purpose and influence. We start training on September 14 and the fall quarter is focused on 'The Call.' Our desire is the same that was expressed by Soren Kierkegaard in the mid 19th century, "The thing is to understand myself, to see what God really wants me to do; the thing is to find a truth which is true for me, to find the idea for which I can live and die."

Alignment: Assuring A Spiritually Centered Ministry - Part 1

2010-02-18T18:57:03-08:00

Key Concept of Alignment

Whether you are sighting in for target shooting, calibrating an analytical instrument, aligning the wheels of a car or organization, or spiritually centering a ministry or personal life, one fact holds true—if you don’t have influence over the forces controlling accuracy, you have no mechanism to assure you will hit anywhere close to your intended target or goal. Optimal functioning requires alignment.

Fundamentals of Alignment

Intentional progress for any ministry is a stewardship issue. Ministries have been given destiny, resources, and the time frame to accomplish a divine appointment. Unfortunately, many are the ministries that have crashed and become unable to relevantly serve the community in which they exist. Why? Because every ministry is on a journey and the ministry is like a vehicle. Some ministries fail to negotiate the metaphorical curve resulting from a changing culture or failed leadership; as a result, upend, crash or go through rough terrain trying to get back on the road. some survive the crash only to get stuck in mud up to the engine and slowly sink in a quagmire of muck weighted down with excess program baggage and useless ministry accessories than even a rescue tow truck can't pull them out.

In a sense, these ministries were driving through their rear view mirror and navigating based on historical success (trailing indicators) rather than seeing the curves of the future (leading indicators). A continual process of alignment keeps a ministry on the road with eyes focused on forward progress, not recent history. However, alignment is not solely right and left and between the lines. Continuing with the driving metaphor, especially with traffic, alignment is also being aware how close or far other drivers are in front and behind you. If this is true in driving and ministry, then recent history is as helpful as current data for alignment.

Successful businesses undergo a rigorous alignment process because profitability demands it. Ministries must undergo a continuous alignment process, not because of any business survival issue, but because of a stewardship responsibility to be salt and light—instruments of righteousness and love within the community. The day is coming when spiritual leadership will be asked what it has done with what has been given.

Understanding Alignment

Relaxed Static Stability The newest fighter jets, particularly the F-117, are a contradiction of avionics and aerodynamics. When these fighters are in perfect alignment, they are the fastest, climbing-est, banking-est and diving-est fighter airplanes ever built. But the stealth jet design makes these airplanes unstable and impossible to fly manually without a sophisticated onboard avionics system.

To balance the contradiction, the redundant onboard computer system takes thousands of pieces of data per second to make the micro adjustments necessary for the jet to fly. This is known as relaxed static stability. Without continuous monitoring and adjustments, the newest generation of fighter jets would break up and crash to the earth. They simply cannot fly without a continuous process of alignment.

Organizations, contrary to what seems to be apparent, cannot function effectively without relaxed static stability in relational processes as well as in technical programs. Crime laboratories, for example, cannot produce reliable results unless their testing instruments have been calibrated using a known reference standard to maintain accuracy or get re-centered again. The instrument cannot assure accuracy by performing tests on itself. Error simply compounds error. In fact, there is not an analytical instrument built capable of perpetual accuracy. And when that piece of mechanical and electrical gadgetry won’t calibrate, it means something is functionally wrong with the instrument; it needs repair. Most instruments can make minor “fine tuning” adjustments, but no instrument can fix itself once broken.

Likewise, in a ministry, if alignment can not or is not being achieved with day-to-day adjustments, then something is functionally wrong with how the ministry is organized or operated. Dysfunction necessitates intervention.

Organizational alignment involves a process of continual monitoring against a known standard, a periodic refocusing of the lens and an identification of external reference standards to make sure the adjustments are truly centered rather than simply mirroring what has already been done. A ministry in a process of continuous alignment assures that actions yield results in line with intentions.

Most ministries today have invested time and effort into creating vision, mission, values and guiding principle statements. The only means of preventing this good work from becoming cliché, or worse, a cynical reminder of who they aren’t, is to regularly engage leadership in an alignment/realignment process.

Perceptions Are Not Alignment

Many organizations including ministries make a fatal error in thinking self-perception or ministry-perception—what we think to be true without the discipline of rigorous self-examination—is reality. The cliché that perception is reality is only partially true. A more accurate statement is that perception is apparent reality. Foundational to having a successful working system of alignment is procuring accurate data contributing to sound decision making, and then going beyond perceptions, hopes or group think.

