(or the 5 Dysfunctions of a church)

This is also the title of a teleseminar I’ll be doing this Thursday. It seems a bit presumptuous to be able to reduce all of the issues that go on with our churches to just 5. There is, of course, a very long list. But these are the overriding issues that I see over and over. They are a combination of organizational issues that can apply to any company, non-profit, or church, along with issues that are very specific to churches. Each of the 5 will include 2 diagnostic assessment questions to allow someone to evaluate how their church is doing in each area — how functional or dysfunctional they are. So, collectively, I hope this gives them a report card to guide them in what they need to work on.

Should we work on our weakest area? That’s the approach of Natural Church Development (NCD). I have never been completely comfortable with this approach. What is good about it is that it may motivate us to work on SOMETHING that has value in a targeted way that hopefully will get results. And that has to be good. But it may be BEST to work on an area that isn’t the weakest or most dysfunctional, even possibly your STRONGEST area. The latter is the approach of Marcus Buckingham in Now Discover your Strengths. I don’t think there is one stock answer. It depends on your situation in your context. I guess the most important thing is continuous improvement, constantly working on something to keep the church moving forward.

If you’re curious about the 5 BIG IDEAS, you can sign up for the teleseminar here. I my use this blog to talk more about them if it goes well!

This past weekend I took my discipleship group on a “life story” retreat. We went to a mountain cabin for an overnight experience where our only agenda was to be together and tell our life stories to each other.

With my discipleship group, deep relationship is the absolute requirement for real growth, change, and transformation. That’s because Christ’s love through us will only transform in an environment of true vulnerability (David Benner, Surrender to Love). I told the men that they had up to an hour each to share their stories, and the response was that “there’s no way I can take a whole hour.” Of course, as the group’s leader, I had to go first to try to model how to do it but also to make it safe for them by being truly  vulnerabe. I took an hour and a half, which surprised me. Then each man told his story, and they ended up all taking an hour and a half each. We were surprised at how fast that time went, whether we were telling our story or listening to others’ stories.

The ground rules included:  do not give advice or “fix,” do ask clarifying questions and questions to invite the man to go deeper on an issue, and do “cover” the man when he has been vulnerable or emotional by affirming him, identifying with him, or sharing from our hearts how he is affecting us.

After each man shared, we gathered around to pray for him. One comment during the prayers was that it was obvious how God was involved in each man’s story his whole life, including the great struggles and the times when he wasn’t yet a believer. Affirming that for each other was a great gift.

When we were done, we commented that after an hour and a half we all could still recall several significant events in our lives that we hadn’t yet shared. Well, maybe when we do this again next year some of those will come out. During our next regular meeting this week we agreed that we now know each other on a completely new level, and we’re looking forward to how God will use that in our relationships and our lives.

You can do this with your small group, staff, board, or ministry team. It’s especially effective with a gender-specific group however. Relationship is the foundation of any team, leading to overcoming Patrick Lencioni’s “5 Dysfunctions of a Team,” which are lack of trust, healthy accountability, commitment to decisions, accountability to follow through, and attention to results. I have encouraged church boards to do this, and it has deeply impacted not only their relationships but their effectiveness as a board. I have seen more courageous decisions come out of those boards.

I think this connects with something God puts into each of our hearts — a deep desire for real Biblical community. This is how the Church should work.

How a rider, an elephant, and a path can help you change your organization

By John Purcell © 2012

When Tech Corp (not it’s real name) decided to develop new vision, mission, and core values plus a strategy to move in that direction, they invited employees to interact more on the “rough draft” of the plan. What followed threw the leaders back on their heals, as several people opposed many of the changes and even utilized the venue as an opportunity to fire criticism at the leaders about multiple concerns they had about the organization.

A key point from the book Navigating Through Change is that people will experience fear and then a real sense of loss, even grieving, when they know that change is coming.

