Great ideas come into the world as quietly as doves. Perhaps then , if we listen attentively we shall hear, among the uproar of empires and nations, the faint fluttering of wings, the gentle stirrings of life and hope. Some will say this hope lies in a nation; others in a man. I believe rather that it is awakened, revived, nourished by millions of solitary individuals whose deeds and works every day negate frontiers and the crudest implications of history. Each and every one, on the foundations of their own suffering and joy builds for all.

Albert Camus, famous dead guy

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Here is something that I’ve been wrestling with lately:

The number, however exact or arbitrarily picked, becomes the number.

It’s a goal but also a limiter.

So, right now, I can open a spreadsheet and point to every month in 2013 and tell you exactly how the business got to, is getting to, or will get to that number.

Could I make more? Yes. Could I make less? Yes. But chances are good that the business will generate just about that amount of money we need because that’s what we’re aiming to do.

Why is that? Because I’ve picked a number. When I set the price of goods, whether my team’s time, the price of a project, or a product I’m dividing the amount of resources I have for sale by the amount of money I need to make to hit that number. For example, if the team spends 5 days on a project it should make us about 1/4th of what we need for the month to hit that number.

That number determines a price in my mind for what we charge to build a website or design a book or speak at an event, or whatever.

The Kicker

Now, here’s the kicker. This all happens on the subconscious level. In other words… It’s not a cognitive decision. I’m not looking at a project or product and actually doing that math. Instead, I’m projecting a price onto a commodity (time, project, product) which in turn determines the net business outcome. (What we charge for that commodity.)

The number is. And the reason we make that number month-in-and-month-out and not a number that is 10x’s bigger or 3x’s smaller than that is because we’re aiming at a number which is. 

Of course, now that I recognized this as a limitation to growth on a cognitive level about 6 months ago, I’ve started thinking differently about the commoditization of what we offer. (See below)

What does this have to do with you? Everything. The number is problem is the reason my business is growing at the pace it is growing at. It’s the reason your business has 5 employees and not 25. (Or has 25 employees when you really need 5.) It’s the reason your church reaches 180 and not 600. (Or visa versa) It’s the reason your youth group is the same size it was 5 years ago. It’s the reason your school will score ____ on the state test this year.

So much of the impact of your business/ministry is determined by the number that’s in your head  no matter how frustrating that number becomes to you, no matter how much you know you need to grow or risk losing everything, the reason you reach that number is because the number is.

How to Grow Beyond the Number Is

Here’s the thing that released me to a new way of thinking about this problem about 6 months ago. And I’m sharing this because I think it’ll help you.

Most of those who will read this work in the non-profit sector. In your case the number isn’t usually money, it’s impact. It’s people’s lives. And with an ever-increasing population you deal with the reality that to do as well as you did 5 years ago you need to reach more people next week than you reached this week. To have a number is problem means you reach less and less of the population every year. And that’s devastating.

So here’s how to break the cycle. Change your focus from the number to the value.

Growth = Focusing your outcomes on expressing the value in your work. (The value is why you do what you do.)

Stagnation or decline = Focusing your outcomes on a number merely codifies misplaced value, which leads to a decreasing ability to express your value. (The number isn’t why you do what you do. Desperation mode leads to death of the values you ultimately do the work for.)

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A few weeks ago I wrote about my friend, Ryan. Ryan just finished a year as a contractor in Afghanistan. He quit his job as part of rebooting his life. No doubt, it was a spiritual journey. A Christian man quits his steady job of a decade to find the self he’d always knew was there.

He faced fears like mortality. Like… things blew up all around him. He faced fears like loneliness… people like him don’t join the Marines or Army. He faced it all and came out smiling on the other side.

In many ways the trip proved to his manhood to himself. No one had to look at him and tell him he was a man.

And realistically, no one can take away his man card. (He can’t even self-revoke it.)

So now, post-Afghanistan, Ryan has created a little project that allows you to give a Man Card to your friends made of steel that cannot be revoked. (See the video)

So watch the video and join me in supporting Ryan’s project.