We like to think we are analytical and systematic in how we gather information and evaluate the environment around us. But listen to Steve and Jill Morris from the book, Leadership Simple:

Biologists Humberto R. Maturana and Francisco J. Varela have observed that at least 80% of what we perceive to be information from our outside world actually comes from what we already know, from the experiences we hold inside our memories. We sense some events or things and then we draw from our knowledge additional data to fill in what we missed in the original communication or information. Or, we select out what is not consistent with what we know and replace it with knowledge we already have.¹

In applying their research, we know what we do many times a day is evaluate and compare current experiences and information against past history; we then make choices based on conclusions. That’s using deductive reasoning, understanding and wisdom. However, what Maturana and Varela found is that we often don’t know when we are substituting external data that we may not be comfortable with for already acquired, familiar, potentially flawed assumptions and perceptions. This can make our perception of reality highly unreliable unless we check it it against outside points of reference such as biblical standards, wise people, and feedback data.

If spiritual leadership does not engage in a rigorous and systematic process of alignment, then it will remain in a state of self- and ministry-deception about the source of problems and solutions. The authors of Leadership and Self-Deception – Getting Out of the Box make a clear case:

Self-deception is like this. It blinds us to the true cause of problems, and once blind, all the ‘solutions’ we can think of will actually make matters worse. That’s why self-deception is so central to leadership—because leadership is about making matters better.

Next Post: Lack of Alignment--A Common Challenge to the North American Church

Growing Your Leadership Skill

2009-04-27T21:07:24-07:00

Wednesday, April 29 I had the opportunity to do a workshop at the Northwest Ministry Network Annunal Conference (Assemblies of God). My topic was "Growing Your Leadership Skill."

Click here (Download Spiritual Leadership2) if you want a pdf of the handout materials.

Click here (Download Staff TrainingNWMN) if you want a pdf of the supplemental material backing up the handout materals.

What Do You Want? Legacy

2009-04-25T20:17:41-07:00

On July 6, 1776, over two hundred British warships and possibly 30,000 troops were amassing around Sandy Hook off York Island (later known as Manhattan), preparing to invade New York. The British command was now aware of the seditious work of the Continental Congress in Philadelphia. Colonel Henry Knox, six months out from his amazing feat in bringing cannons to Boston from Fort Ticonderoga (see What Do You Want? Achievement), realized his prior accomplishment was not going to be enough in itself to save New York. What would be required for all was a sense of legacy. He writes to his wife, "The eyes of all America are upon us. As we play our part posterity will bless or curse us"

We, like Henry Knox, should be humbled and motivated by that same thought for our ministry. The eyes of our community are upon us and as we play our part to bring Christ to a lost and dying world posterity will bless or curse us too.

The buildings, streets and markets of ancient Ephesus, Corinth and Rome can still be seen as historical and rich with archeological artifacts. Although they have no current utility, the ministry that occurred in the buildings and markets and on the streets continues to resonate today. Generations upon generations’ lives have been forever changed because of discipleship, fellowship, prayer and prophetic words of teaching, preaching and exhortation. The dedication of believers caused people to believe in Christ as the only way to salvation and eternal life.

The Body of Christ does not replicate merely by philosophical and theological assent. The progeny of the Body of Christ, you and me, are here because of two irrefutable facts—the calling power of God, and the living salt and light of 2,000 years of ministry. That’s legacy!

It’s no fantastical illusion to believe that the very ministry being done today will have the same impact of legacy, for better and for worse. Every staff member and volunteer needs to understand that the work he or she does is not just for today. Legacy results from words spoken in kindness, or not spoken because of busyness; from compassionate concern, or irritation from interruption; from the extra effort of excellence, or doing just enough to get by. Every leader needs to ask the question, what legacy will I choose to form? Will it be the legacy of Kingdom growth or the legacy of cynicism and doubt? The answer is in every leader’s hands and every leader’s tongue and every leader’s prayers.

Leadership has no choice. One person’s influential life upon another leaves a mark for years to come—maybe a lifetime. Staff must be recruited, discipled and developed with legacy in mind. And when correcting is necessary, and it will be for everyone including the leader, leaders must never forget that even in the unglamorous work of phone calls, reports, maintenance and mundane service, legacy is at stake.

Ray Blont, Associate Director and teaching fellow at the Washington Institute, in an address to the graduation class of the U.S. Navy's Leadership Logistic Program at Port Hueneme, CA, contrasts the legacy of two significant people of history and how they chose their time to influence legacy.

The lives of Thomas Jefferson and William Wilberforce are illustrative for us. A few years ago I was struck after a visit to Williamsburg that Thomas Jefferson when he served in the House of Burgesses of Virginia helped to introduce as one of his first acts a bill to abolish slavery in Virginia. He was soundly defeated. But I had just begun reading a short biography of one of Jefferson’s contemporaries in England whose time and career were a remarkable parallel to Jefferson’s. For he, too, began his career as a legislator, a Member of Parliament, and he, too, introduced a bill to abolish the slave trade in England and its colonies. He also found his youthful purpose thwarted by his elders. But their stories ended very differently.

