Will Mancini

We can quickly assent to the fact that all kingdom-minded ministry is truly collaborative and not competitive. Yet, if we are really honest, there is a practical and true competition that people doing ministry in North America are going to feel. And it is real.

How can we think about this competition with clarity? Basically, the sense of competition is always present when people have choices. They have a choice of where to go for church, where to give their money. A church planter has a choice about planting networks. When someone wants to find a vehicle for overseas missions, there are choices. Even within a church, a volunteer has a choice of where to serve.

How should the kingdom-minded leader respond to this sense of competition? 

1) Know how you are uniquely called to make a kingdom difference. The truth is, if you can’t quickly do this, you should immediately begin a process to discover and articulate it. If you really can’t differentiate your ministry you should seriously consider closing shop and joining the competition. The mantra is “differentiate or die.” 

2) Study the strengths of other ministries. When you are clear about your unique role, it will free you to really understand and appreciate what other ministries are doing. It will also help you appreciate and articulate your own distinctives. Most importantly, it will prepare you for the next step.

3) Speak well about the competition. A little secret I learned long ago from great sales people, Christian or not, is that they always talk good about their competition. From Christ’s viewpoint, not only should we be always gracious, but we ought to have the integrity  to connect real needs to best solutions. If you have discerned well, you can cultivate a spirit to  support and promote other ministries and not only your own. It is a beautiful thing to live and model leadership with this kind of egoless clarity!

4) Live your call with passion and leave the results up to God. Ultimately it is important not to be distracted by, concerned about, or jealous of the fruitfulness of other ministries. Many leaders are weighed down by such emotions and deceptions. Over the years I have worked on many “levels” pastoring, served in para-church ministries, and started my own. I know first-hand the soul-sickness of comparison and I have had to repent many times! Keep repenting until you have the clarity to pursue your unique contribution with nothing to prove and nothing to loose.

I couldn’t resist telling this story. A church recently finished a Vision Pathway with Auxano. With the new mission articulation beginning to shift and shape the ministry (1 of the 5 questions discerned through the visioning work), a church staff wrote the following note on a workroom refrigerator:

BECAUSE OF OUR MISSION TO  ____________________ PLEASE KEEP THE COFFEE AREA CLEANED.

This note appears to be an application of what I encourage all of the time: Drip the vision (#visiondrip) into the daily conversation and daily flow of leadership. Tie everything you do back to the mission.

But this time the application went wrong. No, the mission of Christ is not provided for you to anchor your petty workroom rules and enforce it on everyone else. The mission is a reminder of what we are all supposed to be doing, so that I can start with my motives, my heart, my actions and my modeling.

As a leader or facilitator, never underestimate how you create an atmosphere, the moment you walk into a room you. One key question is, what kind of atmosphere does your presence generate? 

The answer to this question, must be attuned to who you are (being yourself) and the particular work that you do (for example, conflict resolution vs. strategy brainstorm). Given the fact that I tend to be a people-oriented initiator (“DI” on the DiSC, ENTP on Meyers-Briggs) and that I work in the field of vision, here is a description of the atmosphere I want to create:

• Engaging – creating positive connections with EACH person
• Thoughtful – being interested and not just interesting
• Expectant – modeling enthusiasm and confidence that God is at work
• Curious – reminding people that I bring questions before answers

Here are some of the practical facilitation steps I keep in mind when I work with teams.

#1 Set up early enough in order to  focus 100% on people when they come in. This seems like a no brainer but it’s easy to slip here. If  I’m distracted with tasks when people come in the room, the desired atmosphere dies quickly. 

#2 Greet each person in the room starting with the least important person, if there is any “hierarchy” present. (For example, children before adults, lay leaders before staff people, people who don’t know me before people who do know me.)  The dynamic here is that everyone feels more at ease when each person sees that everyone matters. I don’t start a meeting until I have shaken every hand with an eyeball-to-eyeball genuine greeting. Think about the “hierarchy” idea: What parent doesn’t appreciate you greeting their children first?

#3 Start interaction early and have everyone speak. I don’t like kicking off a meeting with a long intro by me or an extended prayer time. There is a time where people get to know me and there is a time for extended prayer, but not to kick things off. This strategy creates interaction, positive energy and let’s people know that I am there to listen more than talk.

#4 Pray passionately and expect God to show up. Even though I don’t start with extended prayer, I do start by clearly and strongly “leaning into God” confessing our utter dependence on Him and faith-full anticipation of His blessing. I always ask for supernatural wisdom, with James 1:5 as a springboard.

The secret to processes for discovery or mastery is to avoid straight line thinking. There are two important times when making a “b-line” for something will hinder you. I use both of these diagrams frequently when I navigate the Vision Pathway. 

The first diagram I use is called the “clarity spiral.” I use it when for any visioning process to illustrate an important truth of process: In discovery, vital movement at the beginning of the process will feel indirect and therefore slow. This indirect movement includes steps of preparation, orientation, and perspective development. But with each process step, like a 4 hour collaborative meeting, the movement toward the center speeds up. The first two meetings take you only slightly close to point B, but in the last two meetings you can zip around pretty fast. I had one pastor validate the spiral by using the illustration of his kitchen renovation. He said it felt like his kitchen was a mess all of the time, until the end, when it all came together quickly. If you are leading a discovery processes, lead the journey and set expectations with the spiral . It will buy you the patience you need in the beginning. 

Like a discovery process, you also can’t follow a straight line  in a mastery process.  This simple idea was drilled home in Set Godin’s little book gem called The Dip. Here is the picture from the book. The premise is that you can’t move directly, via straight line, from a basic state to a mastery state in any category. You actually have to go through a season or stage where greater effort yields less results. I call it the tunnel of chaos. It is critical to anticipate this stage to know when enduring the dip is worth it or a waste of time. Any good coach appreciates the dip and the role of encouragement, support and direction to guide someone through it.

Where can you use these drawings this week, or this month in your leadership?

I want to share some thoughts as I focus more and more time on training other consultants, coaches and pastors on how to facilitate visioning. This year will represent a significant shift from my primary role of leading vision processes to reproducing vision processes.  While I have been apprenticing others from day one, the current shift will have me focusing more on apprenticing full-time navigators, training pastors, and making tools (including but not limited to new books). Read this related post on why I write.

As I share these thoughts, I want to encourage you toward reproducing your own vision. Consider these questions:

• How will your vision spread today without you being directly involved?
• How much time do you allocate to working on vs. working in the ministry?
• Who are you apprenticing right now?
• As you have experienced God’s blessing in ministry how have you become a bottleneck?
• Now that you have delegated what you don’t do well, how have you multiplied what only you can do well?
• If you were hit by a Mack Truck today, would the legacy factor of your life take your current vision much farther? 

In the series on the Art of Not Being There, I will share more with you on:

• How I am reproducing Church Unique’s Vision Pathway in a Church Unique Experience “kit” in cooperation with Group Publishing. The kit will be designed for church teams to do a vision process on their own through workbook, videos, and lots of tools that go along with the Church Unique process.
• Introducing the people I work with and how I am building the team at Auxano
• Our own strategy for scaling and expansion without diluting our culture and vision
• Special days on my blog dedicated to the craft of facilitation and great white-board learnings

I look forward to your interaction on the art of not being there.