Will Mancini

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.

Four days at Exponential 2010 brought  hours of speaking, listing to great talks and countless conversations with thought leaders, network leaders and pastors from many tribes.  Here are my four top reflections. 

#1 There is a huge difference between church planting and movement cultivating (and some still don’t get the difference.) The most important positive change in ministry in North America is not just the increasing interest in the practice of church planting, but the increasing emphasis on the practice multiplying movements, of which, church planting is one step. It’s very easy to plant a church without engaging in ministry that multiplies. Two newly released books that will clarify the difference are Viral Churches by Ed Stetzer and Warren Bird and Exponential by Dave and Jon Ferguson. I am truly excited to see God at work to make the reality of multiplication more clear and accessible to leaders. 

#2 The most acceptable idol in ministry today is missional service. This idea was stirred  by a comment by Matt Chandler. I will paraphrase it: “Transformation comes through our relationship to Jesus, not through our engagement  in mission.” Anytime good things happen in the name of Jesus, the good thing can eclipse Jesus. Right now, altruism is in and much activity is happening in the name of “external focus,” “missional communities” and social justice. Let’s beware of thinking too highly of our own goodness or allowing the Martha in us to work out the Mary in us.

#3 Great partnerships are important for great accomplishments. The testimony of Exponential itself is one of amazing growth through partnerships. I was impressed with how may networks and denominations made Exponential an internal gathering time (the Auxano team did as well). But this didn’t just happen. It was carefully engineered by Todd Wilson who didn’t target church planters as the primary audience but church planting network leaders. Everywhere you looked it was possible to spot a partnership in many different forms that you would not necessarily see at other conferences. What was modeled by the conference was discussed as content as well. In particular I liked Billy Hornsby’s talk on the Five Relationships for Movements. The fifth kind of relationship he lists is a partner, defined as “groups that want to identify with your idea and are ready to promote it or even finance it.” 

#4 Evangelical churches still exist in a vision vacuum. Most of our momentum in ministry today is still driven by personalities, crowd dynamics and great facilities, not vision. For example the church that hosted the conference had vision posters up all over the place, but if you asked the volunteers about the vision of the church, all you got was a deer-in-the-headlights stare. I talked with two pastors both from different very large, rapid growing churches. They were quick to say, “We are doing better with clarity that we ever have.” Yet with a very simple clarity test, it was fairly obvious that these assertions were misguided. Of course this touches my holy discontent, so I tend to see it readily. And I am grateful that for the continual hunger and amazing response from pastors who see the opportunity of clarity tools like the Kingdom Concept and Vision Frame. We ran out of Church Unique twice at the conference.

The last two days I spoke for a total of 7 hours at The Exponential Conference in Orlando. It started with Pre-Conference track where I walked through the four-fold Vision Pathway. Then I spoke in the Reproducing Movements track with Alan Hirsch, Dave & Jon Ferguson, Billy Hornsby, Greg Surratt and Efrem Smith.

I opened the talk with two movement killers:

• CONTROL (Leadership Issue)
• COMPLEXITY (Organizational and Communication Issue)

I then summarized how we must overcome “thinkholes” and frame clarity to achieve one of THE essential ingredients of reproducing, movement oriented vision:

•  EGOLESS CLARITY

I am grateful to Matt Erikson who did a fantastic job capturing some notes from this talk and very complete notes from the PreConference. 

Here’s one thought that I contributed to the conversation on reproducing movements:

Reproduction and Imitation Don’t Mix. It takes so much conviction and courage to lead a movement that reproduces that if you aren’t thinking your way through your own DNA and unique model of ministry it just won’t happen. The fountainhead of every great movement was a moment of original, God-inspired clarity.

Since I recently posted Craig Groeschel’s new values, I thought I’d share some common pitfalls when articulating values. Call it want you want: values, code, DNA, philosophy of ministry, etc.  Most attempts in ministry to articulate the core motives and driving convictions of the organization or movement don’t amount to much. Of course, our intent is  good, and we have a lot of energy the day they are written. But all to often, we simply populate another web page or birth some bullets for a membership class, without creating a tool that actually helps to shape culture. 

