At The Table of Thanks

The End and the Beginning - a Leading Questions post

The following post was originally published at my Leading Questions blog. It is my perspective on the changes in leadership and organizations that mark the dramatic difference between the 20th and the21st centuries. I share it here as background and context for all the posts that appear here. An ongoing compilation of Leading Questions posts is available as Leadership for the 21st Century.

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Seeing what's coming

What if our past experience instead of illuminating the future, obscures it? What if the way we have always approached a problem, or the conduct of a single day, or the organization of our work makes it more likely that we end up not accomplishing what we envision?

Working in planning processes over the years, I've concluded that people can see what they want, but fail to reach it because of how they go about it.  We can imagine the future, but not see the path that will take us there. This gap in our abilities is becoming more acute as the ways we have worked are becoming less effective.

From another perspective, we rarely see the end of something coming, or the beginning of the next thing. We tend to see in retrospect.  Our aversion to change, I believe, is largely because we don't like surprises. We defend the past hoping that it is sustainable into the future, even if we see a better, different one.The past, even less than ideal, at least seems known and more certain, more secure, more stable, more predictable, more confortable, at one level.  It does not mean that it is satisfying or fulfilling, but it seems safer. 

As a result, instead of providing us a sound basis for change, the past can inhibit us from achieving the vision that we see. Instead, we live by a set of cultural forms that must be defended against change. In other words, the form of the way we live and work remains the same even after its vitality has gone. 

Change that has come

What impresses me about our time is how fast change is happening, and how quickly things we thought were normative seem less relevant.

Ten years ago, websites were the rage. You weren't on the cutting edge of business without one. Today, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and a host of other social media platforms are the norm for a business. Twenty years ago, CDs were the norm. Now, digital I-Tunes downloads. Thirty years ago, the Soviet Union was the West's nemesis, now militant Islam. Forty years ago, Vietnam and racial equality were the dominant issues of our time. Now we have an African-American President, and Howard Schultz wants Starbucks in Vietnam. Fifty years ago, President Kennedy was challenging the nation to go to the Moon within the decade. Today, the government is putting space exploration on the back burner as space travel is becoming privatized.

Could we have imagined these changes?  Possibly. We'd probably not be able to see how they'd happen. That is the curious thing about visions and visioning. We can imagine the end, but not the means.  The pathway to the future goes through today and tomorrow. Yet, we are captives of our past thinking and experiences.  They are the measure of what is possible and what can be done.

The End and the Beginning

I have been reflecting, in particular, on these thoughts over the past several months.  I've tried to step back without prejudice and identify what I see without reducing it down to a few simple categories. What I do see are the markers of change in three broad areas.

For one it is the The Beginning of the End, for another The End of the Beginning, and for another, surprisingly, The Beginning of a long delayed Beginning.

Some of this reflection was prompted by a conversation about a project event to take place later this year. It was a discussion about how businesses function. The contrast was between a focus of work as a set of tasks to be done and the importance of human interaction in meeting organizational goals. I realized coming out of that conversation that this project, for me, represented a turning point in human and organizational development. It provided a picture of the past and the future. The past as the Industrial model of business organization and the future of organizations as communities of leaders. That last phrase was what I envisioned a decade and a half ago when I began my consulting business. Only now, after all these years, do I see that simple idea beginning to have relevance for the way we live, work, organize and lead organizations.

What I see is:

The Beginning of the End of the Progressive ideal.

The  End of the Beginning of the Capitalist model.

The Emergence of freedom and democracy on a global scale.

The first two, Progressivism and Capitalism, along with modern Science, are the principal products of the age of Enlightenment.

The Progressive ideal believed, and still does by many of its advocates, that through government control of science and industry a free, equitable and peaceful world could be achieved. Conceived during the 19th century as a belief that society could be perfected, and as a counter-balance to the industrialization taking place in Europe and the United States, it was an utopian belief in a well-order, controlled, uniform world.

The Capitalist model was born in a belief that each individual should be free to pursue their own economic welfare, and not be forced by government rules or economic servitude to do that which they choose not to do. It was the ideology that provided the basis of the industrialization out which has come prosperity for more people in history and the rise of the modern middle class.