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One of the things I’ve been learning is that I simply cannot work all of the time.

I have to play. Beyond the concept of Sabbath, which is ultimately about trust that God will provide 7 days of sustenance for 6 days of work, the discipline of play (recreation) is the secret ingredient to creation. (In my world, my creativity is a commodity.)

Therefore, you can’t have creation without recreation.

Thoughts? 

p.s. This is my first test video with the GoPro Hero 3. First impressions? Wow!

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@mclanea #MoodyPC is primarily intended for #pastors. #refocus #refresh #equip church leaders. Praise God for other conferences #Heprovides

— Moody Conferences (@MoodyConference) May 15, 2013

Some backstory…

11 years ago this week I graduated from Moody Bible Institute. The moment of walking across that stage, shaking Joe Stowell’s hand, and knowing that I had done it, goes down in history as one of the greatest accomplishments of my life.

I had defied every odd stacked against me.

• A family history of poor academics.
• I got to college without having a single useful study skill. I sailed through high school without studying or ever doing homework. Moody was relentless academically and I was ill-prepared.
• Culturally, I didn’t fit in. I hated the holier than thou sub-culture of some of the students. Hate might not be strong enough. (Fortunately, I wasn’t alone. Many of my best friends in ministry are bonds formed because of our disgust.)
• Academically, I competed against students who had been groomed for Moody. They had lots of exposure to the Bible, theology, and even the vernacular. I constantly played catch-up in the classroom.
• My family support system crumbled during my 2nd year… there was no financial help, not because they didn’t want to but because they had bigger challenges to face.
• A few, low-level Moody employees said vile things to me. Discouraged me from continuing. Told me to quit. Told me I wasn’t the type of student they wanted to invest in. Told me I wasn’t good enough. And I’m not exaggerating. (There were others who encouraged me and kept me going.)
• I returned to Moody as a married student with a full-time job. I worked from 4 am – noon 5 days per week, attending class in the afternoons, for 3 years. My last year I worked 45-55 hours per week, had a 10 hour per week internship, and Megan was a newborn. Every day was a physical and mental challenge.
• Somehow I fulfilled or begged exemption from a huge myriad of undergraduate obligations. I fulfilled as many as I could, but some just weren’t possible.

I am proud to have walked across that stage. No one gave that to me. I earned it. I fought for it.

It was worth fighting for. I wanted to finish. I wanted to learn. And I wanted to stand with the thousands of alumni who love that place, were trained by that place, and gone on to do great things for the Kingdom.

I soaked up my education at Moody like a sponge. They didn’t just teach me stuff. My professors taught me how to think. Brick by brick they built a foundation for not just how to do ministry stuff, but how to minister to people, and more importantly… to deeply understand the questions that define “why” we do stuff.

I share all of that because you need to understand my great respect and love for my alma mater.

Historically, she fits the mold for a place which has helped lead the church. The church desperately needs a ministry training school like Moody.

The Problem She Faces

But she is struggling. She is in trouble. While she has traditionally been a place for all kinds of protestant believers, she’s taken a turn to the right. She’s anchored herself to the tug boat of conservatives pulling her further and further into the dark seas of isolationism and lost her place as a place of neutrality.

Consequently, her alumni are increasingly ostracized and shunned.

Shockingly, those who are being shunned or just flat out ignored are not doing so because they hold views divergent from the historical Moody Bible Institute. Alumni are being pushed away because we’ve taken the very things they taught us and applied it to our ministries in exactly the way we were taught to.

Her alumni, engaged in that for which we were prepared, are left wondering where she is going and why she is acting the way she is acting.

And in the meantime we are left on the outside looking in. We aren’t invited to come and ask questions. We aren’t even responded to. Some have even been officially told to go away, quite literally pushed out the door.

An Example From Yesterday

An early catalyst for the creation Moody Bible Institute was a woman named was Emma Dryer.

There is a men’s dorm bearing her name. So much of the DNA that is Moody Bible Institute reflects Emma’s work. (The video above captures this.)

