Vision, Culture, Infrastructure [STAR] (2)

Introduction

This is a workshop about basic strategy for leadership in the areas of Vision, Culture and Structure.

DISCLAIMER: NOT SO SPIRITUAAL - TALKING TO LEADERS. MORE TECHNICAL

I’ve been blessed with a spiritual Father (PB) that I travel with to Singapore. We go over there and consult for churches and leadership teams - it’s more a thing over there than it is here, for some reason it’s not really a culture over here yet. But in my travelling I notice this - many ministries are struggling with the BASICS of growth.

And one of the greatest misconceptions about growth is that all growth is good growth - and this is not necessarily true.

For example - accidental growth is not necessarily good growth because you can’t replicate it. Growth that outpaces culture is not good growth because it leads to cultural dilution (something I hope to cover later)

ILLUSTRATION: MARS HILL CHURCH Not sure how many people have heard of Mars Hill Church? Founded by Mark Driscoll in Seattle in 1996 it grew to over 15,000 attendees across 15 locations by 2014. By Jan 1,2015 it was all gone. The entire hurch was dissolved and a critically acclaimed podcast “the rise and fall of mars hill” was made which explains why - deep structural and cultural problems consolidated power around one person, numerical groth was prioritised over culture, celebrity culture ran rife etc. Not all growth is good growth.

Jesus spoke about this in Matthew 13 when He talked about the parable of the sower - some seed sprang up quickly - but because it had no root, it withered. Fast growth without deep roots is a warning sign, not a celebration.

What is healthy growth? I believe healthy growth has two traits:

Sustainability - Growth that doesn’t burn out volunteers, growth that doesn’t outpace identity.

Directionality - Growth that heads towards a goal, Growth that heads towards the Godly vision/mandate of the group.

Before we get into this workshop can I just encourage you to heed this lesson, that it’s possible to grow in number and shrink away from our calling as a church.

Today, I want to share with you the fundamentals of healthy growth - it’s basic leadership but so many churches can miss out on these fuundamental steps - and growth becomes erratic, unsustainable and irreplicable.

Pray

Vision (The Destination)

Vision may be one of the most important things we need to bring back into our churches, we don’t need to just bring it back we need to start obsessing over it.

Proverbs 29:18 “18 Where there is no prophetic vision the people cast off restraint

Think of Vision like the Destination - it’s where you’re heading. And if where you’re heading looks bad, then nobody will join you on the journey. If where you’re going is Spirit-led and God appointed then it will supernaturally attract people.

Vision is one of the important duo of Vision and Culture - The vision and culture of an organisation = it’s Identity. In other words it is WHO you are as a ministry.

Without a strong identity growth has no direction. Who joins the church, nobody knows. What happens when they join? well nobody knows that either. What are the goals, the passions, the God-ordained purpose of the church, nobody knows again. It’s just “another” church.

Churches lacking purpose, not living out their God-given mandates are the key reasons I believe God witholds growth.

God entrusts growth where there is alignment with His purpose. Think about the parable of the Talents, Think Luke 16:10-12, Think about bearing fruit in John 15.

Now let’s get more technical - Vision should ideally belong to the entire church but sometimes in the absence of an overarching vision it can be given specifically by the zone minister - this really is a case by case basis.

Let’s start with the most important principle when it comes to Vision: And that is whatever your vision is - the most important thing you can do is to own it. Understand it, study it, meditate on it, find your own conviction in it. (so few people do this)

The level of effectiveness of the vision is always decided by the level of ownership over it. Does it move you? Does it reflect the deepest passions, the deepest mandates that God has planted inside of you?

Andy Stanley wrote a book called Visioneering and defined vision as “A mental picture of what COULD be, fueled by a passion that it SHOULD be.” - it’s the second part that’s ownership. Vision without conviction/ownership is just a slogan.

The thing to know is that Vision and Culture are transmitted by language - so if you want others to own your vision with you, then it must have memorable phraseology.