Both the Progressive ideal and the Capitalist model have brought great benefits and liabilities to society. They form the two sides of virtually every divisive issue confronting the world today. They are quite similar, yet in very different ways. Both are organized around the control of power and wealth. Both have been institutionalized in the large, hierarchical organizations in Washington and on Wall Street, and in similar institutions throughout the world.

Over the past decade, the Progressive ideal and the Capitalist model have begun to show their age. The assumptions that underlie these ideologies are being challenged by forces of change that are beyond their control. Because the control of global forces of change is problematic and less realistic.

A principal assumption of the Enlightenment is that we can know what we need to know by analytical decision making. In other words, by identifying the parts of a situation, we understand it, and therefore can design a strategic mechanism for controling the outcome.  This analytical process works very well in the realm of the natural sciences, less so in the realm of the social sciences. To paraphrase novelist Walker Percy, "Science can tell us how the brain functions, but not about the functioning of the mind."

At the beginning of this essay, I wrote of what I was seeing The Beginning of The  End of the Progressive ideal and The End of the Beginning of the Capitalist model. Neither of these observations are political statements. I am not a Democrat, nor a Republican. I am not a Progressive nor a Libertarian. I find none of the current choices of political affiliation representative of my own perspective and values. I speak as an outlier, not an antagonist. 

I see these ideological movements as products of a different time in history. The assumptions and the way of thinking that brought these ideologies into prominence are now receding in appropriateness. The conditions that gave rise to these ideas over the past three hundred years are now giving way to new conditions.  If progressivism and capitalism are to survive, then their proponents must change.

Emergent connection

These ideologies born in the age of Enlightenment share a reductive approach to knowledge. In other words, we gain knowledge and understanding by breaking things into parts. The assumption is that things are collections of discrete parts.  Yet, we know that in the natural sciences, the mixing of different chemical elements creates something new and different that cannot exist in any other way. Water being the most obvious example.

However, in the social realm, there is a shift toward emergent knowledge as the basis for understanding what is.  The emergent perspective sees connections and wholes rather than just parts. In a network of relationships, the value isn't one person, but rather the connections that one person has to other persons. 

Think of it as the difference between those radio ads selling lists of sales leads, and knowing the person who has a relationship with 100 of those buyers. The former is a list of contacts, of names and addresses. It is a parts list.  The other is a picture of a network of connections that one person has. This second picture is the picture of the future, for it is a picture of relationships.

We see emerging forces all around us. Again, this is not a political statement, but an observation. One difference between the Tea Party demonstrations and the Union demonstrations of the past year is the difference between an emergent organization and a traditional hierarchical one. The Tea Party organization is intentionally decentralized in local communities. Unions are designed as centralized concentrations of power.  One body speaking for a host of organizations.

 The difference here is between a centralized and decentralized organizational structure, like that described in Ori Brafman and Rod Beckstrom's book, The Starfish and The Spider. The centralized structure (the spider) is vulnerable at the top. Take down the leader, and the organization suffers significant loss of prestige and power. The decentralized system (the starfish) is not vulnerable at the top, because there is none. In a decentralized system, no one expression controls the fortunes of the whole. The centralized is the industrialized model, and the decentralized, an emergent one. The system that the Progressive ideal and the Capitalist model share is one of centralization. Operating separate from both are independents and small business entrepreneurs. The difference is between a hierarchy of control and a network of collaborative relationships.

The recent rebellions in the Middle East are also examples of this emergent model. The use of cell phone and internet technology to connect people in agile, less structured ways make these rebellions possible, not necessarily successful, but possible.Their desire is for a freedom that they see provided and secured by democracy. When thousands of demonstrators fill the streets of Cairo seeking the end of a repressive regime, their impact is far greater than their numbers. We see a visual counterpoint of the difference between being a nation of free people and one living under an authoritarian government.

Even as the Progressive ideal and the Capitalist model decline, the impetus towards freedom and democracy grows. I heard recently that there are now more nations with democratic governments than at any time in history.  Democracy that grows from a grassroots base is an emergent model. The impact is greater than the sum of its individual parts. In an emergent context, one person's actions can serve as a catalyst for thousands more. For example, the recent uprising in Tunisia was started  when a street merchant Mohamed Bouazizi set himself on fire to protest the abusive treatment by police of his vegetable cart business.

