Will Mancini

Steve Jobs, one of the world’s most influential inventors, died today.  If you have the slightest interest in pursuing a personal vision, this 15 minute video is a must watch. And if Steve Job’s innovation has impacted your life, you will like these three life lessons even more.

Life Lesson #1: FUTURE ORIENTATION- You have to trust in something.

• Trust that it will all work out in the end.
• Dropping out of college allowed me to “drop in” on what I wanted to learn.
• Most of what I stumbled in on turned out to be priceless down the road.
• Trust that the dots will connect down the road.
• You can’t connect the dots looking forward you can only looking backwards.

Life Lesson #2: LOSS AND LOVE- You have got to find what you love.

• I was lucky I found what I love to do early in life
• After 10 years and building a 2 billion dollar company with 4000 employees I got fired.
• I had been rejected but I was still in love.
• It turned out that getting fired from apple was the best thing that ever happened to me.
• The heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again; I was less sure about everything.
• It freed me to enter the most creative period of my life.
• And the only way to do great work is to love what you do.
• If you haven’t found it yet, keep looking, don’t settle.  As with all matters of the heart, you’ll know when you find it.

Life Lesson #3: DEATH – Your time is limited, so don’t waste it.

• When I was 17 I read a quote, “If you live each day as if it was your last, someday you will most certainly be right.”
• I have looked myself in the mirror every morning and asked myself, “If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?”
• Remembering that I will be dead soon is the most important tool I have ever encountered to help me make the big decisions in life.
• You are already naked, there is no reason not to follow your heart.
• Death is the destination we all share.
• Death is the best invention of life. It clears out the old to make way for the new.
• Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life.
• Have the courage to follow your heart and intuition- everything else is secondary.
• Stay hungry, stay foolish.

Yesterday, I conducted a Church Unique workshop for 10 churches connected to ICF- International Christian Fellowship, headquartered in Zurich. ICF Zurich started in 1990 and now runs almost 3000 in worship at renovated factory in downtown Zurich. ICF Zurich is a one-of-a-kind church, especially in Europe, as it boldly presents the gospel with energy, creativity and culture-savvy leadership.

My favorite part of their Vision Frame is their six style statements. ND Strupler, who leads the movements church planting network shares them below as I put in on the spot outside of the church.

ICF Zurich – Our Style

• At the heartbeat of time: We constantly ask ourselves how church needs to be to attract people today.
• Excited about life: We are excited about life with God and have a positive attitude towards life.
• Experiencing fellowship: We treat one another with love and enjoy life in fellowship.
• Developing potential: We support people and help them to flourish and develop their full potential.
• Giving the very best: We give our very best for God. For we value quality.
• Nothing is impossible: We believe for God nothing is impossible.

If you are interested in learning more about effective church planting in Europe, please leave a comment and I will pass it on to ND.

As I reflect on Steve Job’s resignation this week,  I am grateful for how his achievements inspire my own thinking. Here are some updated thoughts on a post I wrote from 18-months ago.

Whatever your opinion of the Apple products, they continue to capture the consumer imagination and bring innovation to life.  With the historic moment of the iPad’s original release, now about 18-months old,  I want to revisit some of the actual sound bites of the marketing blitz. Quotes from the release include:

• When something exceeds our ability to understand how it works, it sort of becomes magical
• It’s hard to see how something so simple can be so capable
• It’s going to change the way we do the things we do, every day
• I don’t have to change myself to fit it; it fits me
• We decided, “Let’s redesign it all…let’s redesign and reimagine and rebuild from the ground up…”
• You get an order of magnitude more powerful
• There’s automatic orientation
• Everything gets out of the way so that you can focus on the content you care about
• We want to put it in the hands as many people as possible right from the start
• This is a new category, but millions and millions of people are going to be instantly familiar with it

What if the ministry of our local churches could reflect amazing claims like this?  Go ahead and reread the list, but this time thinking about your church.

Is there even room for a comparison of Apple’s advancements to gospel-centered ministry? I believe so and I think the magic of this tech revolutionary  has something to teach church leaders.

Listen to the linchpin strategy of Apple’s success:

“It’s built by our hardware team in concert with our software team and what that gives you is a level of performance that you can’t get any other way. Apple is the one place that you can really do this. We build battery technology, we build chip technology and we build software and we bring all those things together in way that no one else can do it.”

The singular application of Steve Job’s success to church leaders is that design from the ground up is so fully integrated, that quality and innovation are unsurpassed. In church speak, we would dream that ministry content, ministry environments, ministry people and processes are so integrated that life change and accessibility to the gospel are unsurpassed.

But often doesn’t happen. Why not?  We simply  prefer NOT to do the work of designing, thinking and building this way. We like the message of Simple Church, or Church Unique, but get stuck relying on existing models. We get weary of talking with lay leadership about real changes in ministry strategy. We get satisfied with the good results of duplicating a program rather than the great results of incarnating our own. We get so busy on the ministry treadmill that we let every staff person makes decisions based on their own “operating system.”

What would happen if Steve Jobs decided to make disciples?

How would he design the church? What adaptations would he make to your ministry design? What would he stop altogether?  How would he redesign from the ground-up?

This is the fourth post on “Vehicles for Vision.”

The series started with an exploration of why preaching should not be your primary vision vehicle. Then we reviewed six vehicles that every church leader should use. Next we declared the leadership pipeline is often a missing link when it comes to using every vehicle.

Now I want to discuss a vehicle which is always in place but not intentionally used. It’s a powerful way to tell your story but neglected it broadcasts static. It’s your church’s “structural story.”