Moody was an exceptionally progressive place where women received a formal education in preparation for vocational ministry. Long before most Christian colleges and seminaries trained women, Moody Bible Institute was on the forefront. Moody was one of the first colleges in Illinois to admit women. 35 years before women could vote in the United States, they were educated at Moody.

Historically speaking, Moody has been progressive… even cutting edge… on the role of women in the church.

Wherever you go in the world, you will find women trained at Moody Bible Institute, doing Kingdom work as missionaries, teachers, and leaders.

That all began to change in late 1990s. Right around 1999 or 2000 Moody actually added this section on gender roles into their “Moody Believes” statement specifically mandating that women not be prepared for pastoral ministry. (This is the document that every student, staff, and professor signs as part of their connection to the school.)

Previously, they had been silent but largely affirming towards the role of women in the church. As someone who was a student at the time you need to understand how much this new addition to the doctrinal statement divided the campus. The topic dominated the classroom. It was beyond disruptive. Professors– the most powerful voices on campus– were hamstrung, they either complied, keeping their mouths shut, or left their tenured positions.

This was the marking of a huge turn towards conservative isolationism. (At the same time, many  undergrad professors moved on. Some of that was surely related to this gender roles issue. In other capacities it was related to some leading the way on something they coined “Progressive dispensationalism.” It was a course correction to dispensational thinking, one which the board of Moody rejected, further turning the school towards the conservative.)

The point is that for decades Moody was one place within evangelicalism that was progressive on issues of women in ministry. But that course radically turned, became frozen, and is now tailoring a regression on the roles of women in the church while at the same time most evangelicals are embracing the roles Moody is now officially against. (There are TONS of conservative evangelical churches with women in pastoral leadership. It’s not on the edges anymore, it’s a mainstream reality within evangelicalism.)

So that’s why I find it offensive that Moody’s Pastors Conference doesn’t allow women to register to attend.

Women can get their undergraduate and graduate training at Moody. Many go on to pastoral roles. But come back to campus for encouragement, further training, and the common bonds of spending time with fellow pastors? Not allowed!

As their website so clearly describes… women may attend general sessions of the Pastors Conference with their husbands. But they cannot register as an attendee nor can they go to any breakout.

And this is the response I got from Moody’s Conference department about the policy:

@mclanea #MoodyPC is primarily intended for #pastors. #refocus #refresh #equip church leaders. Praise God for other conferences #Heprovides

— Moody Conferences (@MoodyConference) May 15, 2013

So many digs in 140 characters. Women aren’t seen as pastors. They aren’t worth refocusing, refreshing, or equipping as full participants, much less under the title of pastor or leader. And then the arrogance of the last phrase… “Praise God for other conferences… hashtag HE PROVIDES!”

My jaw fell open in sadness when I saw this. I couldn’t believe that someone at Moody thought it was OK to say that. U-N-B-E-L-I-E-V-A-B-L-E.

Further, their policy makes no sense to me. It doesn’t align with their historical progressive stand on women in ministry. It certainly does not lean into their heritage with historical ties to Emma Dryer or the tens of thousands of women they’ve trained for ministry.

Instead, the attitude that women are secondary in their role within the body of Christ continues to drive a wedge between people who love the Institute and those who refuse to support the degrading of women’s roles.

Join Me in Asking Moody to Lead the Change

Trust me. It would be easier if I just let it go. It’d be easier if I just wrote off Moody. But I love her too much to stand in silence. 

I understand the idea of an institutional preference. (Much more so than poorly constructed proof-texting to create an exclusion of women from pastoral roles.) But I can’t understand an institutional preference which separates you from your historical posture.

So I am continually, out of love and respect, asking Moody to change its policy. I’m asking that they allow women to fully participate in every undergraduate and graduate program. I’m asking that women be allowed as fully registered participants at their annual Pastor’s Conference. I’m asking that they invite women pastors to speak and train both men & women at the conference.

And yes, I’m asking Moody to re-embrace their leadership position on the role of women in the church which proudly supported thousands of opportunities for women to serve the church to their fullest giftedness from the late 19th century until the end of the 20th century.