The Network is Emergent

In business, the emergent model has relevance. When a business perceives itself to be a structure of parts, processes and outcomes, following upon the centralized industrial model, then it has a much more difficult time seeing the value that exists in the relational connections that exist both between people and within the structure itself. It is why so many businesses become siloed and turf battles insue.

However, when a business sees itself as a network of interactive individuals, then the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. The result is higher levels of communication, collaboration and coordination.

While the Progressive ideal and the Capitalist model are products of the age of Enlightenment, emergence, freedom and democracy are even older ideas finding new ground and relevance.  In the traditional business organization, their relevance can be seen in two ways.

First, in the freedom of the individual to take responsibility through their own initiative. This perspective harkens back to the ancient Greek democracies where Greek farmers and small business owners participated in the governance and protection of their city-state. For businesses to replicate such an ethos requires a shift in perspective from employees as functionaries of the tasks of the company to a recognition of the potential contribution that each person offers. It is in this sense that each person leads out of their own personal initiative to give their best to the company.

Second, in the emergence of businesses as human communities of shared responsibility. The traditional approach has been to break down the organizational structures into discrete parts of tasks and responsibilities, and to staff to that conception of the organization. This traditional hierarchical approach worked in simpler times when businesses were less global, more homogeneous, and employees less well trained, and had the technology to advance their contributions beyond their individual position in the company.

Today, the environment of business has changed, as the context becomes more complex and change accelerates. Agility and responsiveness are not embedded in structure, but in human choice and in relationships that amplify those shared choices to make a difference. It is the freedom to take initiative to act in concert with others that creates the conditions of successfully managing the challenging environment of business today. The result of a greater emphasis on relationship, interaction and personal initiative is a shift in culture. One only has to select any page in the Zappos.com Culture Book to see the influence of genuine community upon the attitudes and behaviors of the company's workforce.

The Keys to Change

I began this post by saying that we rarely see the end of something coming or the beginning of something new. What I offer here has been germinating in my mind for the past three years. It is still not yet fully formed, and may never be. Yet, I am convinced that the changes that I see happening mean that there is no going back to the halcyon days of the 1990's or even the 1950's.  Business organizations will not long succeed as mechanistic structures of human parts. Rather they must emerge into being communities of leaders, where individual initiative, community and freedom are fundamental aspects of the company's culture

The keys to the future, in my mind, are fairly simple.

1. Leadership starts with individual employees' own personal initiative to make a difference. Create space and grant permission for individual employees to take initiative to create new ways of working, new collaborative partnerships and solve problems before that reach a crisis level.

2. Relationships are central to every organizational endeavor. Create space for relationships to grow, and the fruit will be better communication, more collaboration between people and groups, and a more efficient coordination of the work of the organization.

 3. Open the organization to new ideas about its mission. Identify the values that give purpose and meaning to the company's mission.  Organize around those values that unite people around a common purpose, that give them the motivation to want to communicate better, collaborate more, and coordinate their work with others.  Openness is a form of freedom that releases the hidden and constrained potential that exists within every company.

We are now at the End of an era that is unprecedented in human history. The next era is Beginning, and each of us has the privilege and the opportunity to share in its development. It requires adapting to new ideas, new ways of thinking, living and working. I welcome the change that is emerging, because I find hope that a better world can be gained through its development.

Worshiping Communities - the essential question

One of my New Testament professors in seminary would regularly caution us about the hardening of the categories in our interpreting the Scriptures. As the new Form of Government is implemented through the presbyteries, and as the Fellowship of Presbyterians promotes their vision of a New Reformed Body, I feel that we still must guard against the hardening of the categories as we look to what the PCUSA will be for the 21st century.

My question isn't primarily theological or biblical, but rather social. It is a question of how the church as an organization in society adapts to changes that are influencing us.

So, let's play a little thought game to get at the heart of this issue.

*One million Lebanese gather in Beirut, March 14, 2005, to protest Syrian occupation and the assasination of Lebanese prime minister Rafik Hariri.

