Where have they gone - do we care?

If you lead a church you need to read this. If you know a church leader you need to send this to them to read.
Why am I being so demanding with this post? Because I feel there is a need for all of us to do what we can to try and stop the ongoing cycle of hurt and abuse that is happening mainly across evangelical churches.  I have reproduced the following open letter written by Addie Zierman on her blog here as having shared it as a link on my facebook account many people commented essentially saying that this "hits the nail on the head".
Personally my family and I have been hurt and abandoned but I also know many, many others who have been through the same type of pain. From people who have led churches only to be discarded with paltry a book token for their services through to people who have been ignored for years and eventually get the message and move on and no one notices.
As I said on facebook - you can see why it is 'easier' to hear the prophetic call to growth and enlargement and just wait for Jesus to bring it - but maybe we can't hear (or aren't listening for) is Jesus' saying "remember I talked about the lost sheep..." An Open Letter to the Church: How to Love the Cynics 
You should know, first of all, that there’s no quick-fix here. There are not ten steps. There is no program that you can implement, no “Young Adult” class you can start.
This is not about your building or your music or your PowerPoint slides.
There is not a trendy foyer in the world with the power to bring us wandering back.
After all, there’s not much you can say to us that we haven’t already learned in some Sunday School classroom somewhere. We know the Bible stories.
We heard them over and over, year after year until they became part of our blood, part of our bones. We’ve heard a thousand sermons. We recited Scripture on Wednesday nights and earned shiny little jewels for plastic crowns. We know the “right answers.” We know the Ten Commandments and the Fruits of the Spirit and how to “lead someone to Christ” with five Bible verses and a three-minute testimony.
We left quietly at age 14 when we joined the drama club, and it felt more like family than youth group ever did. We left in a huff at age 17, angry and rebellious, slamming the church door behind us. We left at 19 when we gave in to passion in some parked car somewhere – left after a dozen sermons and well-meaning Christian speakers told us that in surrendering our virginity, we had surrendered our worth. That we were broken beyond repair.
We stayed the course for a long time. We led the small groups, sang on the worship team, and you told us that we would change the world for Jesus. And then we went to Christian college, where people looked at us side-eyed and dared us to prove our faith. We turned inward, faded out, faded away.
We left after long hours praying for healing that never came. We left when the Christian Girls and the Mean Girls were the same girls. We disappeared into Depression. We walked out of a funeral service of someone too young, and we never stepped foot in a church again.
We left for a hundred different reasons, none less real or important than the other.
Once, we believed quickly and entirely, our faith in the church people and in God all tangled into each other. We believed that you who loved God would be different, and no one ever confessed that Christians are broken too. We felt the knife-stab of hypocrisy at some point, and it is a wound that never really healed.
So we sit, arms crossed at the edge of it, hypersensitive to your failures and your faults. We have spent the last several years honed in on our bullshit detectors, critical and cautious. We are constantly aware of the darkness: yours and ours. The whole wide world, broken and dying, hurling herself into the abyss.
We hear your bewildered conversations about how so many of us have left the church. You are head-scratching, writing books, trying to pinpoint the problem. You are feeling powerless to stop the mass exodus of a generation.
You are looking at your church bulletin, wracking your brains, trying to figure out what you could offer us to make us come home.
But this is not about a program. We will see right through that flyer you stick in our mailbox. We have been bait-and-switched before, and we’re suspicious. We were raised on a steady of diet of ads and commercials, after all – we know when you’re trying to sell us something.
We need you to fight for us.
We need to be more than a number, an attendance card in the offering plate. A statistic.
We need you to come to where we are.
Come out of the church offices and the Christian bookstores. Turn off the local Christian radio station and hear us.
(Sometimes, I think that’s all it would’ve taken for me. Some church stranger to sit down next to me and just say, How are you really doing? You really ought to join the women’s ministry. Just get plugged in Just How are you doing? Just someone interested in just listening. Just someone to mean it.)
We can see through every trick, and we are not looking to be someone’s success story. This will not be a quick fix; you can’t just slap a little redemption on this mess and call it good.
We need you to sit with us in the mad season for as long as it takes. We need to hear your stories – the messy ones, the hard parts. We need you to tell us the pain of it without skipping ahead to the happy ending.
Maybe we can face our darkness if you are honest about yours.
We are weary and bitter and deeply broken. We can see through everything…
Except for maybe love.
And this probably won’t look like revival. It won’t look like much at all, and we need you to be the one group of people in this whole appearance-driven world who are okay with that.
We need you to measure your success not in results but in faithfulness. In coffee cups and late night phone calls. In glasses of wine and sharp fragments of story.
We need every single one of you. We need you brave in the face of our anger, kind in the midst of our bitterness. We need you every day. We need you here not there.
We are tired and we are cold, and we are looking for a reason to come. Be the reason.
Light a candle. Take our hand, and walk with us.
Remind us what Jesus looks like: arms open, eyes full of love. Help us see him there, sitting with us in the anger, waiting.
Help us. Love us. Join us. And, maybe, we’ll find our way home.