Until that time, this proud alumni respectfully stands in protest. 

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I’m always impressed how much retail space exploits psychological advantage to prepare people to spend money. I can run into a corner store and quickly grab the 5 items I need. But the same 5 items in our local grocery store? It’s at least 15 minutes as I walk from end to end of that building.

In business, I can think of times I’ve visited offices and noticed that they take advantage of these same things. When I worked at BlueCross BlueShield of Illinois, you better believe they designed their entry way to their psychological advantage. A massive, all glass entry with 50 foot ceilings. The entire first floor of the building was open concept so you could see elevators zipping people to various floors, massive escalators with a constant stream of employees looking very busy, and a massive… MASSIVE security desk separating that world from you. (Probably 75 feet long) Every time I hosted a guest for a meeting, when they finally made it to my floor they were completely intimidated.

I guess I wonder why churches don’t do this? (Some do it quite intentionally.) But most churches don’t have a consistent entry point communicating a certain vibe. Even the most “seeker sensitive” space is always a little daunting and intimidating.

I wonder if there’s more we can do? I wonder if, when we host people for 1-1 meetings or the day-to-day business of the church, if we’re even aware of the psychological advantages we have just because we know where to go?

Question: Is your church thinking about this? If so, what are you doing to help prepare people for worship, gathering, or meeting you by the design of your space?

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12!

Mom and dad did our best to suppress saying, “Holy cow. How has it been 12 years? You were just a baby yesterday?!?!!?” Of course, that’s what we were thinking. But such nostalgia is pre-teen uncool.

Celebrating Megan

We’ve asked Megan what she wanted and what she wanted to do with her birthday for weeks. I’d define her response as ambivalent. But Kristen and I took it as a challenge… “Why are you asking me what I want for my birthday, you should know.”

We thought about the things most twelve year old girls seem to be into: Clothes, cell phones, and the pop star du jour. Those are almost laughable when thinking about Megan. She’s not into clothes, none of her friends have a cell phone, and she can’t stand One Direction.

We got her a few simple gifts. Things like a new bike helmet, a dress in her favorite color, and a big jar of Nutella from Paul. We’re also into experiences… so Kristen, Megan, and Paul did the Jungle Ropes course at the San Diego Safari Park. (Which looked like fun. I entertained Jackson while they did that.)

Later, we had a nice dinner outside on the patio followed by an amazing homemade ice cream cake featuring layers of Oreo & fudge sandwiched between vanilla ice cream. Last… we watched the 14 hour Survivor finale before finally crashing at about 11.

Seemed like a good twelfth birthday to me. 

The Year to Come

In some ways, yesterday was holding onto something we may look back on as simple times. The Autumn of childhood is giving way to the dawning of adolescence.

We’re all looking forward to this transition. (We repeat that often, trying to convince ourselves.) Being twelve is awesome. But when you are 12 you want to be 13. And when you’re 13 you want to be 17. We know that as she deals with new things the biggest challenge for us will be adapting our parenting. And we’re preparing ourselves for everything to get just a little more complicated.

But for now she’s holding on. You can see it as she pairs down some of the kid toys but holds on to artifacts. She wants to read books about fairies and adventure… but those books are getting too easy, too. She loves the kids program at church but is excited to go to the middle school youth group.

And for now we’re holding on. We know the sun is setting on her childhood. But we’ll make the most of one more summer of splashing in the waves with mom and dad, building castles in with Paul and Jackson, and sitting down to giggle together watching America’s Funniest Videos and Wipeout.

We’re not quoting Robert Frost, just yet.

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I’m fascinated about things like traffic. People are annoyed about sitting in traffic, driving to work, the lack of free parking. They are also annoyed about traffic in their neighborhoods, the speed of cars, the fact that no one walks anymore, the fact that kids don’t play outside anymore.

And, of course, they are annoyed about the price of gas, the effect of emissions on the environment, and the import culture this creates in a nation who defines itself by its independence.

It’s cognitive dissonance. (Feeling conflict by holding onto competing values.)