Last year I read a new book called Switch, How to Change Things When Change is Hard by Chip and Dan Heath. Since then I have helped several organizations apply concepts from the book to their situations. A rider, an elephant, and a path represent the book’s paradigm for change. The premise is that we must direct the rider, which represents our rational thinking, motivate the elephant, which represents our emotions, and shape the path, which represents the new direction of the change. Obviously, the elephant isn’t going to go where he doesn’t want to go, so a core finding is that we can’t ignore the role of emotions in the process of change. The authors do a great job researching the subject and describing numerous case studies to demonstrate and prove their points. I would like to explore how this paradigm applies specifically to an organization, so we will take their points and sub-points and demonstrate how to apply them.

Directing the rider (our rational thinking)

• Have a distinct vision and describe it so that your people understand where you are all going. Make sure the key leaders are the first to buy in (ideally after helping to shape the vision themselves). Then it’s not one person’s vision but a vision of the leadership. One non-profit that I worked with did this when the leaders took two weekend retreats to shape the strategic plan then took several weeks to unpack the plan with the entire organization.
• Clarify the steps each person can take to help them as individuals and the organization as a whole to get there. What do you expect of them and why? Make the steps as easy and specific as possible.
• Who is working in a way that you want to see others doing? Find out what they are doing and reproduce it. One organization did this when they realized that most of the personal growth was coming from people who had been mentored by one key leader. So they found out what he was doing that was so effected and developed a process and coaching for other leaders to enable them to reproduce their leadership as well.

Motivating the elephant (our emotions)

• Describe the vision in a way that your people can FEEL it and are moved to desire it. Utilize stories, paint a verbal or literal picture, find testimonies, and do anything else that is experiential. Leaders do this effectively when they learn to paint a picture of what the organization could look like one day in the future.
• Break the change down into bite sized chunks that can be more easily handled emotionally.
• Challenge and help your people to grow through this change experience. Offering coaching and mentoring to help them not only deal with the change but learn and grow from it can be resources well invested.

Shape the path (the way forward)

• How can you tweak the environment to make the change easier for people?
• How can you help people build new habits around the change?
• How can you make the desired new behaviors contagious to make it more and more easy for others to adapt to them? Rewarding the desired new behavior privately, publicly, and monetarily can all be options.

The bottom line is that change in today’s culture with today’s generations is going to take more REAL leadership from you and not  just directive leadership.

No, not beer, abs. I work out daily and just joined a gym, as well, so I was thinking that in this new year it would be challenging to set a goal to develop six pack abs. I have begun to work on it, and have seen some encouraging results in the first few days. Well, actually not so much seen as felt. I hurt in the right places. It feels like a goal that is very hard work but reachable.

Then it hit me — what would a SPIRITUAL SIX PACK be for me? And if I put focused effort into that, would I be able to see and feel real results there, as well?

For you it will be a bit different, but for me here is what the spiritual six pack would include:

1. Being in the scriptures daily
2. Practicing the presence of God, praying and listening to him throughout the day, remembering that I’m in union with Christ, in fellowship of the Trinity, and called to my unique role in God’s story rather than my own
3. Making disciples constantly (from non-belief to belief to maturity to leadership)
4. Serving the poor in a tangible way
5. Experiencing and communicating joy constantly
6. Serving my wife with abandon, helping her meet her deepest desires and serving others in and through my profession with abandon, regardless of the tangible rewards

As I look over this list, first of all it energizes me a great deal. These things are very personal to me based on what God seems to have been saying to me over the past few months. Also, it also seems to be extremely hard, but doable. But it’s going to take a plan, hard work, and some accountability. In some areas I’m already on track. In others I’m not out of the block.

What would YOUR spiritual six pack look like?

Leaders have said to me that they would love to have asked for a leadership coach, but it felt “selfish.” But when their board recommended it and actually appropriated the funds, they jumped at the opportunity.

