Will Mancini

If you are reading a book (non-fiction), don’t continue until you know the singular reason why the book was written. This reason should reveal the problem that the book is trying to solve. The value of any book and all of its parts is tied to this double-barreled clarity: A singular what and a compelling why.

Why would I fire up a post on this topic right now?  Yesterday, Warren Bird of Leadership Network, asked me to do a conference call with a group of seminary students at Alliance Theological Seminary. They are going through Church Unique as a text. The first question I got asked is, “How would you state the purpose of your book in one sentence?” In all honestly the question bugged me a bit, because I went through great pain to provide the clear answer to that in the introduction. It revealed to me the reality that most people don’t connect their reading back to singular clear purpose, even when an author points it out clearly.

Here are the problems if you don’t know the purpose of the book and the problem it solves:

• You might be wasting your time on a book and topic of no relevance to you
• You might not appreciate the difference between books that are well written and poorly written
• You might misinterpret what is being said through the content of the book
• You might apply a solution to a problem that was not the problem the book addresses
• You might not appreciate the problems that the author experienced before you do

Well this might sound a little to anal to you, but for me, its about being clear.  There are more books out there that I could read in my lifetime, so its important for me to digest every book with intentionality. The two exceptions for me with non-fiction books are reading for entertainment or enjoying a biography for inspiration.

Just for fun, here is the singular reason I wrote Church Unique  (seen in the excerpt below). It is to challenge the reader to find their Church Unique- that is, to live a vision that creates a stunningly unique, movement oriented church.

The problem that the book solves is unpacked in the first four chapters of the book (below) and reveals the problems and pitfalls of two decades of “visioning.” The bottom line is that most work done under the banner of “visioning,” in the local church is a waste of time. How’s that for a problem statement?

• Unoriginal Sin – Neglecting Uniqueness
• The Fall of Strategic Planning – Obscuring the Essence
• The Iniquity of Church Growth – Caging the Kingdom
• Lost Congregations – How Churches Adapt to the Vision Vacuum

Here is the excerpt from the introduction:

Neue is a new quarterly journal by Relevant Media that just rereleased with a more readable magazine format and leadership savvy content. The tagline is “Ideas Shaping the Future of the Church.”  A very short article by Scot McKnight (his blog) was a particular jewel in this new issue. It doesn’t look like the content will be online anytime soon. Here are my highlights for the article Copycat Church:

In summary, Scot concisely and articulately connects the problem of copying methods and programs from other churches to a defining observation he has made in his career as a theologian and biblical scholar. He calls it his most important discovery of the last decade. In his own words:

For me the most important discovery in the last decade, of biblical and theological studies was two-fold: First, I realized that Jesus’s language was not sacrosanct for Paul and Peter and others.

 Second, I realized they were doing exactly what Jesus was doing. That is, Jesus wasn’t “imitating” anyone when he articulated the movement of God in terms of “Kingdom of God.”  He didn’t find this in Moses, or David, or Isaiah and restore it to its proper place, and the early Christian apostles didn’t “imitate” Jesus by expressing the Gospel with “Kingdom of God.”

The thrust of this article, carries the heartbeat of the ministry of Auxano and the book Church Unique: Every local congregation should think through their local context and their particular calling from God. And when they do, the articulation of their identity and direction will be stunningly  unique!  Scot’s emphasis is that even the inspired biblical authors didn’t copy each others words. Therefore, and even though we have the foundational revelation of Scripture, the Holy Spirit still creates new articulation of the Gospel through his people for different places and times. Here are some quotes from the article. 

• Imitation has its place, but one thing imitation doesn’t promise is results. Unfortunately a lot of church leaders don’t get that fact.
  
•  You can’t imitate Spirit-empowerment. You either have it or you don’t.
  
•  There is one thing that’s clear: There is no movement of God apart from God’s empowering Spirit.
  
•  The New Testament suggests that Spirit-empowered movements articulate the Gospel for a particular context for that day.
  
•  Spirit, context, Gospel, word. Those are the elements of a genuine movement of God.
  
•  The apostolic witness is the foundation of the Spirit-shaped truth of the Gospel. However, this does not mean that we simply puppet, or imitate the words of Jesus or Paul- for the New Testament does not do that itself.
  
•  What we need is less imitation and more discernment through God’s Spirit.

Thanks to all the folks at the C3 Conference (Creative Church Culture) who quickly sent this video as it brought to mind Church Unique.  Ed Young Jr’s creativity is off the charts as usual, and this time he brings a video with a message close to my heart. Enjoy! He is the pastor of FellowshipChurch.com

It’s fascinating how the social sciences reveal what the Bible makes so plain. In a recent book entitled Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us, Daniel Pink unpacks what he calls “motivation 3.0.” What are the surprises? Basically Pink does excellence work explaining that the extrinsic motivators, like making more money, pale in comparison to intrinsic ones.  The three top internal motivators that he builds the book around are:

• Autonomy
• Mastery
• Purpose

Here is a nugget from the “purpose” chapter of the book, which of course, is the clarity evangelist’s favorite part. Pink discusses the power of words and quotes from management guru, Gary Hamel. 

Words matter. And if you listen carefully, you might begin to hear a slightly different- slightly more purpose-oriented dialect. Gary Hamel says, “The goals of management are usually described in words like efficiency, advantage, value, superiority, focus, and differentiation. Important as these objectives are, they lack the power to rouse human hearts.” Business leaders, he says, “must find ways to infuse mundane business activities with deeper, soul-stirring ideals such as honor, truth, love, justice, and beauty.” Humanize what people say, and you may well humanize what they do.

If we, as a ministry leaders, want to rouse human hearts, we must learn to drip words of purpose into a daily dialogue. As we do, we follow the legacy of Jesus himself and every God-breathed word in Scripture. The first three verses that come to mind are:

For even the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many. – Jesus Christ (Mark 10:45)

As Jesus walked beside the Sea of Galilee, he saw Simon and his brother Andrew casting a net into the lake, for they were fishermen. “Come, follow me,” Jesus said, “and I will make you fishers of men.”  Gospel of Mark (1:16-17)

Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things. Apostle Paul (Philippians 4:8)

If you want to learn from others who are “delivering vision daily,” check out my post on Open Source Vision Casting. If you would like to probe the content of Drive a bit more (and if you like movies instead of books) check out this TED video on the subject.