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Learning will make the critical difference for churches
and ministries to remain on the cutting edge in the 21st century.
Learning helps organizations adapt to change, avoid repeating past
mistakes, and retain critical knowledge.
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The church can
thrive in change and uncertainty when leaders and members
are clear about their biblical purposes.
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When churches learn from both their mistakes and successes
they can improve their processes to meet cultural challenges and
changing standards for ministry. If they do not learn, they lose
their ability to provide relevant, biblically sound ministry.
Churches that learn fastest introduce a range of ministries
and services to their members and community and adjust them quickly
based on results and feedback.
How Do You Create a Cutting Edge Church?
1. Identify and articulate shared purposes, values,
and vision.
This is a must. Values and vision provide the direction
and energy to keep the church on course and moving forward. As people
are more empowered, a clear understanding of the purposes, values,
and vision keeps everyone moving in the same direction. Biblical
purposes and mandates distinguish the church. By clear understanding
of and strong personal and corporate commitment to biblical purposes,
the church becomes more than just another business or organization.
2. Become entrepreneurial.
Churches on the cutting edge adapt entrepreneurial
strategies to Christian ministry. This means that leaders are unafraid
to take risks and stimulate vision among those who minister with
them. Part of this process involves empowering others. In fact,
all members are encouraged to be entrepreneurs. Many members can
take independent initiatives rather than having to submit every
idea for approval. This does not ignore accountability and commitment
to the church's shared values and vision. It is the conviction that
each believer is called, gifted, and empowered by the Holy Spirit
and as such can hear and discern God's will.
3. Learn to thrive on change and uncertainty.
Al Flood, chairman and CEO of CIBC Bank stated, "In
a fast-paced, continually shifting environment, resilience to change
is often the single most important factor that distinguishes those
who succeed from those who fail."
The church can thrive in change and uncertainty when
leaders and members are clear about their biblical purposes. Problems
come when a church confuses its true biblical purposes with preferences
for ministry methods. In a church that is clear about God's unchanging
purposes, change and uncertainty are opportunities to be exploited.
The question is, "How can we use these changes in the process
of achieving our goals?"
Flood identified five basic characteristics of what
he calls Type-O (Opportunity-oriented) people. When these same characteristics
are present in the church and its leaders, that church can thrive
in change and uncertainty.
1. Positive: Display a sense of security and
self-assurance based on a view of life as complex and challenging
but filled with all kinds of opportunity.
2. Focused: Have a clear vision of what they
want to achieve.
3. Flexible: Demonstrate a special pliability
when responding to uncertainty.
4. Organized: Develop structured approaches
to managing ambiguity.
5. Proactive: Engage change, rather than defend
against it or evade it.
(Taken from Flood, Al, Chairman and CEO of CIBC Bank.
The Learning Organization. Speech to the 62nd Annual Coaching Conference
on the Challenge of Lifelong Learning in an Era of Global Change,
Geneva Park, Ontario: August 1993).
4. Encourage experimentation in ministry.
Every change requires a new experiment. A change in
culture forces everyone to adjust. What was accomplished and achieved
must be evaluated honestly, with nothing taken for granted. The
methods, strategies, and tools used yesterday may not work today
and may be obsolete tomorrow.
Promote a learning lab experimental mentality. People
who are encouraged to participate in experimentation are more motivated,
engaged, and productive. This is not reckless experimentation but
a system of trying, learning, and adapting to become more effective
in ministry.
Learning and staying on the cutting edge today requires
that a church view itself as a work in progress or a laboratory.
Like landscaping your yard, it is learning while you are experimenting,
creating, and developing. An approach to ministry development that
often fails is to present facts to a committee who in turn submits
them to a board who has the power to ignore or postpone action.
By the time a decision is made the window of opportunity may be
closed. Motivation, morale, and effectiveness all suffer. Frustration
may result.
You can capture the learning opportunities by asking
your team weekly and monthly what is working and what is not in
regard to achieving purposes and goals. Use this feedback to correct
mistakes and make adjustments. Accept a mistake as a breakdown on
the path to accomplishment rather than a personal failure. Robert
Hargrove in Masterful Coaching (San Diego, CA: Pfeiffer &
Company, 1995) says that "breakdown" triggers creative
and effective thinking, new ways of being, and the invention of
new tools. The questions to ask when you make mistakes are not the
psychological ones like "What is wrong with me?" "What
is wrong with what I did?" "What is wrong with the others?"
Rather, you should ask, "What was the breakdown?" "What
correction do we need to make to eliminate the breakdown in the
future?" "What is missing that would make a difference?"(http://www.smartbiz.com
(c) 1995 by Pfeiffer & Company, and is excerpted from Masterful
Coaching by Robert Hargrove, published by Pfeiffer & Company,
San Diego, CA)
5. Become more risk taking.
Fully empowered equipping leaders and ministering
leaders must be allowed to learn the hard way, by making mistakes.
This means developing a more risk-orientated culture within the
church. Those in ministry must be encouraged to experiment and feel
the freedom to fail and learn. Ask your group, "Do people in
the group generally look at mistakes as learning opportunities or
as a reason to get discouraged and give up?" Tom Peters’
book, Search for Excellence, is about Howard Head, inventor
of the fiberglass ski. Head would go to his workshop, mix up a batch
of black plastic goop, and mold it into a pair of skis. He would
then take them to Mount Washington, New Hampshire, to have the ski
instructors try them out. Over and over the skis broke on the rugged
terrain. After 33 trips to the shed, the thirty-fourth pair of skis
worked. If Head had been afraid to make a mistake, he would not
have invented fiberglass skis.
The reason for continued experimentation, risk-taking,
and learning is to take action and minister more effectively.
6. Facilitate cross- pollination.
To stay on the cutting edge, do all you can to avoid
inbreeding, exclusiveness and group think. Mix team members
around in ministry as much as possible so they can develop new perspectives
and new skills. A primary value to be cultivated in the church is
to honor different views and perspectives. This can lead to new
ideas, methods, and tools for ministry. It is also essential to
involve new members in ministries appropriate to their spiritual
development and giftedness. Most thriving ministries today involve
people who come from different ministry specialties with different
views and perspectives. They have taken the time to understand one
another's positions and ideas. They learn to dream together with
a willingness to give and take, so great things begin to happen.
7. Become and recruit cutting edge leaders.
Today's organization requires leaders who are more
flexible and responsive. They must:
- Foster an environment conducive to learning and self-renewal.
- Create an appetite and agility for continuous change.
- View every church member as a source of valuable ideas.
- Share their expertise and also their mistakes freely with others.
- Demonstrate a high level of patience and tolerance for ambiguity.
- Share information, power, and decision making with others throughout
the church.
- Demonstrate commitment to their own learning.
- Have a strong sense of purpose for themselves and the church.
- Encourage relationships and the building of networks.
- Demonstrate courage and inspire others through their own actions.
- Respond to both spoken and unspoken needs of others in the church.
- Have high personal and professional standards. (adapted from
an article entitled, How
Organizations are Changing: What People Want from Work and the
Workplace Today
Christ is our model for staying on the cutting edge.
Although He walked counter to the religious and institutional norms
of His day, His ministry was solidly based on God's principles and
purposes and contextualized to the culture and the people to whom
He was ministering.
W. Edward Deming said, "Nothing happens without
personal transformation." Jesus said, "Unless a grain
of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains only a single
seed. But if it dies, it produces many seeds" (John 12:24,
NIV). This truly is the secret of being a cutting edge church.
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