Why do values have so little value?

1. We have too many values. With every value your list, the gravity of you values weakens. If you have too many you have nothing. Your organization may value 10, 17, or even 50 things. The point isn’t to list them all, but to list the 4-6 that matter most. How many values have you spelled out?
2. Values are too generic. When a church regurgitates Rick Warren’s 5 Purposes, it has said nothing specific about the culture of your church. Don’t tell me that you value worship or fellowship or evangelism.  Go deeper. What drives how you worship or experience fellowship?  For example, does worship inspire wonder with the awe of God, or emphasize a personal authentic connection? Right now review your values and ask the question, “Which one of these could be said of every church in North America?”
3. Values are reactionary. Values should be the essence of what you stand for, not the reminder of what you don’t like. For three decades many of our statements have been littered with the terms “excellence” and “relevance.”  But do these terms really say that much about us? I recommend articulating what makes you relevant or what makes you excellent.  Keep pushing through until you get to the core. 
4. Values repeat doctrine. It’s important to be clear on your doctrinal belief system and these beliefs can and should influence your values. But values shouldn’t be limited by restating doctrine. For example you might believe in the authority of scripture or the priesthood of all believers. Again, free your values to show something more specific or in addition to the belief rather than just restating it. For example, one church stated the value of “Truth with Gentleness” to describe the manner with which they teach the whole counsel of God. How many of your values are redundant to doctrine?
5. Values aren’t actionable. Any value that does not give rise to a new thought, emotion, attitude or action is worthless.  I recommend creating a bullet list for every value as a running “demonstrated by…” list. Every team in the ministry can then flesh out the specific meaning and desired outcomes of the shared value in their context. If the code can’t “connect the dots” to  practice, then you won’t gain more than inactive intellectual assent. Are your values springboards for daily action? 
6. Values are too aspirational. If values represent more of what you want to be than what you are, you’ll immediately loose credibility as a leader. There is a time and place for vision, but that is different from values. Two-thirds of your values should be rooted in what you are today. What makes you great right now? Why will you win this week?  Again, don’t be afraid to have some aspirational content. But when you do, be sure to take the lead in sharing them as DNA dreams. Otherwise people will think that you’re smoking something.

So how valuable are your values? Could yours use refreshing? I would love to hear your thoughts or your example of re-articulated values.  After all, Craig Groeschel was man enough to refresh his.

Craig Groeschel knows the value of writing the unwritten. In a 3-part series on “Code,” he is sharing a fresh rework on why they do what they do. So far he has shared 9 of 13 deeply held convictions:

We are faith-filled, big thinking, bet-the-farm risk takers. We’ll never insult God with small thinking and safe living.

We are all about the “capital C” Church! The local church is the hope of the world and we know we can accomplish infinitely more together than apart.

We are spiritual contributors not spiritual consumers. The church does not exist for us. We are the church and we exist for the world.

We give up things we love for things we love even more. It’s an honor to sacrifice for Christ and His church.

We wholeheartedly reject the label mega-church. We are a micro-church with a mega-vision.

We will do anything short of sin to reach people who don’t know Christ. To reach people no one is reaching, we’ll have to do things no one is doing.

We will lead the way with irrational generosity. We truly believe it is more blessed to give than to receive.

We will laugh hard, loud and often. Nothing is more fun than serving God with people you love!

We will be known for what we are for, not what we’re against. There are already enough jerks in the world.

I tell leaders repeatedly, that great accomplishment is accompanied with great clarity. Groeschel didn’t get his vision from a book or a conference but from a God-led, God inspired process. If you didn’t think you had the time to foster conversations and carefully articulate your core code, then consider how much busier Craig should be too. Then consider the cause and effect. Maybe the commitment to processing clarity is one of the primary, dynamic, and systemic reasons for LifeChurch.tv’s effectiveness.