EXAMPLE: Kinetic Belong Believe

My first pastoral gig was being the youth pastor of Faith Community Church’s youth ministry: Kinetic. I like to use this as an example because it was the first place I implemented and grew a lot of these strategies. I was the youth pastor in Kinetic for 3+ years. In that time, we grew the youth group from 60 people through to just under 400 kids. And many of the structures and strategies have remained in place until today, and the youth group is still going strong today. So if that’s ok with you guys - I’ll be using the examples from Kinetic.

Kinetic’s Vision Statement was Belong and Believe - this told you everything about where we were going as a youth group, it even revealed our overarching strategy. We wanted to build a place of belonging, a home - everyone could come in and feel a part of the family immediately. And yet we didn’t want to be just a social club - the ultimate goal was to bring them to belief in Jesus Christ. We wanted every single person to find not only a home but a relationship with Jesus. And also - that was the order in which we would do things. We would love people and help them to belong and through that love they would believe in Jesus Christ.

Belong -> Believe.

It’s concise, it’s memorable. If your people can remember it - then they can own it as well. Remember these things are transmitted by language, so if they can’t repeat it - it doesn’t catch.

The words belong and believe were always the two most talked about words in the youth group - intentionally.

Simon Sinek wrote in his book Start With Why that organisations that communicate their WHY consistently outperform those that only communicate their WHAT. Because people are not just interested in WHAT you do, they are more interested in WHY you do it. PURPOSE is a much more powerful motivator than PRODUCT.

Another important principle to know: Unity is derived from Vision. A clear vision is by far the most effective way to get everyone on the same page. Vision really helps to drive mobility (program recruitment, initiatives, responsiveness to instruction, evangelism drives, ministry drives).

As a side note - if you are trying to set vision just note that Vision does not come out of concensus - it causes it. What I mean by that is that too many cooks really do spoil the soup. Don’t go asking everyone what the vision should be - as the pastor - you need to lead the way in setting and following the vision.

EXAMPLE: Piano Tuning.

Nehemiah 2:17–18 “17 Then I said to them, “You see the trouble we are in, how Jerusalem lies in ruins with its gates burned. Come, let us build the wall of Jerusalem, that we may no longer suffer derision.” 18 And I told them of the hand of my God that had been upon me for good, and also of the words that the king had spoken to me. And they said, “Let us rise up and build.” So they strengthened their hands for the good work.”

Nehemiah did not survey the people about whether they wanted to rebuild the wall - he received the instruction from God and cast it immediately. The Vision came first - and then the concensus followed.

Let me tell you the superpower of Vision - The real power of Vision unlocks when EVERYTHING is directed through it. Vision must become the filter through which everything in your ministry passes through, Vision is the lens through which everything in your ministry is seen. EVERYTHING GOES THROUGH THE VISION/VALUES CHECK.

Every song you sing, every activity you plan, every stategy, every culture.

Vision becomes the criteria that everything is critiqued by (which is why it is so important to make sure it is from God).

Don’t call a place a home if you plan on running it like a hotel

EXAMPLE: Belong Believe

We cut out games so that people would spend more time talking because we figured that providing cool areas to talk and get to know each other promoted belonging more than games did.

We figured people can’t belong if they can’t get there so we started up a transport ministry to drive and pick up kids from all over the city. We even redirected funds that were spent on the games to subsidise their fuel costs and pay for busses that could take multiple kids so they could fellowship IN the busses before they even got to youth.

Every youth that wanted to serve was first required to join the Welcome Team - which made it the largest ministry in the youth group, with the most manpower, which means more newcomers covered, more youth talked to, more people feeling belonging.

Like when I say obsess - we obsessed. We made everything point to the vision and it became so powerful. I was on the phone to youth pastors almost every week because their kids would VISIT and decide to stay in the youth, which was NEVER our goal; but the VISION was so effective we were literally telling people to go back to their home churches.