The Post-Pentecost Structure

Let's say that right now at the end of the year 2011, Pentecost is happening, not two thousand years ago.  Right now. It may look like the picture above of a crowd of a million people in central Beirut, Lebanon in the spring of 2005.

You and I are present as the Spirit descends upon this random multi-cultural crowd of people gathered in a city square or park in places like Los Angeles, Hanoi or Beirut. On this day, we are present at the spiritual birth of the church.  Not the creation of a new denomination, but the church of Jesus Christ.

How would the media cover the event? What would the Twitter feed of the event be recording? How soon would there be a Facebook page up asking people to like the new social network of Pentecost? How would the dominant religious institutions of our time react? What would be the mainstream religious traditions, if there had been no Christian body for the past two thousand years, until this afternoon?

What do you think the people caught up in the Spirit's appearance would do next?  What do you think would happen tomorrow or the next week? After a year, what do you think would have happened to this group of people? Would they still be together?

More importantly, what organizational form would the people caught up in the Spirit's movement adopt? If the church were born today, what would it look like?  Would it look like a mass uprising or a few people sitting around a table in a coffee shop chatting? Would it look like a downtown, tall steeple church, a mega-church or a house church meeting in a suburban living room?

We have the Acts record to know what happened two thousands years ago. But what about now. The new Form of Government or NRB or any other traditional formalized structure of a denominational church are patterns of church organization that are also logical adaptations to current forms of secular organizations.  As a result, all church structures are products of their historical context. To understand this insight is to recognize that change is not necessarily destructive, but rather how the church adapts to the culture around it.

A Discussion of Structure

One day this past week, I celebrated the 30th anniversary of my ordination as a minister of the word and sacrament / teaching elder. I spent the day with a group of leaders from a presbytery discussing their presbytery's organizational model, and why it wasn't working. Like many presbyteries, they are divided up into regional clusters. The intent was to help this large diverse, geographically scattered presbytery create the conditions for community and shared mission. It hasn't happened like it was designed.

The essential problem, in my opinion, is a widely shared perspective about organizations that has found its way into the church. This adaptation to contemporary organizational norms sees the church as an administrative / programmatic entity created for order, efficiency and top-down accountability. This is the secular corporate model that has been the standard approach to organizations since the end of the Second World War. The PCUSA institutionalized this approach in the reunion of 1983. 

This approach elevates administrative process over human interaction. The result is the creation of an organizational environment of divisive special interests, each seeking to claim preeminence as the core mission of the church.

I am saying that the divisions in the church over the past hundred years are products of organizational design, not simply differences in theology and social / political ideology. The product is disunity in the Body of Christ.

The Structural Shift

Over at my Leading Questions blog, I've been writing for a long time about how change is affecting organizations and leaders. The key posts over the past 18 months are gathered in the compilation, Leadership for the 21st Century, that explores the social and organizational changes that are influencing what we understand the nature of leadership and organizational structure are becoming in the 21st century. Working both sides of the line that separates the church from for-profit businesses, non-profit community organizations, local governments, regulated utilities, healthcare organizations and institutions of higher education, I have come to see that there is an epic shift taking place in society from organizational structures of hierarchy to ones based upon a network of relationships. What I see is are Parallel Structures of Networks of Relationships.

Here's the juxtaposition that I see constituting a shift that is historic and transforming society as a whole on a global scale.

Organizations since the rise of the global empires of three millennia ago have functioned through a structure of hierarchy. As this image describes, hierarchical organizations are built around a leadership structure of institutional authority of delegated responsibility whose purpose is institutional integrity. This is the corporate model that we see designed into virtually every business and government institution in our society.

Functioning in parallel are relationship networks. These networks form around a shared mission or interest. I'm distinguishing these relationship networks from the more common social networks that one can find on Facebook, Google + and the myriad other online gathering points. These relationship networks are missional in nature, and are governed by the values that inform that mission. Participation in these networks is based on personal initiative to contribute. As a result, these networks are based upon a leadership structure of shared mission, shared responsibility, personal integrity and initiative to make a difference that matters.

These parallel structures of networks of relationships have always been present in the church.  They are what I see in this guide to 21st Century Congregational Distinctives and the shifts that I see taking place in congregations.

