Andy finished with brilliant practicality. Here are some notes I took...
I. Whereas programming begins as an answer to a question, over time it becomes part of organizational culture.
A. As culture changes many of the questions remain the same, but the answers don’t.
B. The tendency is to institutionalize our answers.
Stop being angry with people who are short-sighted and don’t see the world the way you do. We need to lead people to see the world the way we see it! Help people see it in a different way! Otherwise, it becomes a fixed cultural reality - that is ineffective.
C. If we institutionalize an answer, the day will come when it is no longer an answer!
People keep the old, ugly couch – even when they move! It doesn’t even occur to them that they could just leave the couch and walk away.
The couch is now filled with memories.
They originally bought the couch because it was a place to sit. But, over time, they fell in love with the couch. It is not carried with them because it still serves a practical reason…it now has memories attached to it. It is loved. It is cherished. Yet, the average person could walk into your house…and draw very different conclusions!
When we fall in love with programming, we keep it around even when it no longer serves a function. Over time we all have couches we have got to get rid of.
If we believe eternity is at stake, the couches need to go!
Identify the couches that need to go.
Get them out of the house.
Some will protest.
"But, everyone is in love with the stupid couch!"
We must get our leaders to see these things for what they are!
Identify the ugly couches in our ministries and get rid of them.
I told my staff, "I think we’ve fallen in love with something that is not as effective as it originally was." Before we implemented change I sat down with staff and said, “I want to help you think differently. Then I think you’ll look at it again. I think you’ll see it differently.”
We don’t have time to drag around expensive, ineffective couches!
II. We must continue to be more committed to our mission than to our programming, or our model.
Ask, “What are we most committed to?”
“What are we most in love with?”
We must love the vision and mission of our church.
A. Over time, sustaining the model can become the mission.
Beware.
Some have substituted the model for the mission. Their biggest concern is not lost people. It is that they don’t have enough money to support the programming they’ve been in love with for many, many years! Their mission is to keep the old program running.
B. Over time, the model can work against the mission.
The “for profit” world doesn’t keep ugly couches around very long.
If it is not profitable, it is removed.
But we – in the church – will keep things around for generations - things that have not worked for generations!
We need to take a long hard look at what we are doing programmatically.
III. Points of discussion
A. What have we fallen in love with that’s really not as effective as it used to be?
B. Where are we manufacturing energy?
"If we got kicked out and the board brought in a new CEO, what would he or she do? Why shouldn’t we walk out the door, come back in, and do it ourselves?" - Only the Paranoid Survive by Andy Grove
What is it the “new guy” would look at address immediately?
C. What are our organizational assumptions?
Leaders must bring the underlying assumptions that drive company strategy into line with changes in the external environment.
This is HUGE!
Your teams have assumptions, and we make decisions based on assumptions! We must bring those assumptions into line with a changing culture. The problem is – we don’t even know what our assumptions even are!
Culture changed. Our assumptions stayed the same.
The assumptions a team has held the longest or the most deeply are the likeliest to be its undoing.
(That sentence explains the decline of denominations in America.)
The world has changed.
1. What do we assume about people and how to reach them?
2. What do we assume programmatically?
3. Which assumptions are false?
4. Which assumptions are true, but not fully leveraged?
Challenge:
We must lead our people to a place where they fall in love with God.
Stay in love with the thing God called you to do. Create a model to support it.
Proverbs 9:9 - Instruct a wise man and he will be wiser still; teach a righteous man and he will add to his learning.
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