Will Mancini

Last week I was completing the Vision Frame with a church in California. They could feel the removal of what one pastor  called their “invisible walls.”  It’s an interesting comment given the fact that its a very effective church.

What is an invisible wall? It’s something your eyes can’t see that keeps your team from working better together.

• Mistrust
• Missed time
• Misalignment
• Misunderstanding

Every week brings a fresh truckload of glass bricks for your team to stack.  Busy week after busy week leads to busy semester after busy semester. No one has ill motives. No one intends to build a wall. But the walls go up without conscious notice.

The good news is that it’s NOT rocket science to take down a wall. Haven’t you noticed it’s easy (and usually fun) to tear stuff down anyway? What we need are some sledge hammers to take down this hard-to-see  barriers.

Weekly, I watch leadership teams tear down their invisible walls.  Keep in mind, I am talking about effective teams, not broken ones.In Auxano’s clarity process, teams feel like a team at a whole new level. Even though the meeting room looks the same, the real albeit unseen barriers have been removed.

How do you demolish those walls? Try these five things.

• Give permission to identify walls.
• Beyond permission, shape  a culture of authentic dialogue by how you give and receive feedback. Telling people that you are open to honesty and “push-back” isn’t enough. Permission has not truly been given until it you have done. Keep in mind if you don’t receive it well, you’ll shut down the sharing next time around.
• Schedule time dedicated to strategic conversations. Most teams don’t create enough space for important, non-urgent dialogue and decision-making. At Faithbridge over the years, the team has regularly “parked” (sometimes monthly) conversation topics for scheduled “strategic-stuff-only” meetings.
• Schedule margin in the calendar for “drop in” conversations. With the speed of ministry, it goes a long way to touch base for no “necessary” reason. It says you care. It says you are available to listen. It provides an opportunity to remove a glass brick, instead of adding one. Yesterday, I challenged a staff member pretty hard in a consulting meeting. Today I stuck my head in her office to check in and mentioned, “Hey, I pushed you pretty hard yesterday and I just wanted to acknowledge that it might have been a little too hard.”
• Make one bold feedback question a standard part of your team culture- “Have I done anything lately that has diminished the trust in our relationship?”

What other actions would you add to demolish invisible walls?

It was great to be at the Right Now conference in Dallas today. Here are the resources I referenced during my speaking:

6 Elements of Compelling Vision

• Here is the Vision Casting Spider Diagram: Articulating Vision Proper
• Recommended Exercise: Listen to Dr. MLKs “I Have a Dream Speech” with this tool

The Future of Church Strategy

• If you have an iPhone or iPad download the free Leadia App from Leadership Network
• You can purchase FLUX: Four Paths to the Future. There is a chapter on 3 K
• Here is the  Vision Frame Overview and other related Vision Frame links.
• Check out the Vision Frame of RIGHT NOW

The FREE Church Unique Visual Summary

• Go here to download this 52-page graphical summary.
• It can be read in 10 minutes!

If you joined me at Right Now today:

• Consider subscribing via e-mail to my blog.
• Use the search box to hunt for relevant stuff.

Instead of counting Christians, we need to weigh them. – Dallas Willard

Clear vision requires clarity about the results you are after. Any result you might desire for your ministry will fit into three broad categories - input results, output results and impact results.

INPUT RESULTS

Input results in the church world focus on the number of people and dollars that “come into” the church. Input results are important. You don’t have a church without them. It’s also important to measure input results. You can’t lead well without knowing them.

Common ways we talk about input results include the “ABC’s” (attendance, buildings and cash) or “nickels and noses” or “butts and bucks”  Every week, thousands of churches across the land will print their input results on a worship bulletin or review them in the next elders meeting. Input results inform the functional dashboard of the American church.

OUTPUT RESULTS

Output results refer to actual life-change outcomes that God intends for followers of Christ individually and together. Examples of output results include the quality of a believer’s prayer life, the skillfulness in sharing the gospel, or the development of patience as one of the fruits of the Spirit.

There are hundreds of biblical phrases and concepts to capture the wonder of gospel-centered output results. From terms like “spiritual formation” and “transformed living,” to “Christlikeness,” and “full devotion to Christ.” I have never met a church without some banner, slogan or mission that points to output results. Output language shapes the primary intent of all the pastors I have ever met. Yet while output results shape intent, most pastors rely on input results to validate the mission’s success. Output results, not input, are the only true measure of the mission.

IMPACT RESULTS

Impact results capture the broader effect of the church in the surrounding city or community. Think of it as the positive difference that is made from the sum of believers influencing a region or pursuing a specific kind of social impact together. An example of an impact result would be lowering the number of homeless people or reducing the percent of teen-age pregnancy or increasing the high-school graduation rate in an area.

A tree is a useful analogy to relate input, output, and impact results. Let’s imagine a Florida orange tree soaking in the sun and drinking in gallons of rainwater. We could actually measure exposure to light and absorption of water as input results. After all you can’t have healthy citrus without them. Output results reflect the total number of good oranges produced. Impact results are the happy faces and healthy bodies of little Joey and Suzi as they guzzle down fresh OJ with their scrambled eggs.

What is the significance of these three kinds of results for vision casting? That answer is for another post.

Meanwhile you might enjoy my new book from which this post was taken. It’s my first published work since Church Unique on innovation and vision. The title is FLUX: Four Paths to the Future, which is available to iPad and iPhone users through Leadership Network’s new app called Leadia.

This post is not for everyone. First, its for followers of Jesus who really want to reach messy people groups with the gospel, including some entrenched in darker darkness. Second, its for people who live within Las Vegas or a Southwest airlines trip to there at cities like:

San Francisco, San Jose, Oakland, Reno, Sacramento, San Diego, Phoenix, Tucson, Albuquerque, etc.

Vault is one of the most unique equipping opportunities you will ever have. This mini-conference (noon to noon, Monday-Wednesday next week) will bring you deep inside the thinking and methods Vince Antonucci and Verve Church use in Las Vegas, which have led them to reach atheists, pimps, prostitutes, bikers, Wiccan witches, Buddhists, strippers, lesbians, and many more of the truly lost, the people Jesus called all of us all to reach. I have been onsite with Vince and his team two times- his church work is the real deal!

How can YOUR CHURCH go from reaching church shoppers to reaching people who don’t like church? That’s what Vault is all about, and you don’t want to miss the conversation!

This year special guest John Burke will be leading three sessions of Vault.  You may have seen John speak at Willow Creek’s Leadership Summit.  He’s the author of No Perfect People Allowed, and the church planter and pastor of Gateway, one of the most evangelistically effective churches in America. John will share principles you can use to reach people who are truly far from God.

I will be there sharing thoughts on redemptive passion and vision clarity. Most importantly I am bringing one of our Auxano navigators, Dave Saathoff, who has learned how to reach thousands of people, far from God in San Antonio, Texas.

The cost is only $125 (or $100 for groups of 2 or more), which includes three meals and book giveaways! The conference is limited to about 100 people, which provides for an amazing dynamic that promotes learning and relationships. But it also means that registration will fill up soon, so register today!