Understanding Parallel Structures

The key to understanding our future as a church and a denomination is understanding how these parallel structures function as worshipping communities.

A parallel structure is not a replacement structure, at least not by intention.

We can see parallel structures throughout the church. The Fellowship of Presbyterians is a parallel structure. The overseas mission work of a presbytery is a parallel structure. The ministry to the homeless in the congregation where my family worships is a parallel structure. The choir in almost every church is a parallel structure.

These structures provide a way for people to gather around a common interest of shared mission. It is how our diversity as a church functions. These are relationship networks that provide what I observe people saying about what they want from their life.

People want their lives to be Personally Meaningful, Socially Fulfilling and Make a Difference that Matters.

People want their values to matter and a purpose to their lives. They want their relationships to be healthy, respectful and caring. And they want to make a difference that matters.

I'm convinced that we need to structure our congregations, as well as our businesses, schools, community organizations and government organization to help people achieve these goals for themselves.

The idea of the PCUSA creating 1001 worshiping communities during the decade is an attractive one to me. It is because I see in this simple goal a way to elevate parallel structures of networks of relationships as places of worship, mission and community that create opportunities for people to find the church a place of Personal Meaning, Social Fulfillment and where their contributions make a difference that matters in the context of shared mission in Jesus Christ.

However, if this vision that I have is to be achieved, it means that we have to change some of our understandings of what church structure means.

A Reforming Structure

The organizational world outside of the church is changing. It is adopting a network perspective where relationships of shared mission and responsibility are their core organizing principle. The old corporate model is failing. The emerging paradigm is the network of relationships. This model puts a premium on personal initiative, creativity and commitment to contributing. The old hierarchical system discouraged initiative in favor of compliance. 

Networks of relationships provide a way for people to become engaged in the full mission activity of the organization. The stronger the relational interaction, the stronger the organization, and greater the opportunities for impact.  This is true in the church as it is in the business world.

For example, in my presbytery, two of our mission endeavors are partnerships with a Guatemalan presbytery and with a hospital in Malawi.The significance of these partnerships is that the Guatemalan churches are financially supporting the mission in Malawi. Shared mission, shared responsibility and the result shared impact as the church.

People involved in these mission partnerships find their faith strengthened, their skills of ministry expanded, and their perception of God's work in the world broadened through their involvement. As a network of relationships, they are functioning as a worshiping community.

The same can be said for the campus ministries that I serve with through the North Carolina Presbyterian Higher Education Ministries.  They are very much are like mini-congregations with programs of worship, fellowship, faith development and mission outreach.

Each of these mission endeavors are parallel structures aligned with a board, a church and in many cases through a presbytery. Each one has aspects of faith development, worship and service as a part of their program. Each is a network of relationships functioning as a worshiping community.

The Structure of Future

Here are my convictions about the future structure of the church. These are not predictions. Rather what I see is how we can adapt to a 21st century social context that is unlike the last century.

1. Relationships precede structure.

2. Connectionalism first must be relational if a connection system of governance is to work.

3. Presbyteries are the key to strengthening the connectional relationship between people and churches.

4. Worshipping communities are networks of relationships of people who are personally engaged in faith development, take personal initiative to contribute, and build relationships of shared mission and responsibility to live out the Great Ends of the Church.

5. As a denomination, we'll be smaller with greater impact, as we become more missional as a church.

The essential question of what will the structure of the PCUSA look like in the future I believe is answered in the development of parallel structures of networks of relationship of shared mission and responsibility as worshipping communities in Jesus Christ.

If Pentecost was to take place today, I believe this is what we would see. Networks of Relationships as Worshipping Communities of Shared Mission.

This is our future.

 *http://www.calpeacepower.org/0201/images/Lebanon_overview_bg.jpg

The Measure of a Church

Over the sixteen years that I have been consulting with churches, one of the most difficult topics to address is the question of the measure of a church's effectiveness.

Like any modern organization, numbers tend to dominate the discussion.

Two Churches, Same Stats

For example, the annual statistical report that congregations submit to Louisville provides an interesting but quite incomplete picture of a congregation. A casual look at this sample graph of three statistical measures would give you an idea that all is not healthy with this congregation. However, if all you knew was the red line's membership growth statistic, that from 1985 to 2010 the congregation grew from around 300 to over 1500 members, you'd rightly think that this is a growing, healthy church.