Some 40 years later, Wilberforce was notified on his deathbed that not only had the slave trade been abolished but slavery itself. He had spent those years tirelessly working in government for the abolition of the slave trade and of slavery and it had broken his health and derailed his career that should have ended as Prime Minister. Yet not one life was lost in a war that many thought was necessitated in England for such a monumental change to occur.

Jefferson would die on the 4th of July, 1826, 50 years to the day of the signing of the Declaration of Independence where he wrote ‘. . . all men are created equal." Yet he lost his focus on that purpose and even as President and later as a revered senior statesman, he demurred from his earlier commitment and spent his remaining years building UVA as the first university free from religion in the curriculum. Whereas Wilberforce concentrated his time and energies on two great objects as he called them, Jefferson concentrated his time and creative energies on his own quiet candidacy for President as an opponent of central government that would dictate to the states. He achieved that office, Wilberforce did not, but 40 years later, 600,000 men would die to abolish slavery in America.

But my point here is this—how we spend our time impacts what we will ultimately accomplish with others. And how we spend our time depends on what we use as our purpose for living.

The Last Chapter in the Life of the Rich Young Ruler

Ah, the last chapter in the life of the rich young ruler. What a sad story. So close to obtaining the one thing in his life he could not buy, make happen or achieve by being good. Eternal life. He choose to invest in the things he knew—wealth, power and a form of religion but not in the unknown of sacrifice and devotion. In the end the rich young ruler did leave a legacy. The problem was it was so small history doesn’t record it.

Being an observant Jew and of the aristocracy he no doubt was an acquaintance of Saul of Tarsus. Who knows, perhaps he and Saul could both have come to see Jesus on this day. What we do know is Saul’s legacy became one beyond anyone’s comprehension at the time. The rich young ruler’s selfish legacy is left in the dust of time. Why Saul and not the rich young ruler? Why Saul in a blinding light on the road to Damascus? Both could have been powerful influencers for New Covenant people. One chose not to fill in the one thing he lacked--selflessness--the other’s legacy lives on every time the New Testament is opened.

Four Thoughts About Legacy

1. Legacy goes before us into the future. Shouldn’t that be, "Legacy goes AFTER us in to the future?" No. Legacy creates its own shock wave, like breaking the sound barrier that pushes out in front of the moving aircraft. As servants we prepare others for the future, just like Paul and Silas or Barnabas prepared disciples to go where they could not go.

As a spiritual leader you are preparing people to go where you can’t or maybe even should not go. Consider this: when you die you do not leave a legacy; the legacy has already left and gone before you.

2. Legacy is the only thing you get to take with you and leave behind. If we hear the "Well done, good and faithful servant" from the master, it is not about a successful hermit life but about legacy in relationship, as we "one another" through life.

3. Legacy is. Whether for good or for evil, for unintentional casualness or intentional intensity in relationships, we are creating legacy.

4. Anti-legacy is too. Every time we see an opportunity and fail to seize upon it, legacy happens too; a life not given the opportunity to take a different road. Regret and remorse are the products of anti-legacy.

Contrary to our human emotions we should look forward to opportunities to expect, to encourage, to prod, push motivate, instigate and, if necessary, to correct a team member . It is the heart of discipleship and the fruit of the effort will affect the legacy for possibly generations to come.

So, what do you want from your ministry team? Compliance? Achievement? Innovation or creativity? Empowerment? While all of those are helpful none of those having lasting impact. Only the effort energized with the intention of legacy will produce any lasting impact for the Kingdom of God. If we think we can please God with our compliance it is only as good as our last good act. How can we present achievement to the Creator of the Universe and expect Him to be impressed? To God who knows all, is beyond time and is in a continuously creative process how can we think the Creator is pleased with our puny ideas? And empowerment? When the Holy Spirit indwells within our "new creation" life, the Spirit of Christ who raised him from the dead, perhaps our view of empowerment becomes "right sized" to a droplet.

All that is left that He has chosen to leave to us to do is to simply leave a legacy of ministry that not only is an agent for change for the moment but lives on to, perhaps, even influence another generation.

What Do You Want? Empowerment

2009-04-12T15:38:22-07:00

What do you want from your staff? In the last four posts we’ve looked at compliance, achievement, innovation and creativity.

In the last post we said, "Creativity is not the same as organized chaos. Creativity still keeps focus on the mission/purpose but is willing to test the status quo to determine its structural integrity and relevancy. As a Christ follower and leader when you consider the necessity to find new ways to minister and reach out to the community, how much tradition and traditional thinking remains on the table?”

Even if the easy correcting issues get satisfied with compliance or even achievement, it’s not good enough. Settling for either is squandering an opportunity for discipleship and is simply poor stewardship of those entrusted to you.