The truth is that one of the most SELFLESS things you can do as an organizational leader is to invite a good leadership coach into your life. There are 2 key reasons for this. Most obviously, it will benefit your organization and others around you by helping you become a better leader. But also it will be a lot of work for you to grow and give the organization those benefits. You are offering to humble yourself, to be vulnerable, to discuss your struggles, to trust another person, to trust God more, and to work very hard to do specific things to change years of habits in some cases and to attempt things that may be very uncomfortable in other cases. That is what it takes for your potential leadership growth to be realized with the support of good coaching.

And if you’re a board member or a team member, one of the best things you can do for your organization is encourage your leader to work with a coach.

How a rider, an elephant, and a path can help you change your church

By John Purcell © 2011

When First Church (not it’s real name) decided to develop new vision, mission, and core values plus a strategy to move the church in that direction, they invited members to interact more on the “rough draft” of the plan. What followed threw the leaders back on their heals, as several people opposed any changes and utilized the venue as an opportunity to fire criticism at the leaders about multiple concerns they had about the church.

A key point from the book Navigating Through Change is that people will experience fear and then a real sense of loss, even grieving, when they know that change is coming. I believe that change in a church can be harder than in any other type of organization — for several reasons. First of all, our churches are very important to us, and God has impacted us through them just the way they are. So, naturally, we’re not sure we want to see them become different. Secondly, the people we are urging to adapt to the change are not employees whom we can order around but members and attendees who are there voluntarily. Finally, we can’t communicate with those people on a daily basis as a business does with its employees, so it’s more difficult to reinforce the change.

Last year I read a new book called Switch, How to Change Things When Change is Hard by Chip and Dan Heath. Since then I have helped several churches apply concepts from the book to their situations. A rider, an elephant, and a path represent the book’s paradigm for change. The premise is that we must direct the rider, which represents our rational thinking, motivate the elephant, which represents our emotions, and shape the path, which represents the new direction of the change. Obviously, the elephant isn’t going to go where he doesn’t want to go, so a core finding is that we can’t ignore the role of emotions in the process of change. The authors do a great job researching the subject and describing numerous case studies to demonstrate and prove their points. However, I would like to explore how this paradigm applies specifically to the Church, so we will take their points and sub-points and demonstrate how to apply them.

Directing the rider (our rational thinking)

• Have a distinct vision and describe it so that your people understand where you are all going. Make sure the leaders are the first to buy in (ideally after helping to shape the vision themselves). Then it’s not one person’s vision but a vision that God has brought to the leadership. Hilton Head Pres did this when the leaders took two weekend retreats to shape the strategic plan then took several weeks on Sunday mornings to describe the vision for the church.
• Clarify the steps each person can take to help them as individuals and the church as a whole to get there. What do you expect of them and why? Make the steps as easy and specific as possible. Sparta E Free Church did this when it challenged the members to, over the next few years at least, each get into a discipleship group to experience spiritual growth and deep Biblical community.
• Who is ministering or growing in a way that you want to see others doing? Find out what they are doing and reproduce it. Perimeter Church did this when they realized that many of the mature and equipped followers of Christ were coming from Randy Pope’s discipleship groups, so they developed what he was doing into a transferrable process that has permeated the church and today is impacting numerous other churches.

Motivating the elephant (our emotions)

• Describe the vision in a way that your people can FEEL it and are moved to desire it. Utilize stories, paint a verbal or literal picture, find testimonies, and do anything else that is experiential. Robert Johnson of Hixson Pres did that when he preached a sermon series about their newly crafted ministry and strategic plan, not only unpacking the Biblical basis for the plan but painting a picture of what the church could look like one day in the future.
• Break the change down into bite sized chunks that can be more easily handled emotionally. When a church called The Vine decided to try to get everyone involved in ministry, it invited its people to take the one step of attending a series of equipping events where they would explore their unique designs and spiritual gifts. At the conclusion of this experience they were provided specific opportunities to serve.
• Challenge and help your people to grow through this change experience. The admonition to pray is definitely a part of this, as is a concerted effort to personally shepherd you people through this. Several churches have announced that the elders are available to meet with anyone who wants to discuss the new, proposed strategic plan for their church.