Then again, if we add in the worship attendance (blue line) and stewardship pledging (green line), we can see that the picture of a congregation's health is much more complicated that membership numbers.  Numbers don't tell everything, and cannot tell the whole story of a congregation. It cannot tell us, for example, that in this hypothetical church, a flood devastated the community in the late nineties, on the heals of a large employer moving their operation overseas. Membership remains steady, growing a bit, but worship attendance and giving declined.  Or, the same statistics for a different congregation could be representative of a series of short pastoral tenures in a church of strong programs for children and youth. So, worship attendance drops while participation in other programs of the church remain strong.

It is important to understand context, so that the numbers provide meaning and insight.  The issue still remains how should we measure theses sample churches. Same numbers, different context.

Faithfulness, the Holy Rationalization

In virtually, every church where I've done work, the issue of measuring their church's life and ministry is a problematic question. I don't see it primarily as an organizational question of statistics and trend lines.  How many times have I heard pastors and parishioners say, "God doesn't call us to be effective but faithful." Or something to this extent. I find this a statement of false piety and the deflecting away of responsibility for the outcomes of the church's life. It dodges the reality that God created us with intention for us to live lives of purpose in Jesus Christ. It suggests a passive kind of faith that lacks a clear sense of God's calling.

The faithfulness claim is really about the church not to being treated like any other organization, so that it avoids scrutiny. Of course, it isn't just like any other organization, and of course, faithfulness is a core facet of our calling to follow Christ.  The question is what should be our standard for being faithful. Do we each come up with our own personal standard because at the end of the day, our faith is entirely personal, between God and me?  Or is there something that we all share as the chruch that calls us to a common aspiration of performance?

How do I know when I am faithful? How do I know if I'm meeting God's standard.

Here are two Scripture references that I find helpful.

First, Ecclesiastes 3:1-15.

For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven:
a time to be born, and a time to die;
a time to plant, and a time to pluck up what is planted;
a time to kill, and a time to heal;
a time to break down, and a time to build up;
a time to weep, and a time to laugh;
a time to mourn, and a time to dance;
a time to throw away stones, and a time to gather stones together;
a time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing;
a time to seek, and a time to lose;
a time to keep, and a time to throw away;
a time to tear, and a time to sew;
a time to keep silence, and a time to speak;
a time to love, and a time to hate;
a time for war, and a time for peace.

 What gain have the workers from their toil? I have seen the business that God has given to everyone to be busy with. He has made everything suitable for its time; moreover, he has put a sense of past and future into their minds, yet they cannot find out what God has done from the beginning to the end. I know that there is nothing better for them than to be happy and enjoy themselves as long as they live; moreover, it is God’s gift that all should eat and drink and take pleasure in all their toil. I know that whatever God does endures for ever; nothing can be added to it, nor anything taken from it; God has done this, so that all should stand in awe before him. That which is, already has been; that which is to be, already is; and God seeks out what has gone by.

God meets us in the reality of our lives. We go through the seasons of life. We live with a sense of history, of time and place, and gain the knowledge for how we can adapt to the changes that come in life. And we do this in a life context of God's engagement with us throughout our lives, from before our creation through our passage from death into eternal life.

There is an intentionality that God wishes upon his human creatures to eat, drink and take pleasure in all their toil. To take pleasure in our work is a judgment that we make about what we do. It is a measurement that gives us joy at accomplishing something of real worth. That judgment provides us perspective on the context of our lives lived within the intentionality of God's purpose. This is the world that God has created. To see that our calling is to simply be faithful in some generic sense, empties the meaning of the work that we are to do as his human beings. It is a statement that this world, a world that God has created with clear purpose, has only a secondary, or instrumental purpose. That there is no inherent value in what happens day to day, all that matters is what is to come later, we are in effect passing time in a faithful manner. I don't think this is the perspective that we gain from the Scriptures. And yet, it is one of the guiding ideologies of the modern church, to be people of faith, faithfully serving their Lord without concern for the outcome of their faithfulness. 