As a leader, there comes a point when getting expectations of compliance or achievement met by staff is inadequate for the demands and opportunities of ministry. Asking, expecting and requiring innovation and even creativity are good steps in discipling staff to their potential and the ministry’s need, but is that all there is? No. Fortunately, there is more, and it’s the process of empowerment. The word “empowerment” is beginning to suffer from a lack of clear meaning due to overuse, yet staff empowerment, when it’s there, is the model of Christian community and ministry.

Empowerment is not a clever term for abdication, delegation or manipulation. The word means to give power and/or authority to another person. As the word implies, power is transferred, generated and possessed by those charged with applying the “it” of why the enterprise was created. Empowerment means allowing a team member to discover and grow their own power through an enrichment process initiated and fostered by the leader. And autonomy, responsibility, flexibility, maturity, anticipatory communication and open accountability and feedback are key elements of empowerment.

When we see empowerment at work in Christian community there is a high level of staff and team member trust-- the core component of empowerment. Team members share a common vision, have developed self-management and self-initiation disciplines and skills and the focus is on customers/ministry recipients rather than being totally team centered. Empowerment develops in an environment where team members are more concerned about the success of accomplishing what the team was created for and the full utilization of other members rather than personal success or security. Likewise, each team member knows that that same concern is shared for them by everyone else.

Empowerment as a discipline requires time to develop and mature within the leader, staff, new staff, volunteers, members, and recipients of the ministry. But when it becomes a cultural and philosophical precept of how ministry is done, ministry gets done magnificently. In a process model, empowerment is at the opposite end of the spectrum from authoritarian transactional leading. While empowerment focused leadership is more effective than transactional, it is not superior to other styles. Transactional leading is for new team members. Once mission, vision, values, goals and procedures are indoctrinated the maturing team member responds best to a transformational style of leadership. However, only after a team member has the self-management, self-correcting and self-initiating skills can empowerment be successful for both the team member and the team.

At a spiritual level, empowerment is evidenced by allowing the Holy Spirit who inhabits every Christian to exercise his power through our submission. This was the greater treasure available to the rich young ruler. Sadly he, like many of us, was inclined to put his trust in things he made, accumulated and could count. But the worldly power he was seeking and the same sought today is never enough to satisfy or fulfill the potential God has in mind for our lives.

The rich young ruler had a comprehension problem. He no doubt enjoyed the power that position, prestige, wealth and religious status afforded him by birth. He was a powerful person in a land of unbelievable poverty yet and he was an observant Jew, one who worked very hard at being righteous, but obviously, something was missing. While he had more power than he could use he did not feel empowerment. All that work and yet a feeling of emptiness. He certainly did not feel empowered by God since most of his religious life centered around trying to please/appease God rather than being a vessel for use by God. For all that he had and all he had accomplished, something was missing and it was bothering him. But the empowerment came with a price. Everything. Simply give up your power for my power was the offer of Jesus. He missed it.

Too often we commit the same error. We could gain a quantum leap of effectiveness in enterprise or ministry if we just gave up our power over staff and empowered them to do what was good, right, mature and smart. But then we wouldn’t have the same puny power the rich young ruler had, would we?

Next post -- Legacy

What Do You Want? Creativity

2009-03-31T08:25:30-07:00

What do you want? What do you really want from your work or ministry team? Compliance is fundamental for order it but never takes effort beyond the basics. Achievement is essential but it also doesn't complete the effort. Innovation allows/forces you to begin to stretch and take measured risks. But is there more?

It was IBM who began to challenge their employees and customers to "think outside the box." But that has become, now, an overused cliche that is simply an analogy for innovative thinking. What if thinking outside the box doesn't give you the answers or the process? Is there another way of looking at the needs and how they get satisfied?

Think of a problem as being like a strip of paper and your possible solutions are written out on a line. When you get to the end of the paper you are out of solutions. But, aha, you think. What if we taped the ends together. Then we could continue to write solutions to our problem. That's innovative thinking but soon you see that you are looping on your old solutions and there is another side to the strip for new solutions but how do you get to it? What if the end of the strip was twisted and then joined? Now you've created a continuous strip that in a single line covers both sides of the strip. That's creative thinking and that is called a Mobius Strip.

What do you do when "tried and true" isn't good enough? Christian ministry is the largest and oldest family owned business that ever existed-- two thousand years of "we've always done it this way." In many ways it's been 500 years since the enterprise has had a new idea. Now that's not bad, in and of itself, since our mission has been made clear from the beginning. It's just with that much tradition, change in how we fulfill that mission comes slowly.

In the last posting we said, "When team members are unable to fulfill their roles to meet leadership standards and expectations, and the issue is neither compliance nor achievement, innovation may be what's lacking. Organization or relational barriers may be preventing team members from getting work accomplished. Sometimes working harder and being more careful isn't the solution. Sometimes finding a better way to do the job is what's required. Staff need to be challenged with the fact they have been selected not just to do existing tasks well, but to find better ways to deliver ministry."