I call this the principle of visional intentionality - that every possible variable that can be controlled is directed to further the cause of the vision. Let every decision you make be in service of the vision that God has given you - go all in.

Many churches struggle not because they’re doing too FEW things but because they’re doing too many UNRELATED things. If something doesn’t serve the vision - even if it’s a good idea, it’s a distraction.

Steve Jobs once said that Apple’s success came from saying no to a thousand good ideas to protect the few truly great ones.

Vision also is a great builder of OWNERSHIP. If you’re struggling with getting your people to have ownership over the church then clear Vision is one of the most effective ways to generate it. If you’re struggling with ownership issues - people not serving, not getting involved, not engaging with community etc. - many times that’s because they’re struggling to identify with the church. Remember I said Vision and Culture form the identity of an organisation - if you want people to have ownership, then give it a strong identity they can associate with.

We built such a strong vision of “A place where everyone belongs” in the youth group that we started to have kids come up to me and ask - we want to bring this culture of belonging, of home into our high schools. How do we do this? And so we worked with them to start up and shape what became our school ministries. Kinect in WSHS and Unite in RSHS. These places were announced in school assemblies as places to make friends, school counsellors would send bullied people to these ministries, teachers would advise kids who were having a hard time fitting in/new transfers to give these groups a try.

At one point Kinect would have 130 kids every week on a Tuesday at lunch, Unite still meets with around 100 last time I spoke there. But here’s the thing, these are leaderless operations - the students started and ran these themselves. Why? Because when they catch the vision of the youth group it builds ownership - they seek personal expression of it.

When people feel like they own something, they become empowered to act. When you reach a point of Visional strength in the ministry - your people feel ownership over the vision, and they subsequently feel empowered to express it in ways that they are passionate about to. The best way to end up propagating your vision.

Culture (The Journey)

Now, if vision is the Destination - then Culture is the journey.

There is no point in having a brilliant destination if the journey to get there is tiresome and downright difficult. This is why Vision and Culture go hand in hand - you can’t really have them exclusive of one another.

Good culture with no vision, they lack direction. Good vision, no culture - they lack drive.

Management expert Peter Drucker once said “Culture eats strategy for breakfast”- you could have the best vision and structural set up but if your culture is unhealthy, then culture will win everytime.

What is culture? Culture by dictionary definition is the Set of behaviours that define a particular group.

But in ministry I think we can simplify this down to the “Experience” people have when they walk into our church.

And before anyone goes around thinking that culture is a secular concept - this simply isn’t true; in fact in Scripture we are given so many examples of Christian “culture” - what believers should be like. Think of the beatitudes, think of the fruit of the Spirit, think of the moral lessons that Paul gives church leadership in Titus, think of all the times Jesus says, “The Kingdom of heaven is LIKE…” this is ALL culture, it’s what Christian BEHAVIOUR is meant to look like.

The first thing to know about culture is that it is either by DESIGN or DEFAULT.

What I mean by this is that if you don’t design it - then it will default to whatever the majority behaviours are. And that is rarely ever a good thing when you’re dealing with people.

EVERY GROUP has a culture - whether you call it that or not, there is no such thing as a group with no culture.

Culture, like vision, is primarily transmitted through language - it is spoken.

How do you decide on your culture? Culture should be a reflection of Core values. You start with your core values - and when you practise them consistently you end up with culture.

Every leader of any organisation should always make the time to sit down and think on what their core values are and ministry is no different.

What are the things that you value most in your ministry? What are the VALUES that God has placed on your heart to grow? What are the VALUES that have shaped your life the most? The VALUES that are non-negotiable in ministry, in church, in life.

Now since culture is transmitted through language - and should be a reflection of your core values. My suggested way to set culture is by establishing “Culture Pillars”. These are statements that communicate your core values in applicable, effective ways.