Leadership and values, the most important thing?

Awhile back I started a series of posts under the title Leadership: destination, people, journey, and arriving. So far I have written about the destination (defining, getting and communicating vision), the next stage is the journey.

In any journey you first have a destination, otherwise you are going nowhere. Next is the process of the journey, "How you want to get there?". This is where values fit into the picture. In his book, "Purpose Driven Youth Ministry", Doug Fields says, "values reveal what is important to your ministry (or organisation)". Values essentially give you the benchmark to test the means and methods you are using to get to your destination.
Most people would agree that values are important but I believe they are the missing organisational link in the trinity of mission, vision and values. If not altogether missing then at the least the poor second cousin of mission and vision. Why do I say this? Every organisation has values, whether they are written down or not. However generally these values are meaningless because:
They aren't Real - are they actually values or just objectives or non-value statements?
They are rarely Repeated - are your values explained, communicated, discussed or taught?
They are never Reviewed - is the organisation measuring what it does against how it says it wants to do things?

Real values
In the first instance are the values that the organisation holds something tangible that you can describe and see in the real world - e.g. friendship or teamwork. Very often organisations produce complicated, long winded statements or just use vision or mission orientated words and phrases as value statements.
Some good examples of values (that are clear and understandable) are City Church, Revelation Church and Boeing

Repeated values
Like vision, values should be kept in front of the organisation and not just locked in a document or website.
If values tell us what is important to us and speak of our ethos then we should be talking, communicating, educating, sharing these values widely and regularly. At this point the phrase "values are caught not taught" would usually be stated and it certainly has a ring of truth to it and values can be seen and therefore caught. But if catching is the only method for getting values then is it like catching a virus? When you come into the presence of the value holder and you pick up what you see and percieve then you become a similar value holder. But if values are only caught then like a virus mutation may occur. We need to teach and communicate clearly what our values are, what they mean and what they look like. This should happen in many different ways acting as a plumbline to test what we are 'catching' from one another.

Reviewed values
So we have some real values, we are repeating these values regularly. How will we know if we are really doing what we say is important?
We could ask some questions which would objectively see if we are doing what we say is important. Again in Doug Field's book he shares how they did this in his youthwork, so for their value of acceptance they had the following questions they would ask of themselves to review how they were doing in this area.

If you have a set of values how do you know if anyone, even yourself, is following these values? Do you do some form of objective review or do you just say to people "these values are core to who we are" so you must be following them.

So I guess we need to ask yourself how important are our values? How are values held in your organisation? What are your experiences, good or bad? I would love to hear your feedback on this - in fact I would really value them ;-).

How you react to criticism reveals a lot

Recently there have been a number of articles in my local paper (Herts & Essex Observer) detailing a variety of situations of possible cover up, on going criticism and the apparent arrogance of the leaders of my local council. Their response was one of ignoring or denying that anything at all is wrong. Inevitably as with all disputes and arguments the truth will lie somewhere in between.

When people criticise or question you or your organisation, responding by closing ranks, ignoring or denying any problems is a sign of weakness, arrogance and a lack of compassion - or maybe all three!
99 times out of 100 there will be a little truth (or a lot) to what the person is saying.

Wise, caring and ultimately strong leadership will want to know about any weakness or failing they have because the odds are the leaders themselves can't see these.

The alternative is a world where we hear:

• They would say that
• We are right you are wrong
• If you don't agree you know where the door is
• You need to believe/agree with this to be part of it
• The leaders know what is best/right don't question their decisions

Is this the sort of society or culture we want to build?

Leadership: real people, inspiring leaders

Like most people who have worked in many jobs and in different industries I have served under and alongside many leaders, probably hundreds. I am certain that everyone of them has shaped and influenced me, for good or bad, even if I didn't realise it. So I sat down one day a while ago and spent a few minutes listing leaders I have known and one thing that I would remember them for. These are real people that I know or have known and not the 'great leaders' of platforms and books that you and I have read and heard but actually don't know.

Martin Harrison - the first person who ever led me, he particularly taught me the importance of training people properly, giving the necessary feedback and coaching and then letting them (me) make their own mistakes.

Elizabeth Gooch - an incredibly driven and focused woman who showed me the importance of getting the right people together to make a great team.

David Stroud - I worked on one of the regional teams that David led. During this time I organised a church leaders weekend. This was the first such weekend I had done and unfortunately my calculations went wrong and we were looking at a £2k loss (it ended up only losing around £200). When I shared the details with the team David simply said, "Well you won't make that mistake again". In a stroke he removed my fear and guilt and showed trust in me for the future (all my church leaders weekend since have turned a small profit!).