However, sometimes innovation is merely repackaging when what's needed is a completely new approach. Christian ministry in North America is facing a unique challenge. More and more people are simply not finding church as we know it to be the solution to their spiritual needs. And, more and more people are not seeing their spiritual needs as important in how they live their lives. Perhaps it's time for some creative thinking and then some creative doing.

Creative doing is distinct from innovation in the fact that while innovation finds ways to do known practices better, creativity finds ways to meet needs in entirely new ways, using new paradigms and looking, perhaps, for different measurements of effectiveness. That's different than being different for the sake of being different. Creativity is effective when there is a compelling need and existing conventional thinking is making no progress and the need still exists.

In order for creative thinking to take place several elements need to be in place.

1. Key stakeholders support. Traditionalism is anti-matter to creativity.

2. Clear understanding of mission/purpose and how the efforts towards that mission are failing.

3. High tolerance for risk. There will be a lot of trial and error. Can everyone tolerate the inevitable failures of doing something new.

4. Agreement the costs of creativity are worth accomplishing the end goal.

5. Reserve capacity to fund experimentation. Traditionalism is inexpensively exorbitant. While traditionalism is efficient to maintain the potential return on the investment is unacceptably low.

A couple of things to keep in mind if you want your team to be creative.

1. Keep your eye on the mission. When things get rocky there are a lot of distractions out there. Remember why you were created; why you continue to exist.

2. Change your viewing instrument. In addition to seeing the issues through the lens of leadership, look at it from the position of the customer, the recipient or potential recipient of service or ministry. Look at it from the view of the first line employees/ministry workers.

3. Celebrate risk taking yet don't be wasteful or reckless for the sake of risk.

4. Communicate the need and the strategy. Gather the support of the stakeholders. Understand what is likely to happen if "business as usual" is usual.

For the rich young ruler compliance just wasn't doing it for him. Neither was wealth, position or power and the possibility of being a better, more righteous Jew wasn't looking any brighter. Jesus offered him a simple yet totally creative solution to his dilemma. The solution was creative since the ruler had to put something into his life that he completely lacked--selflessness. "Go and sell everything you have and give to the poor and you will have treasure in heaven. Then, come and follow me." There was nothing in the rich young ruler's life that prepared him for that. Jesus asked him, as Paul describes in 2 Corinthians, to become a new creation--to allow the creative, regenerative work of the Holy Spirit to make a new life.

Creativity was too threatening for him. So it is for many today who are presented with the same opportunity for a new life. So it is for many businesses and far, far too many ministries. Without creativity compliance is a prison. Without creativity achievement is a meaningless acquisition of accolades and accoutrement. Without creativity innovation is merely rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic.

Creativity is not the same as organized chaos. Creativity still keeps focus on the mission/purpose but is willing to test the status quo to determine it's structural integrity and relevancy. As a Christ follower and leader when you consider the necessity to find new ways to minister and reach out to the community, how much tradition and traditional thinking remains on the table? What are the standards for taking elements of our orthopraxy--how we practice our faith--off the table? What are the standards for leaving our orthodoxy--what we know to be our faith--on the table? Creativity for variety's sake is dangerous. Traditionalism for security and stability is equally dangerous.

Next post: Empowerment

What Do You Want? Innovation

2009-03-19T09:09:56-07:00

This post is from the article, Correcting Ministry Performance, at SpiritualLead.com.

In the last post we talked about achievement. And while every ministry and enterprise needs achievement to fulfill its mission, and achievement is expected from your team members, there is a dark side too. In the last post we said, "Achievement is the methamphetamine of endeavor. In small doses meth energizes. But soon it becomes the focal point of experience and all of life now centers around the experience meth provides. Achievement, left as the end result of enterprise or ministry can do the same thing. And, in the end, what was an energizing experience of achievement becomes the very same substance that destroys."

So, if compliance is fundamental and achievement is essential, is that all there is to be satisfied with your team's effort? Or is there more? What happens when compliance simply runs the team to a dead end and simply doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results (Ben Franklin's definition of insanity) becomes the activity de jour? What happens when achievement has turned in on itself and like flesh-eating bacteria is consuming the body for more energy to grow in order to consume more energy from the body? Something has to change. But what? Perhaps its time for innovation.

Innovation

Taking an existing service or process and making it better is innovation. In the 1980s Japan rocked the U.S. manufacturing world with products reflecting quality and reliability at a competitive price. Many U.S. manufacturers struggled to complete. Whereas a decade before Japan had been synonymous with poor quality, now products manufactured in the U.S. were being flipped to the mat and gaining that same reputation. Japan was now being hailed as the exemplar of quality process. What happened? Innovation. Due in part to the quality process steps introduced by Edward Deming, Japan innovated itself into excellence.