But…

• Are these annoyances/frustrations caused by a force beyond our control? No.
• Are these things we can fix? Yes.
• Why don’t we fix them? Because we’re focused on treating symptoms instead of addressing the core problems.

Adding to this fascination? Projects and proposals to remove highways from urban areas. See, doing that actually reduces traffic in the long run and recreates neighborhoods. But how would I get to work? Easy. You don’t.

Equally intriguing questions which look at the macro level about the way our society does things.

I mean… we can’t just tell people to live within walking distance of their work…. can we? I mean… we can’t just tell people that green lights just make people drive faster than a community needs… can we? I mean… to do that I’d have to reshape everything I do. We can’t have that! Or can we? 

I mean… we can’t just change the behavior that’s absolutely driving us crazy…. can we? 

Can we? 

Wait. We can’t?

The post Reclaiming Communities appeared first on adammclane.com.

The Set-Up

I’ve been busy lately. Between traveling a lot and catching up from traveling a lot I’ve missed many important details.

On Tuesday afternoon guys from my high school small group started texting me, “What are we doing tomorrow night?” Then I got text from my co-leaders, “What are we doing tomorrow night?”

I kept thinking to myself, “What are they talking about? We’re going to meet at the church, play some volleyball, eat dinner, and have small groups.”

So I looked at my texts from Brian and it turns out that, and I still don’t know why, last night our small groups did outings instead of the normal routine.

Cool. So I need a plan. And I’ve got no plan.

And now they wanted to know what the plan was.

So I played it off the same way I play it off any time I miss details. “I dunno, what do you wanna do?”  About 5 texts later I realized that I was the one whom they were looking to for a plan. So I went with Plan B, tossing out a plan and making sure everyone was cool with it.

“Let’s go to Chick-fil-A for dinner then sunset cliffs to play soccer.” No one resisted.

In fairness, this wasn’t really a new idea. It’s kind of our families go-to plan for what we do when we don’t know what to do on a Sunday night.

Still, no one resisted.

You’ve Never Been to Chick-fil-A?

5 guys got in my minivan last night. They all had the same question…

Dude in back of van: “Why Chick-fil-A?”

Me: “Because Chick-fil-A is awesome. Duh.”

Another dude: “What is it? I’ve never been there. Just heard of it.”

Me: “It’s chicken sandwiches, sweet tea, and crazy dipping sauces. It’s basically just a fast food place but just a little bit better. If you live in the South, you think of Chick-fil-A the same way we think of In-n-Out.”

First dude: “But isn’t that the place that’s hates gay people?”

Me: “Well, last year there was a big thing in the news about that. Let’s talk about that over some delicious chicken.”

First dude: “I’m not sure I feel good about eating at a place that hates gay people.” 

Mark, my co-leader: “There it is.”

Me: “Wow. Really? I don’t think every person who goes to Chick-fil-A or works there automatically hates gay people. I’d imagine most people just think it’s a good place to eat chicken and the people who work there… well, I don’t think a person working the counter at a fast food place really care about what the owners say.”

First dude: “I still feel weird about it.” 

Me: “Well, I didn’t feel weird about it until now. Geez, thanks. Let’s talk about this over some chicken.”

[awkward silence. turn on radio]

Me: (changing subject voice) “So after we eat our gay-hating-chicken, we’re headed to Sunset Cliffs Park. Anyone been there?”

The Chick-fil-A Effect

This post isn’t about what Chick-fil-A does or doesn’t stand for. I could really care less about that.

The point is that impressions that there is a story about you and your organization that is being told. You can’t control it. And you might not even know what it is unless you and your organization are really intently listening.

Because if all a car full of high school guys knows about your organization is a sound byte from a couple years ago which may or may not be true…

Well, they’ll never care about your chicken or sweet tea or dipping sauce.

Question: Do you know what the sound byte impression of people in your community is about your organization?

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Lots of news from The Summit this morning.

• New video (above)
• New website
• First 13 presenters announced
• And registration opens with a couple sweet deals. (Yes! You can bring your senior pastor for under a buck!)

After months of work I’m itching for some feedback. What do you think about any one of those four items above? 

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