Tony Thompson - I led the team that organised Together@Shuttleworth in 2008 & 2009 for the regional churches he and his team oversaw. These events were a great success but on a personal and family level they were a real struggle. So after completing the 2009 event I had to step down from leading the event. Tony arranged support and care for me because in his words he felt responsible that someone from his team needed support. It was good to feel care that went beyond the confines of the role to serve and support me, the person.

Melanie Crane - I worked with Melanie over a number of years and the thing that struck me about her was the way she included and developed people. She seemed to easily gather a crowd but many people can do that. Leaders do something with the crowd, take them on, give them opportunities as see them as more than just workers but as future leaders also. This fully struck me when she was in the process of leaving her job in our church and she gave us a long list of the people who she has worked with and what they have done and what they could do.

Nic Lines - the final person I will mention here is Nic. I work alongside Nic, our youth leader and have seen him at close quarters, especially when I have been on the catering team at Newday. The thing I admire is how after inheriting a team he brought in his own style of leadership. Still a young in leadership (years) but he clearly has the ability to listen and give space to people whilst having a definite sense of what he wants to see achieved.

If you were to name leaders who have shaped your life who would be the first you would remember?

Doing the right thing, the easy thing or nothing

Fork In The Road - Walnut Creek, California
(via PatrickSmithPhotography)

In our lives we come up against many forks in the road. These present us with choices, most of our choices don't make a great deal of difference. What we choose to wear each day for most of us will have little effect on the grand destiny of our lives, as much as the fashion police would beg to differ! Occasionally we have choices which clearly change our paths, as the saying goes, "nothing will be the same again".

Often these choices are between doing the right thing, as we see it, or doing the easy thing - follow the line of least resistance to pass by on the other side.

Doing the right thing can often be painful and costly, it makes us unpopular perhaps and yet along with all these negatives comes a peace in our soul.

The easy path avoids the immediate pain yet doesn't it just push the issue into the future?

Of course there is another way, one I often follow - do nothing. Don't choose, in fact ignore that the choice is there and in time the momentum of life will push you past that fork in the road and it will soon fade into the past. But the major choices in our lives come back again and again and these choices usually get harder, more difficult and more painful.

I believe that almost everyone of us is approaching a major fork in the road. If you are I pray you have the clarity and strength to do the right thing and that God will sustain you through and on that path as you walk it.

Communicating Vision

Before we look at communication let me ask the question, have you got a vision? Is it a destination that you can actually reach or have you actually got a mission statement which is your organisations reason for existence?

Assuming you have a vision there is an important process to go through before you start to communicate it. This process could potentially save you both time and increase the effectiveness of your communication immeasureably - find out if your vision makes sense!

How do you ensure your vision make sense?
Doesn't it already make sense? Remember it makes complete sense to you, you being the person or the team that has carried, crafted and lived it for days, weeks maybe even years.
But do you really want people who hear this vision for the first time to have to ask questions like "when you say X what do you mean?"

Hand your vision statement over to some people who have not been part of the process, these people should meet the following criteria - be good with words, include men and women, cover a range of ages and people types i.e. not just similar people to the leader(s). Give over the documentation you have produced so far and ask them simply "does this make sense, do you have any questions?" then sit back and look to take on board this important feedback.

Concise or long winded?
Your vision can be just two or three words (famously Canon photocopiers was "kill Xerox") or it could cover many specific areas with several goals. However, your vision needs to be memorable and if it is a set of goals using an overarching title or vehicle for your vision will help people to remember it. A good example of a wide ranging vision being encompassed in a memorable way is Kings Arms Church, Bedford who have used the numbers 1 to 5 to connect their goals to their 5 year vision.

How do you communicate?
Simple answer - by every means possible until everyone knows the vision or you have achieved it! In communicating vision there are two key aspects to consider:
1. What are the questions you need to answer?
2. Consider the methods you need to use to really communicate with people

The questions - there are three main questions people will have - Why, How, What

Why have you\we gone for this vision? If the vision is a natural extension of the past or normal for your type of organisation this why question may just cover issues around the scope of the vision. Questions that ask why so high\low\long\short\small\big etc.
If it is a major departure from where you are at now it will be necessary to demonstrate where the faith is in this new vision.

How will we get there? Again the smaller and simpler the vision the less of these questions will come.
Going for a grand vision way beyond where you are now requires more confidence in the steps to get there and if these are outlined then people can gain confidence and accept the vision more readily.

What does it mean for us\me? In the back of everybodies mind whenever a rousing speech or vision is set out there is a little voice that says, "So What?", or in other words, "What does this mean for me?".
This often will be thought of in terms of remuneration of some sought but also in terms of how will I be involved in this. The vision will paint a picture of a wonderful future but what part will I play in helping make this happen? Do I have a part? How will I be involved? All sorts of questions like this will be asked. Maybe even some cynical ones like "We've heard this all before.".