When team members are unable to fulfill their roles to meet leadership standards and expectations, and the issue is neither compliance nor achievement, innovation may be what's lacking. Organization or relational barriers may be preventing team members from getting work accomplished. Sometimes working harder and being more careful isn't the solution. Sometimes finding a better way to do the job is what's required. Staff need to be challenged with the fact they have been selected not just to do existing tasks well, but to find better ways to deliver ministry.

Innovation is, however, only one side of a coin. The other side is creativity and we will look at that in the next posting. But as we look at innovation, keep in mind it is limited to finding more efficient and effective ways of doing the SAME thing. That's the heart of managing. And while managing is essential to get the best use out of available resources, it is still managing--not leading. Leading is influencing others to transform into something they never knew was possible.

The rich young ruler in Mark 10 apparently had a dilemma. He wasn't satisfied with his traditional system of worshiping God and finding completion in compliance. Remember, innovation is taking what we already do and finding a better way to make it work. The rich young ruler was looking for an innovative solution. "Master, what must I do (using existing methods) to inherit the Kingdom of God?" Great innovation question. Master, what can I do to be a better Jew and inherit the Kingdom of God?

Jesus wasn't offering innovation and perhaps the young man was beginning to sense that. To him, innovation was finding a way to be more consistently observant, less sinful and thus more righteous. Jesus didn't give him an innovative answer to his dilemma. "Young man, come, like a child in your innocence, sell all that you own and follow me." That was NOT innovation.

Now, keep in mind, in the administry of the Kingdom of God, innovation is a good thing. It's being a good steward of the resources you have. But innovation has little to do with influencing others to God's agenda for their lives. The rich young ruler could not innovate his system of religion into conformance with what Jesus was teaching and requiring to be be lived out.

Innovation has its place in being a good steward of your ministry but is that all you want from your ministry team? Next post -- Creativity

What Do You Want? Achievement

2009-03-12T17:21:08-07:00

This series of posts is from the SpiritualLead.com article, Correcting Ministry Performance.

So, what do you want from your work or ministry team? While compliance is fundamental its not enough. In the last post we said, "When we set our expectations at the lowest rung, that's what we get. Oh, we may talk about vision and excellence and striving for the best we can be but if, in the end, what we focus on and reward is merely compliance then compliance is merely what we get. Make no mistake, compliance is important but it is the beginning of great work, not the end point. Compliance isn't for dreamers."

Compliance is for managers and that's not bad, but is there more? Of course. What we want is achievement, right? Bigger, better, more excellent, more profitable, more impressive--these are the goals of achievement. Every ministry and every successful enterprise needs to find increasingly more excellent ways to deliver goods and services. It's good stewardship of resources and good discipleship of staff to increase skills, knowledge and insight and to keep ministry sharp and sensitive to the people it serves. Make no mistake, the obvious is true. Achievement is good. But is it all?

Libraries are full of inspiring examples of achievement. Perhaps one of the lesser known was Henry Knox. (Download The Little Known Achievement of Henry Knox ) Better known, perhaps, would be the 40 year trek of the Hebrews from Egypt to Canaan. The construction of the Egyptian pyramids and the Inca and Mayan temple grounds are certainly great examples of construction achievement. And the credibility and influence of the Billy Graham Association is certainly an example of ministry achievement.

However, is bigger and better always the best for a business or a ministry? It seems the answer is an obvious, "yes, of course!" But when staff are overextended, quality of touch time diminishes. Tension and conflict increases. Stovepipe ministries form and over focus on achievement can leave staff worn out, frustrated and unfulfilled in ministry. Business enterprises look very similar. Many are the businesses in the bone yard of failure because they overextended their success. They became over leveraged and under capitalized, provided poor service, produced poor quality product and failed to stay true to their vision and mission statements. Every ministry leader can recall high flying, high profile ministries that have crashed to the floor of failure. An internal implosion occurs when we fail to attend to the details beyond simply "more achievement." Doing well is good. Doing well and losing sight of why you were created brings disaster.

Getting staff to the level of compliance is doing the work of a manager and satisfies the transactional process role. But/and there is more. Challenging, inspiring and disciplining staff beyond that begins the work of leadership. A healthy functioning team has at its core a transformational process model and that model is essential to moving beyond compliance and into achievement.

The achievement of the rich young ruler in Luke 18 was, no doubt, impressive. A member of the ruling Herod family he had wealth, power and education. While not all of his achievements were due to his own work, the family certainly represented achievement and he could and should have been proud of his personal and family achievements even though history now reveals their dynasty to have been atrocious and cruel. Since the question he asked of Jesus had the look and feel of sincerity rather than mocking, we can probably assume this young man was a compliant Jew as well. This young man had achieved a lot in a few years. In today's culture of worshiping celebrities and celebrity lifestyle he would have the paparazzi following him and capturing his encounter with Jesus for the next edition of a Jerusalem tabloid or blog. Certainly, if this encounter would have happened in our culture somebody would have Twittered it! But in Jesus' eyes, all that achievement was not enough to inherit the Kingdom of God and eternal life. Not only was it not enough, it didn't count for anything. Given the choice between achievement and something more, the rich young ruler chose what was tangible and familiar--achievement.

