Will Mancini

This morning I am working with Methodist pastors in my area at Gateway Community Church. Here are the links from the training:

1. Church Unique Visual Summary
2. Common Church Unique Tools (Vision Frame, Clarity Quiz, Thinkholes, Vision Casting Spider Diagram)
3. Ken Werlein Video on Mission Measures (Faithbridge UMC)
4. Outreach Article Referencing 3 Houston Methodist Churches
5. Branding Examples
6. How to Create  Gospel Centered Tagline
7. Strategy Design Questions
8. Strategy Icon Examples

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.

I was recently dialoguing with a very successful pastor about the ten-year vision horizon of the large church he pastors.

He made a striking comment.

“I don’t want to coast on original vision.”

It made me wonder, how do you know if you might be coasting on a vision that “used to be?”

1. You use adjectives that position the vision as historical: original, founding, previous, last season, former chapter, etc.
2. You have increasing realization of how far you God has taken your ministry in the last five or ten years.
3. You actually feel less excited about a the ideals, aspirations, or pictures of the future you used to have.
4. People around you express ask more questions about the future and show increasing curiosity for things like clarity.
5. You don’t hear younger generations say anything that resembles the vision as it was previously expressed.
6. You have updated your campus or changed your key players once or twice without revisiting the vision.

Every meeting I facilitate is unique. The primary distinctive of each gathering is not the subject of the engagement but the collective bias of the group.

You have heard of the “bias for action.” Did you know that there are three other biases? Every individual has a primary inclination or bias around the four basic personality types. And every group has a collective bias.

Why is this important to know?

If you understand the group’s bias you can adapt your facilitation style to maximize success.

The four biases are:

#1  Bias for Action: This person is motivated by getting things done. A great day is a long, finished task list. Go, do, decide!!!

#2  Bias for Harmony: This person is driven by solid relational connection with others. Getting things done in a peaceful manner is more important than how much gets done. Ask, listen, be together.

#3  Bias for Accuracy: This person senses accomplishment only when things are done right. It doesn’t matter how much gets done or how much peace is maintained; all that matters is accurate results. Define, measure, manage!

#4  Bias for Influence: This person loves to see his or her ideas and personality impact the group. Effective communication and the positive response of others is more important that productivity, peace or accuracy. Talk, discuss, laugh!!

The key to using these biases is to adapt your facilitation pace and strategy based on the make-up of the group. So next time you facilitate, try to identify what kind of group you have. It will quickly help you tweak your facilitation style.

• Do we need a faster pace or more breaks?
• Do we need to listen more to one another or make more decisions?
• Do we need to address conflict more directly or do we need better analytics?

Remember that every group has some unstated measure of success for the person facilitating. Dramatic success requires more than just covering the right subject matter. It comes with meshing your facilitation pace, style and strategy with their collective bias.

Before jumping into this third post on “Vehicles for Vision” I want to remind you that it’s useless to talk about vision delivery if you are a little foggy on vision. Don’t feel bad if you are- it takes attention, time and work, but the payoff is infinite.  Here is the tool you may want to use to nail down the identity and direction of your ministry- we call it the Vision Frame.

Now…

Is it possible that there is one vehicle of vision that is literally a missing link? For practical purposes, yes.

The missing link is the leadership pipeline as the second vehicle for vision.

Why? The answer requires a bit of explanation.

Remember, because it’s easy for a pastor to rely on preaching alone to deliver vision, they can miss the more important vehicle of the church’s connecting environment. We dealt with this challenge in the first post.

Now, let’s say that you agree that vision should be delivered through small groups or whatever version of group life that your church serves up. The big question is then, “How do you lead through the volunteer leaders who facilitate and guide group life?” The question reveals why a leadership pipeline is the missing link. It’s impossible to conceive of using your connecting environment as a vehicle for vision if you don’t have a linkage or some mechanism to make your connecting environment leaders carriers of the vision. Strangely, this leadership development piece is missing in most churches.

The quick test of wether or not you have this in place is a few simple questions:

• When was the last time every leader in your church gathered for training and vision casting?
• What does your church do to build a leadership community identity among all leaders?

Again, when I ask these questions, I often receive a blank stare.

We miss this important ministry of leadership development for two primary reasons.

First, pastors are taught study scripture, preach, and maybe even lead small groups. But most pastors are NOT trained in how to develop leaders.  As a result pastors can focus entirely on DOING the ministry rather than RAISING UP others to do them ministry. (The purpose of this post in not to argue for the basic, nuts and bolts Ephesians 4:11-14, but it may be worth revisiting the text.) Second, if your church has a few decades of history, you have existing structures and decision-making processes that simulate “leadership” but don’t function as a “leadership pipeline.” That is, increasing numbers of leaders are not multiplied and mentored through a process in which the vision and DNA of the church is transferred.

So here is a set of questions to get you thinking about what a leadership pipeline might look like:

If you had to rely on your small group leaders or class facilitators alone to deliver the vision…

• How often would you get this group together?
• How much time would you spend with them?
• How much time as a group vs. one-on-one?
• What kinds of things would you do together?
• How would you model the vision with them?
• How would you teach them to model the vision?
• How would you train them to communicate the vision?
• How would you pray for these people?
• How would you measure their progress?
• What tools and support would you provide?
• What ongoing questions would you ask them?

In the end, you will never multiply your ministry if there is no dedicated time and process for leaders sharing the vision with other leaders. And this is unfortunately a missing link in American evangelicalism.

If you would like more information on this subject, Aubrey Malphurs and I wrote a book called Building Leaders on how to build a leadership pipeline for your church.