I was at Group Publishing today in Loveland Colorado to dialogue about the condition of vision and leadership development in the church. I had a great morning with Thom and Joani Schultz (Thom founded the organization 35 years ago.) The facility is impressive with 350 employes and two notable accomplishments: 1) The sell more VBS curriculum than any other publisher, 2) They are repeatedly mentioned as a great place to work from folks who measure those sorts of things. What I liked best about the place is that you could sense the ministry-corporate culture they have created.
I enjoyed time with the new leadership of the pastor resources (including Rev magazine) - Dave Thornton and Brian Proffit. In particular, I was struck by a mind stretch vision that Group has with the Church Volunteer Central initiative. They call it the 80/20 vision by 2020. The idea is that they want to reverse the 20% of the folks doing all the work in the church by seeing a general trend toward 80% involvement from churches who use their equipping resources. Is that a Big Hairy Audacious Goal or what? The heartbeat of the place was inspiring!