Achievement is the methamphetamine of endeavor. In small doses meth energizes. But soon it becomes the focal point of experience and all of life now centers around the experience meth provides. Achievement, left as the end result of enterprise or ministry can do the same thing. And in the end what was an energizing experience of achievement becomes the very same substance that destroys.

So, what do you want from your staff? Compliance? Yes. Achievement? Yes, as long as it is contained and focused. But is there something more you want from your team when the perfect plan turns into the perfect storm? In the next post we'll look at innovation.

What Do You Want? Compliance

2009-03-07T09:16:57-08:00

It''s a simple axiom but its true. You get what you ask for. If you ask for help, you usually get it. If you ask someone to do something, they usually will. If that be the case, then why do people not follow up and follow through? Generally it is because you get exactly what you want. You want compliance? That's what you'll get--and no more.

In the last post we said, "Effective leadership is a careful balance between coaching, mentoring and managing. The proportions vary based on risk consequences and the emotional and skill maturity of those who are a part of your team. The art of leadership is more about knowing the answers to key questions than it is simply possessing knowledge. So, if you know the measure of a leader what is your answer to what you expect of your team? In other words, What do you want from your team and your staff? What do you really want?"

We also saw a rich young ruler listening to Jesus teaching about how a child-like faith is how you enter the Kingdom of God. The interaction between Jesus and the young man apparently didn't go well. We know that because he walked away.

When we work with a team we can project through words and deeds several levels of performance expectation. They can be compliance, achievement, innovation, creativity, empowerment or legacy. What level do you want? Let's look at compliance first.

Level 1 - Compliance

Several years ago I had the opportunity to conduct team building sessions for an aluminum plant in rural West Virginia. Because of serious work relationship problems between hourly and management employees, the plant had been shut down by a strike for over 18 months. One of the precipitating factors angering hourly employees was the legendary hourly worker orientation session. Though discontinued by the time I arrived to do team building, the sting of its humiliating effect still resonated through the plant. For new hires the “welcome aboard” meeting went something like this: “Boy (This wasn’t a racial slur—all West Virginian hourly workers were called “boy.”), Welcome aboard. I just want you to know we hired you from the neck down. If there is anything needing done differently from what we’ve told you to do, that’s what we’ve got engineers for. Now get to work.” That is transactional leadership and transactional compliance* at its worst.

Yet, how much of our correcting time is spent on issues like attendance, timeliness and attitude, and how often are we satisfied when there is compliance? This is not to say that showing up for work and ministry isn’t important. And, of course, meeting deadlines and having a positive attitude is a good thing. But, if that’s all that’s expected—be on time, complete your assignment on time and smile—then it’s all about a marginally effective manager responsible for a marginally effective ministry worker who needs multiple areas of assistance. There’s got to be more to excellence than just compliance.

The rich young ruler looking at the children and feeling perhaps perplexed, envious or confused asked, “Teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?” He had been indoctrinated into salvation through works and he knew he was on a frustrating race where the goal kept getting further and further away and perhaps he was irritated that Jesus made it so easy. What Jesus said was, it’s not about compliance, it’s about innocence.

How many times, as a leader have you thought, "If only my team would do what I asked them to do." Then what? If your team did all that you asked them to do but no more would you be satisfied? Probably. Would the ministry thrive? Probably not. The rich young ruler felt a gnawing sense that compliance was not only not enough, it was also impossible to achieve. No doubt you have experienced the same. Trying to be perfect is not all it's cracked up to be. People fall short, make mistakes, and sometimes screw up royally. That's how we learn and get better and become excellent. Not by merely being satisfied with compliance but by stretching, taking risks, learning by trial and dreaming big. When we set our expectations at the lowest rung, that's what we get. Oh, we may talk about vision and excellence and striving for the best we can be but if, in the end, what we focus on and reward is merely compliance then compliance is merely what we get. Make no mistake, compliance is important but it is the beginning of great work, not the end point. Compliance isn't for dreamers.

Next post: Achievement

What Do You Want? What Do You Really Want?

2009-02-22T12:03:34-08:00

This series of posts is from the SpiritualLead.com article, Correcting Ministry Performance.

The real proof of effective leadership is not in the words spoken, the goosebumps raised, the promises made or even those kept. In the end, the proof is in the end product--the quality, completeness, and timliness of whatever your ministry or enterprise was created for. In the end, effective leadership is judged not on good intentions but rather on what got done--not so much by the leader but by those who follow the leader. And so, if the question is, What is the measure of a leader?, the answer can be found in another question, What did you ask and expect of those who followed you?