What is that you ask? More consulting speak?

Your structural story is the combination of language, systems, and processes that are running in the background of your organization that communicate, for better or worse, something about your church’s identity and vision.

Here is a sampling of five major structural story components:

• Staff titles and org charts: Even when we chart a new course in ministry direction it’s easy to keep the labels of yesteryear. Recently a executive pastor completely redrew an org chart using a circular format instead of a linear top down scheme. Several titles changed. It energized the leaders and helped them understand their new strategy better.
• Budget categories and process: How we think and communicate about spending money tells a story. What is it? One church is reevaluating their annual mission budget process which is completely separate from their operating budget. Forty years ago, having a separate budget highlighted the priority of missions, but now it seems to minimize the emphasis in missional living
• Systems and Information: What information do we keep on hand for each member? What does a first time guest receive if they give us their information?  Your church has a lots of systems (whether designed well or not). On more than one occasion, I’ve visited a Sunday class where a sheet is passed around with the term “prospects” printed at the top. (Southern Baptists have historically used this term.) While I appreciate the attention to attendance tracking, what does that terminology in our database suggest when a guest sees it? Or when the class leaders reviews it?
• Policies and procedures: Does your church have a policy for reserving space? For designated gifts? For social media? Again, this list goes on. What values or aspirations do these policies subtly reinforce? One church I am working with is developing a social media strategy. As we look at the policy we are wrestling through the tension of trying to control what’s being said verses trying guide positive engagement in the body of Christ.
• Internal communication “footprint.” By “footprint,” I am referring to the amount of space and prioritization of messages that are embedded into the internal communication strategy. This would touch on things like the “square footage” of content areas on web space, web navigation, the size of ministry brochures, and word count and font size of ministry info in the worship guide.  At a church I visited this week, the women’s ministry brochure was three times bigger (and more colorful) than the “next step” brochure based on the church’s strategy. In this case the emphasis in the print communication did not align with the church’s vision.

These five things are not an exhaustive list of your church’s structural story, but they illustrate many simple and everyday decisions in church life. Why not use them to better broadcast your vision and story. Use this vehicle.

Two resources I want to mention related to this topic:

The first is a great way to reframe your membership process. It could be a catalytic “structural story” change. Read about it here.

The second is a fantastic free resource by my friend Steve Caton at Church Community Builder. Check out how to leverage processes and technology to make disciples.

Every pastor wants to get people excited about God’s activity in the world through their local church. But not every pastor understands how to use the multiple vehicles at their disposal.

The idea of vehicle is easy to understand. If a community is in desperate need of medical supplies, what vehicles are you going to use? A wheelbarrow or a 18-Wheeler or a C-130 cargo aircraft? And if you could, would you want five C-130’s or just one? You get the picture.

Keep in mind that the concepts we are covering are very powerful when implemented. The truth is that pastors have trucks in their fleet that have never seen drive time. The cost is high as the precious cargo of motivational kingdom fuel never dispenses to hearts and minds of their people. But get those rucks rollin and you will see things happen like you’ve never seen before!

This post is the second in a series on “Vehicles for Vision.” The first post dealt with a primary challenge on the subject- the default setting in the pastor’s mind that preaching is the primary vehicle for vision. It is the default mode because it is the easiest. After all, pastors are preparing messages every Sunday already and they don’t have to get other people involved in the delivery process. It’s simple and clean.

In that post we revealed that despite the important role of preaching, the primary vehicle is the church’s connecting environment. So let’s start there and continue our list:

Vehicle #1: The Connecting Environment. This is the primary vehicle because it is the most relationally intensive. Therefore most of the validation, understanding and appreciation takes place here. Don’t complicate this too much. If you have small groups or Sunday school or missional communities, I am suggesting that those leaders or facilitators and the environments that they create are crucial to the delivery of vision.

Vehicle #2: The Leadership Pipeline. If you understand the importance of vehicle one, you might be asking, “How does that actually work?” That’s a great question because it reveals an even more foundational vehicle. In fact, I consider it the prime mover. The leadership pipeline is the vehicle where vision is transferred from leaders to other leaders. It assumes a leadership development culture. It supposes there are time and places where only leaders meet to pray, dream, dialogue and train together.

Vehicle #3: The Preaching Event. Now we get to everyone’s favorite. And this vehicle is important as it carries a special authority and motivational dynamic with the congregation at large. Preaching connects the vision to the Word of God, to the act of worship, and rallies the entire body of Christ together in a unique way.

Vehicle #4: The Structural Story. This is a meaningful piece that I look forward to unpacking with you. By structural story I mean everything from staff and volunteer position titles, to budget categories, to systems. It’s everything in the background; the supporting processes of the organization. And these  pieces will either make a random, static-like noise or work together to contribute to the story and the vision.

Vehicle #5: The Visual Brand. From screens and worship guides, to curriculum and websites, your church is creating visual palettes from which people are digesting information. It may be a church sign, or a e-mail from the pastor. Everything speaks. As we explore this often overlooked vehicle we will show how you can constantly reflect and reinforce your vision.

Vehicle #6 The Voice of Each One. The icing on the cake is always the word on the street. Vision transfers through people not paper. And the ultimate test is not how well vision was communicated leader to leader, but from a participant to participant. By that I mean, what does Joe attendee say to a co-workers after he’s visited your church for six months? There are important steps that you can take, to help the vision transfer on the front line. Do you know what they are?

As we continue the series we will explore each vehicle further. For now I would encourage you to evaluate your ministry. How many of these vehicles are you currently using?