Shape the path (the way forward)

• How can you tweak the environment to make the change easier for people? Intown Community Church offered small group leader equipping on Sunday morning in lieu of other types of community groups, brought in a great trainer, and then equipped the leaders in how to lead a small group in a deeper, more gospel-driven way.
• How can you help people build new habits around the change? In my discipleship group we all agreed to have personal worship times 21 days in a row, weekly sharing about the impact of our experiences, which have now become regular habits for most of us.
• How can you make the desired new behaviors contagious to make it more and more easy for others to adapt to them? Saddleback’s 40 days of [whatever] do just that through a campaign approach with the entire church, but so does a small group program that begins with a few groups that build demand through word of mouth.
• The Gospel – As you pursue these areas, rely on the Holy Spirit to move the elephant to go down the path.

I think that for most churches Biblical community is an illusive term. Fellowship is used a lot with a wide range of meanings, everything from church suppers to hanging out in the “fellowship hall” to what happens in a small group. But to me, at least, these all conjure up images of acquaintances talking together at an acquaintance depth. What kind of community do you see in your mind when we are “at work” in, for, or in the name of the Church? I conjure up a similar image of people working side-by-side, getting the job done first and foremost, with “fellowship” thrown in either by accident or even intentionally, but fellowship that fits the acquaintance depth again. Where in the church does it get deeper? We assume that’s in small groups, perhaps especially gender-specific ones. And I hope that IS the case at your church (although I’m afraid that small groups don’t even get deep very often).

What would Jesus’s idea of this look like? My thought about this is radical compared to what I see in the Church — that we would have deep Biblical community where we get to really KNOW each other, shepherd each other, minister to each other, etc. (Paul David Tripp’s books describe what I’m talking about here) in the context of JUST ABOUT EVERYTHING THAT WE DO IN THE CHURCH. For example, I have recommended to many church boards that they have overnight “life story” retreats where they tell their life stories in depth to each other. Then each and every board MEETING would focus on mutual shepherding, sharing hearts together deeply, before any business would be conducted. In fact, my model church board policy manual contains the policy that every board meeting would begin with a full hour of mutual shepherding. A crazy, impractical idea because we have too much business to conduct? I honestly believe that the business will get done in that much LESS TIME because of the trust developed in the relationships. This hypothesis has been proven by boards that have adopted this relational approach.

Do I see deep community happening with the usher team? Yes. Worship team? Definitely. Staff? Absolutely. Ministry teams or committees? Yes, in all of them. The “work” of the Church should include fostering Biblical community as we do the other tasks of the Church.

Here’s another real-life example. One church implemented life-on-life discipleship as a required part of their worship team agenda. That meant that to be on a worship team you had to increase your participation from two Wednesday evenings per month to four. So the price to be paid was increased time by each team member, providing mature and equipped disciplers for each team, and, honestly, losing some singers and musicians who didn’t want to or couldn’t make that commitment. However, the gains were spiritual growth together in deepening community, undeniably enhanced worship experience led by these COMMUNITIES of worshippers, and impacted lives in the families and friends of these team members.

Seeing this happen in the Church gets me excited. I hope it does that for you, as well.

After facilitating strategic planning at several churches over the past 5 years, it never ceases to delight me when this happens. A church works through the strategic planning process, beginning with “What is our purpose?” then core values, then vision, then mission, and eventually working their way down to where the rubber hits the road — “What is the most important thing that we need to do over the next year to move toward our vision?” They brainstorm a long list of possibilities, then weight them according to impact on the vision and mission. And life-on-life discipleship comes to the top.

In a recent encounter I overheard some of the leaders talking afterwards, saying that they were surprised that they had not been talking about that need, let alone planning toward developing something. But there was no denying the weight of the result. In fact, it was just ahead of no.  2, which was coming up with a leadership development process. And I believe this was the correct weighting, because in my experience leadership development STARTS WITH intentional discipleship. In fact, an effective discipleship process should be producing spiritual leaders, even if a church doesn’t do anything else to develop the leaders. (I’m not saying there aren’t several other significant things you can do to enhance and build on that, however).