This spiritual question this raises is about how we are to actually live our lives, and be the church. Not the church in our imaginations, but the church on the ground, in the streets and in our places of work.

Let's look at Ephesians 4:4-10.

But God, who is rich in mercy, out of the great love with which he loved us even when we were dead through our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved— and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, so that in the ages to come he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness towards us in Christ Jesus. For by grace you have been saved through faith, and this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God— not the result of works, so that no one may boast. For we are what he has made us, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand to be our way of life.(Emphasis mine.)

The life we live is not our life, but God's gift of kindness to us. It is a gift that deserves our gratitude to God, and our stewardship of that gift.

There is an intentionality to our lives that we miss if all that we are wrapped up in is trying meet some self-determined arbitrary set of rules for what it means to be faithful. In other words, to truly be faithful is to live our lives according to the grace that has been given to us in the concreteness of the talent, personality and social context where we live. When we do this, we each, in our own unique way, become agents and vessels for God's grace in the same concreteness of the world.

To focus on OUR faithfulness is to be distracted from the sufficiency of God's grace as we meet Christ in every hour of the day.

This is an important perspective for churches to grasp. For a church in a real world context is more than a social network of spiritually connected people who are organized as followers of Jesus Christ in a specific time and place. If instead of treating the church like another non-profit organization for the social and spiritual welfare of the community, we see the church as a place of sending people out to live the lives that God, by his kindness, created to be our way of life in that same community, then we begin to see the question of how we measure the church in a very different manner.

The Measure: Mission and Impact

The challenge of measurement is not finding things to measure, but rather measuring those things that provide a true measure of a church's performance. This is especially challenging for churches because we have typically not looked at the church from a performance perspective. Instead, we see the church as a cultural / spiritual community, and faithfulness has more to do with upholding traditions, than achieving some goal.

In a post-Christendom context, the rationale for this approach is less valid. As followers of Jesus Christ, we are living as aliens and exiles. We exist as a constructive social counter-force whose transforming presence creates change. It is this change that we look to as our measure. But to understand the nature of this change, we must begin at a different point.

The Circle of Impact diagram is a conversation guide that I use to help churches and other organizations understand the connection between the Three Dimensions of Leadership - Ideas, Relationships and Structure and the Connecting Ideas - Mission, Values, Vision and Impact. The purpose of the Connecting Ideas is to tie together the Three Dimensions.

For measuring purposes, Mission and Impact are the key ideas.

The church's mission focuses and directs the activities that take place through the structures of the church. For example, one of the churches with whom I've worked developed a new mission statement as a part of a planning process that I facilitated. Their mission is "... to discover and share just how much God loves us" and is applied through every aspect of their church's social and organizational structure. This means that worship, outreach, administration, child care, property management, music and other aspects of their congregation's life have as their mission "... to discover and share just how much God loves us."  As a result, as often as needed, the Session, the pastor, committee members and the congregation as a whole can ask, just how is this part of our church's life helping us "... to discover and share just how much God loves us?"

A compelling mission statement like this one is not just the obligatory God-speak for the cover of the Sunday bulletin. Instead, it serves as a guide for how the whole of the church functions. By providing direction, the church has a better idea for how to measure whether it is fulfilling the intention of the mission statement.

Still, even a well crafted mission statement, like our example here, can turn out to be not specific enough for measuring the church's effectiveness. This is why the idea of impact emerged in my thinking several years ago.

Let me be clear about what I mean by Impact. I see it as change that makes a difference that matters. It is change. Without change there is nothing to measure. With change that is aligned with our mission, we have a measure of the church that makes a difference.

What change do we see in people, and what change do we see in the church when we fulfill our mission "...to discover and share just how much God loves us." What is the transformation you see when a person is transformed by the grace of God. Think hard. Be specific. Write it down if you must. Talk about it. Wrestle with it. For if you can identify the change that your mission in Jesus Christ is intended to create, then you can develop the programs that produce this transformative effect.

Without a clear mission, it is difficult to identify what to measure. And even with a clear mission, but lacking in a clear understanding of the impact that should result, it is difficult to establish a measure that makes a difference.

