Will Mancini

Last week I enjoyed an evening with Chris Willard and Tom Wilson who work with the OneHundredX family of ministries, Leadership Network and HalfTime.

Tom is currently the President of OneHundredX, a new company that was developed in a clarity process with Auxano. Before coming to this ministry Tom served for over three decades with Young Life, concluding his time as a VP of field operations. While talking shop on vision, Tom recalled a year when he made special trips to motivate Young Life camp counselors.  Currently Young Life has 20 camps that bring in over 90,000 students a year. 

One hallmark of the Young Life camp experience (from which many Christian camps take their cue) is the exhilarating welcome that campers get the moment they arrive. As a high-school sophomore, I visited Frontier Ranch and can still remember the thrill of the cheering tunnel of counselors who screamed like they won the lotto when we showed up. It was big. 

Over the years,  Tom said  he watch energy of the welcoming experience cool off. So one year, he decided to address it by systematically vision-casting at all of the camps. What did Tom say? He told them the creation story of the first camp welcome.  He reminded them of the deepest why behind the hype that had grown hollow. 

Early in the camping ministry camp counselors committed their precious summer time to serve the younger high school kids who would come in from across the country. The problem was, in the early days, awareness of the camps had not grown, and not every week of camp had campers. And if campers didn’t come, that meant more boring project work for counselors like painting fences and repairing sheds. With a drought of campers, the counselors began to passionately pray for God to bring students. All they wanted to do was to love on kids! After a few weeks an old beat-up van pulled up the mountain with a dozen or so brand new campers. When the counselors saw it, they were so excited that they spontaneously erupted in applause to God, ushering in the first unforgettable welcome.

One simple story of how it all started brought tons of meaning to the camp counselors that year. 

I just about lost it as I heard the story,  because I still remember the incredible welcome I received at Frontier Ranch. It made me want to be a counselor all over again! 

What about you? Hearing the why behind what we do is an easy way to refresh motivation. Where do the motions of ministry under your leadership need more meaning? What story can only be told by you? What story would people love to hear?

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.

Pastors who shape culture…

  #1  Don’t rely on systems and structure to the neglect of relationships

  #2  Value listening skills as much as speaking skills

  #3  See vision as a state of mind not a statement

  #4  Are motivated more by contextual faithfulness than appearance of success

  #5  Plant the church that the community needs, not the one idealized in their head

  #6  Create their own tools for ministry verses copycat programming

  #7  Lead by letting culture applies its own pressure verses persuasive force

  #8  Can articulate the DNA of their church without borrowing another leader’s words

  #9   Cast vision by interpreting and extrapolating experiences not attendance patterns

  #10  Focus more on practicing shared values than valuing best practices

Where did these thoughts come from? On my flight down to Dallas tonight, I was reflecting on time I enjoyed with a great friend in ministry last Thursday- Dave Saathoff, the senior pastor at Bandera Road Community Church, in San Antonio. He is doing some training for his staff and local church pastors next month and will be challenging leaders with the message,   “Don’t build a church, build a culture.” It reminded me of the working title when I wrote Church Unique which was “Ooze Vision- How Leaders Shape Culture to Guide Growth” These were the thoughts that came to mind as I pondered the distinction in leadership perspective and style.