Here’s the thing. If a church wants to become more “missional,” start with discipling believers to maturity, and you will see hearts grow for the least and the lost with skills developed to share the gospel, spiritual gifts and passions discovered, and support to help “commission” and coach people to get involved where they are called. This is all a part of life-on-life discipleship done effectively.

If a church wants to become more Biblical community oriented, start with discipling believers to maturity, and you will see hearts opened to our brothers and sisters in Christ and an understanding of what deep Biblical community is all about because we are experiencing that in our discipleship groups.

How fulfilling it is personally and honoring to God when we allow the Holy Spirit to work through us and our processes and speak into our hearts as leaders of the church!

I’m about 4 weeks now into my new discipleship group. I started out wanting to have about 5 guys, then it grew to 7 plus myself, and now it’s settled in at 5 guys plus myself. When I sat down with each guy beforehand, I discussed my desire for us to become a Band of Brothers who would get to know each other deeply and in community grow in Christ to love God and others more, serving Him and them, growing in Christlikeness, etc.

But I cautioned each one that this will only come through some hard work each week — first in terms of homework but also in terms of revealing more and more of who we really are and what we really struggle with to our brothers. To a man, each one said, “that’s what I want.” Some said that’s what was missing from whatever other group they may have experienced in the past. Some have experienced a taste of this somewhere along the line; others have never truly had it before. I got to lead off in sharing a brief version of my personal spiritual journey with them, and now all are taking turns doing that. To say that it is good wouldn’t come close to doing it justice. And we have committed to an overnight retreat in a few weeks when we will go deeper into our life stories.

So now we are all “relearning” how to have a daily personal worship time, and every report is that it is so good and refreshing and for most drawing us to God more. I know that’s true for me. I need this as much or more than any of the other guys. I get to model my personal worship time next week in our group, and anticipate that with expectation and some fear.

It is so good to look forward to being with these guys every week. And to get with one of them individually each week, if possible. I think it’s the joy of Biblical community, the life-giving and receiving of investing in other men, and ultimately the power of masculine intimacy. It makes me feel fully alive, and that’s a deep desire that God has put into me that He is now blessing me by fulfilling.

This past weekend I had yet another pleasure and joy of serving a precious church with painful relational stresses. I won’t go into details about this situation, but I can say that it’s not unusual to witness in a church relationship stress among the pastor, elders or deacons (or both if the church has both categories), board, staff, and others.

The amazing thing is that when you get behind the specific issues, you find a LACK OF ORGANIZATIONAL CLARITY as the major culprit! Well, I guess I should say that sin is actually the underlying culprit, but the lack of clarity in the roles of the players, functions of the groups, and relationships among all of those sure seems to give sin an opportunity in Christ’s Church. So should we attach the relationships or the organization? Good question.

I can tell you that in this case we decided to do an Organizational Workshop with the entire Ministry Staff and Board together. We discussed strategic planning and how the unique organization must facilitate that. We discussed the basics of governance along with various models and their pro’s and con’s. We discussed “rules of engagement” for boards, and how boards and staff’s can become real teams.  And we discussed the staff organization and how that was contributing to the issues.

When we were done everyone agreed that if the church can move in the direction of clarifying the organization, with everyone knowing their role individually and each group knowing its role collectively, we would go a long way toward relational harmony, let alone church effectiveness in moving toward the vision.

And one more thing. We discussed how the church can move toward BIBLICAL COMMUNITY EVEN AS IT MOVES TOWARD ORGANIZATIONAL CLARITY. We can go deeper relationally even as we become more organized? Yes, I don’t believe it is a pendulum or an either/or. But it will take intentionality in both arenas.

As we shared how we experienced the day, the overriding word was “hope.”