I would not set too many pillars - only what you require to set up the absolute non negotiables of culture in your church. Usually 4/5 are more than enough.

Culture Pillars are powerful tools for establishing core values within a group and normalising the culture that you feel serves the vision, or specific core values that you feel prompted to grow.

EXAMPLE: Excellence in Service

One of the ones very close to my heart is the core value of Excellence. Col 3:23 is one of my favourite bible passages, and my parents since young have always told me, “Jon if you want to do something - do it properly”. And this is something I really felt called to impart to the youth as their pastor. We pushed this culture pillar hard - and this really is quite a hard one to push through. But we did it eventually - took us around 6 months of constant preaching, teaching, displaying, encouraging - but it set, and was one of our most potent culture pillars that ended up really shaping that generation of youth.

In 2016 we were at a YA Groundswell event being held at LifeChurch (Now KCC Canningvale). 1500 kids, inflatables, dark corners, mass bringing friends - went about as you would have expected it; the place was trashed by the time that everyone was done. The event wrapped up at 9:30 and people started heading home by 10PM. I gathered Kinetic in the auditorium while a couple of the leaders began to clean up the mess. I just happened to have a chat with one of them and he told me that they had planned to be here until 3 in the morning cleaning up, laying out chairs and the works - I then told him if he wanted help, our youth group would help them out - and he thought I was joking.

So I told Kinetic that since we are guests in someone else’s house - it is our duty to leave it in the state which we entered. 250 kids got up without a word and picked up the trash, set the chairs, vacuumed, mopped the floors - we were done cleaning up within 30 minutes. The guys from Life church were so shocked by what happened, they were like how did you raise youth to be so ..good? I think I laughed them off but honestly - culture, it’s far more powerful than we realise. Good, Christlike culture is what God desires all churches to have.

Remember at the start how I was talking about how not all growth is good growth? Now’s probably a good time to explain a concept that all ministers need to be familiar with: Cultural Dilution.

This occurs when sudden growth enters a house and upsets the culture. Because of the influx of new people (who are unfamiliar with the house culture and bring their own set of behaviours) - it literally “dilutes” the culture of the house.

Cultural dilution occurs when physical growth outpaces cultural growth

Why is it important to be able to identify this? Because when cultural dilution occurs - you will notice that default culture kicks in. And default culture is rarely ever good, in fact there are always certain predictable signs of default culture.

Eg. Cliques - poor fellowship culture, Low ministry uptake - poor service culture, bad retention - poor pastoral culture, resistance to change - poor leadership culture. These are almost normal “default” cultures.

ILLUSTRATION: Real-world example — Starbucks 2008: In February 2008, Howard Schultz, who had returned as CEO, made an unprecedented decision: he closed all 7,100 US Starbucks stores simultaneously for three hours to retrain every barista. Why? Because rapid expansion had so diluted the experience that Starbucks had become indistinguishable from any other coffee chain. The growth was killing the culture. Schultz wrote in his memoir Onward (2011) that they had to slow down to protect what made them Starbucks. (Now - coming from Australia where Starbucks sucks - that’s a pretty huge irony, but it’s a good lesson that we should pay attention to) - we can lose culture if we’re not careful with it.

The goal is actually to weaponise your culture into a pathway for attraction.

The best thing about culture is that it attracts like for like, and vice versa - it repels bad culture as well. For example - a culture of strong discipleship will attract people seeking deeper growth. A Strong family-like culture will attract those that value close-knit relationshipis. A strong ministry culture will attract people who want to serve.

This is important because you will end up attracting the kind of people that fit in to your culture - so it almost becomes a form of automatic filter, and I don’t mean that in a bad way either. Like minded people will always build deeper connection with other like minded people, this is something that can accelerate church growth and bolster retention rates.