What does this measure tell us? More than anything a measure of impact is providing us a picture of the active grace and love of God alive and effective through the church. The more we see God's grace in reconciliation and spiritual transformation, the greater our awareness of "just how much God loves us" becomes. The purpose of measurement is not primarily organizational, but rather spiritual to unite us with Jesus Christ as the church.

This emphasis on impact is a shift for virtually every church. What is the shift away from? It is a shift away from measurement by activity and numbers, and toward what changes because of your congregation's life in Jesus Christ. It is the difference between describing a vacation trip by looking at your credit card statement, or by telling stories of places and people who touched your life.

A mission statement that only describes what you do as a church is not going to help you identify what your congregation's impact should be. A statement that describes the change you want to create provides a platform for organizing the whole church to be centers of transformative change.

Change

Is the word a noun or a verb?

Which is it for the church?

Is change what happens to congregations?

Or, is change what we do as congregations?

It is an important question.

The reality that most churches face is that if they do not change they will be changed. The question therefore is what kind of change do we want.

The Meaning of Change

Sometime during my life time, an idea became embedded in the cultural DNA of the church which suggested that the church is a bulwark against societal change. We began to think that this is the one institution that can remain the same and also remain vital. We sold our members on this notion that change is bad, and stasis is good.

The truth is actually the opposite.

Changing is the only way to stay alive. Not changing is how you become a rock. When Jesus told Peter, "upon this rock, I'll build my church," I don't think he was referring to become an actual rock. Rather, to be resilient in the face of change.

There is a lot that can be discussed about change. And over time, I will address it here. There is one thing I want to say about it now to establish a centerpoint for all other discussions about change.

The  Circle of Impact

There are three broad dimensions that we address in our life and work. I call these the Three Dimensions of Leadership. I define leadership as "personal initiative to create impact." Each person, therefore, has the capacity and opportunity, every day, to lead. Each person living in the midst of the everyday dimensions of ideas, relationships and the social and organizational structures, where we live and work, including our churches, can lead by taking initiative to make a difference that matters.

Within the Circle of Impact are four ideas that I call The Connecting Ideas. They are Mission or Purpose, Values, Vision and Impact. These ideas are the glue that holds the three dimensions together. As a result, there is an alignment that happens when the Connecting Ideas matter.

When your mission is clear, then how you organize the church is given direction. When your mission is not that important, then the functioning of the organizational structure takes an importance that primarily resistant to change. This is the situation that I see in many churches that are struggling with change. Structure isn't determined by their mission, but by their tradition of activity. The old line, "We've never done it that way." is a classic statement of a church that is unclear about the Connecting Ideas. It is a church that can't tell you what its mission is, what its values are, what its vision for the future is or what its Impact is. It is essentially a museum vaguely reflecting a long passed time when the Connecting Ideas were alive and directive.

Dealing with Change

If you want to address change, you must begin to do the following.

First Step: Conversation about what matters

Start talking about the Connecting Ideas.

What is your mission? What's the impact of your mission? What difference, really, what difference does it make?

The most effective missions are externally focused. If your mission is just about the people who are already there, then the people who are not will see that there is no place for them in your congregation.

Be honest with yourselves.  Because if you are not, change will be what happens to you, instead of what you do to create the future that is in your hearts and minds by the Spirit of God.

Second Step: Care for Each Other

If on a small scale, caring for each other in your congregation becomes a part of your mission, then you must create a structure that enables it to happen. You can't just desire it. You must create structure to make it work. Structure serves Mission, and Mission serves People.

The best way to start? Small groups that practice four things. Pray for each other, study together, fellowship over meals, and serve others together.

Third Step: Encourage Each Person to Take Initiative to Make a Difference

There are a lot of positive changes that are taking place in churches. None of them though happen without significant growth in participation and contribution by members.

So, if you are listening, you'll understand that changing (verb) the church begins with changing oneself (verb) to create the change (noun) that you desire rather than the kind that you don't.

Change is personal and communal. We go through it together. It either makes us stronger and the church survives, or we cave into its stresses and fear, and the church declines.

Change is a context of faith. It is a time where we learn the content and character of the faith that we believe. We learn whether it is just an idea, or something more. The more is the difference that matters. It is what I pray you find together as a congregations.