Effective leadership is a careful balance between coaching, mentoring and managing. The proportions vary based on risk consequences and the emotional and skill maturity of those who are a part of your team. The art of leadership is more about knowing the answers to key questions than it is simply possessing knowledge. So, if you know the measure of a leader what is your answer to what you expect of your team? In other words, What do you want from your team, your staff? What do you really want?

Six Levels Of Performance

When people are excited and motivated about an activity, they will work until all hours, talk about it for hours, go home and dream about it for hours and remember the time for years as “best time.” Yet, as spiritual leaders we often kill such enthusiasm by making the effort fit inside our neatly drawn lines—by majoring on the minors.

Or we kill the responsible self-correcting attitude of mature people by lumping them with those who haven’t caught the dream yet. Or we make the mature feel humiliated by treating them as if they had no experience or original ideas. Thomas Peters and Robert Waterman Jr. in their classic book, In Search of Excellence, quote a General Motors manager who summed up the typical correcting process. He said,

Our control systems are designed under the apparent assumptions that 90 percent of the people are lazy ne'er-do-wells, just waiting to lie, cheat, steal, or otherwise screw us. We demoralize 95 percent of the work force who do act as adults by designing systems to cover our tails against the 5 percent who really are bad actors.[1]

We know there is more to work than simply having a warm body occupy a position, and particularly when ministry is the goal. Yet what happens to grind people down? What happens in a manufacturing plant may not be as serious in a church setting or a ministry, but discouragement, feelings of being used, demotivation, burnout, cynicism and withdrawal are all too common in the environment that should be the laboratory of relationships.

An anonymous worker at GM echoed the same thought as the GM manager from the worker side.

Are these men and women

Workers of the world?

Or is it an overgrown nursery

With children—goosing, slapping, boys giggling, snotty girls?

What is it about that entrance way,

Those gates to the plant? Is it the

Guards, the showing of your badge—the smell?

Is there some invisible eye

That pierces you through and

Transforms your being? Some aura or ether, that brain and spirit washes you

And commands, “For eight hours

You shall be different.”

What is it that instantaneously makes

A child out of a man?

Moments before he was a father, a husband,

an owner of property,

a voter, a lover, an adult.

When he spoke at least some listened.

Salesmen courted his favor.

Insurance men appealed to his family responsibility

And by chance the church sought his help….

But that was before he shuffled past the guard, climbed the steps, hung up his coat and

Took his place along the line.

(Anonymous – Poem from a GM worker, In Search of Excellence[ii])

So, when a ministry worker or staff person’s effectiveness drops below his or her potential and your ministry standards, what do you want the results of the correcting process to be? Most ministry leaders will say:

· Compliance

· Achievement

· Innovation

· Creativity

· Empowerment

· Legacy

Yet oftentimes they will settle for compliance alone.

In Luke 18:18-29 (Matt. 19:16-30; Mark 10:17-31) we read the story of the rich young ruler. We don’t know exactly who this person was. By his own admission he was an observant Jew and, no doubt, a member of King Herod’s court. Jesus was teaching in the region near Jerusalem since it was close to the time of his arrest and crucifixion. A number of Pharisees had gathered and were following Jesus trying, no doubt, to engage him in discussion and hopefully catch him in some indictable heresy.

A rich young ruler enters the story. He may have been a disciple under one of those Pharisees and possibly came to watch his Rabbi make quick work of this radical teacher called Jesus of Nazareth (of all places!). What prompted him to ask the question we'll never know. Perhaps it was seeing the innocence of the children around Jesus and a desire for a more simple relationship with God that peeked his interest. It's possible the ruler’s question was sincere since he fell on his knees and called Jesus, “good teacher” (Mark 10:17). But perhaps he was going to mock Jesus through a series of questions. Or perhaps he may have grown tired of a continuous and unsuccessful process of trying to obtain righteousness through works. Since he was probably a prince rather than a Roman officer he was Jewish and as such he had been taught that compliance was sufficient to be righteous. Yet, you have to wonder, why the question if he didn’t doubt his own righteousness through his own works. We see a compelling drama unfolding; a young man who, up to this moment, thought compliance was all that was necessary and yet realizing it wasn’t. There has to be more…or maybe less. As we look at the six levels of performance in the next six posts let’s look at the question, "What do you want?" through your eyes as a leader and also look at it through the eyes of the rich young ruler and catch a glimpse of perhaps the questions going through his mind as well.

Next Post: Level 1 Compliance

[i] Thomas J. Peters, Robert H. Waterman Jr., In Search of Excellence, Harper and Row Publishers: New York, 1982, pp. 57-58.

[ii] Ibid, p. 235.