So what are the METHODS to spread Vision and Culture? 3 ways that I like to take from Scripture - when God was speaking to Israel about how to transmit the law down through generations: Deuteronomy 6:6–9 “6 And these words that I command you today shall be on your heart. 7 You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise. 8 You shall bind them as a sign on your hand, and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes. 9 You shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates.”

DEFINE: “These words shall be on your heart” Clearly define it, write it down, know exactly what it is and how it’s expressed. Own it, become passionate about it.

DEMONSTRATE: “teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down and when you rise” The leaders should be constantly talking about and discussing culture, immersing people in it and more than that - DEMONSTRATING it to everyone around them. They are the walking embodiments of the vision/culture.

DISPLAY: “bind them as a sign on your hand, and as frontlets between your eyes. You shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates.” - Never underestimate the power of visual cues. Print banners, Make Phone wall papers, projector backgrounds, instagram, everything, make sure people are sick of seeing it.

Remember 2 key things when you are spreading culture - in any messaging, video, signage, conversation, that you’re attempting to spread culture in - 2 things will decide whether it sets or whether it’s forget (forgotten).

CLARITY - Make sure people are understanding what you’re putting out, make sure it’s clear.

Consistency - all good things take time and if we aren’t consistent in our delivery or in our messaging then the force behind our messaging is lost.

Infrastructure (The Vehicle)

The final component of the 3 is Infrastructure. If Vision is the destination, Culture is the journey, then Infrastructure is the vehicle you use to travel.

Are you using a bicycle or a train? The better your Infrastructure, the more people are able to join you on the journey.

The original infrastructure passage in Scripture that I’m sure you’ve heard of is in Exodus 18 where Jethro visits Moses and he sees Moses doing nothing but judging the people single-handedly and his response is “What you are doing is not good. You and the people with you will certainly wear yourselves out.” And then he provides a solution - Infrastructure. Appoint leaders of thousands, hundreds, fifties and tens. Delegate small matters, escalate hard ones.

Like what Jethro was showing Moses in this passage - Infrastructure is all about capacity and sustainabiility. In other words - how many, and how long.

Good infrastructure will always be the key to sustainable growth AND the key to not burning out your leaders.

There are 3 major groups of Infrastructure that need to be considered:

Leadership Infrastructure

How are you training and equipping your existing leaders?

How are you raising and recruiting new leaders?

Pastoral Infrastructure

How are individuals being integrated into community?

How are individuals being cared for?

Operational Infrastructure

Misc. Transport, Event

EXAMPLE: Connect Group and Leadership Development

Connect Groups are a perfect example of pastoral infrastructure. We put everyone 100 people in a room and it’s nearly impossible to care for people pastorally, so what do we do? We divide that by 10 and allocate each small group a leader - much more manageable, and people feel more pastorally cared for and seen.

We can take that infrastructure another level and ask pastors - what is the function of your CGs? Are CGs the place where people are meant to bring friends first (because this would dictate the program and events) or do they bring them to service first and then get them into connect (which would affect the way services are run etc.) things to think about.

Kinetic had a pretty aggresive leadership development pathway because the growth was so exponential we had to make sure we were raising leaders early to send down the line. We start them in a ministry called Kinetic Anchor which you have to join before serving in any ministry in Kinetic. It’s basically a 8 week course that really helps you catch our vision and culture. Then from the time they’re in year 10 - they would be picked to be a part of a “Core group” in their CGs and introduced to the basics of organising CG meetings, transport, word, refreshments etc on a small scale for 20-30 people. Once you were in core you were invited to a “Kinetic Core” meet which happened 4 times a year and it’s where I would address the entire core team (about 200 kids) on the vision and culture of Kinetic. Then by the time they’re in year 11 they would be selected to co-lead alongside an experienced leader at our 2 camps each year. By the time they’re in year 12 they’re solo leading teams at our camps and are being mentored individually by their CG leaders.

The moment they graduate - we have a list of 15-20 trained and experienced leaders who are ready to jump in and take on CGs and serve.