The Methods
Nothing beats "hearing from the horse's mouth", so the leader of the organisation needs to stand up and clearly layout the vision for the organisation answering the Why, How and What questions.

Beyond this initial communication you need to account for people who aren't there to hear, people who process in different ways, and people who need to hear something several times to fully understand and take on board the vision (this last group is somewhere between 99-100% of the population!).

Having the vision and what it means for us written down in various forms will enable people to pick it up and process it at their own pace.

Repeating the vision is another key method to use. However, remember you can always have too much of a good thing! When the vision is launched it is appropriate to repeat the core of the vision at every opportunity.

Encouraging people to discuss and feedback to the leadership can be helpful. Doing this inevitably will bring up ideas and views that are significantly different to the leadership and the vision. Ignoring these views and people is the wrong thing to do. There will always be actions and strategies that we wouldn't do or follow but, we will still follow leaders if we feel our opinions are heard and respected. Ignoring the views and ideas of people can lead to the situation where people feel that they might as well just ignore your vision. They will certainly not put effort into achieving it and possibly will just leave.


In summary:

• Make sure your vision makes sense
• Make it memorable
• Consider the questions people have
• Use all the available methods and encourage discussion and interaction

Getting your Vision – What’s on the front of your bus?

Leadership is about achieving a vision. So you need a vision, how do you get one?

The leader and leaders of any organisation should have a vision. If they haven’t or the current vision has been achieved or needs to be changed then a new vision needs to be set.

As I said in my previous post looking at the definition of mission, vision, values and goals – vision should answer the question “Where are we going?”

As you seek to answer this question you need to consider the following:

1. How far ahead are we looking?

2. How long will you spend getting the vision

3. What resources will you put into getting the vision (eg retreats)

4. What will the vision look like, its nature?
Numerical – to be a church of X by Year Y
Qualitative – to be a people and place where the love of God is found
Reputational – to be known as the people and place where God can be found
Each of these types should still be measureable

In looking at these questions and the general question of where you want to get to it is worth bringing into this process as many people who can help shape it and add real value to it.

Occasionally, there will a very clear and specific direction that the main leader feels is the answer and the organisation will follow after that. However, in these cases there should still be a seeking after wisdom from the whole body of leadership and not the potentially dangerous reliance on one person’s personal vision.

Understanding the difference between Vision, Mission, Values & Goals

On my previous leadership post I said if leadership is about anything then it's about achieving a vision. But what do we mean by vision, and what about mission, values and goals?

I think it may be helpful to define what is normally meant by these terms.

Mission (you can also use the word Purpose)
Dictionary definition – a person’s vocation, his mission in life
Mission answers the question “Why do we exist?”

Vision
Dictionary definition – something seen in the imagination or in a dream
Should answer the question “Where are we going?”
A vision statement must have a destination otherwise it is just a purpose\mission statement.

Values
The way we do things here – culture, ethos – our distinctiveness
What we believe in shapes our values, our values shape our behaviour.

Goals
These should annual plans that help you move towards your vision in bite-sized chunks
They should be achieveable but challenging.
You could have annual, 2-3 year or 5-10 year goals, it all depends on the long term nature of your vision.

Leadership: destination, people, journey, and arriving

If leadership is about anything then it's about achieving a vision. Whether that vision is...
... winning the championship or avoiding relegation
... growing a business or organisation
... putting on a successful event or trip

So looking at the journey a leader takes in achieving a vision it seems there are four aspects, the four parts of leadership over any given time. Destination, People, Journey, and Arriving.

The Destination - This is all about where you are going, your vision. If you don't have one are you really leading? Is it clear, do people understand it?

The People - Someone who claims to be a leader, yet has no one following them is just taking a walk. So if you are a leader you will have people with you. How do you include them in your leadership? How do you inspire the keen ones and not at the same time disenfranchise the cautious ones?

The Journey - Very few leadership journeys are really easy and mishap free. Much like life there are ups and downs and often it is the downs that test and shape leaders the most. How do you handle the problems? How do we - leaders and the organisation as a whole - learn from our mistakes?

Arriving - At the end of our journey we arrive at our destination. This can be a time for reflection, resetting and relaunching or maybe retirement.

Over the next few weeks I will put a bit more meat on these four bones of leadership. I would love to know your comments on this overall view and my thoughts on each aspect as I share them.


Personal note:
I don't claim to be a guru on leadership but over the years I have experienced and worked with great leaders, read and studied on aspects of leadership and I hope gained some experience and understanding myself.

Admin Lessons - Planning

"If you fail to plan, you plan to fail", it's an old adage but a true one especially when it comes to achieving a vision, goal or even just a one-off event.

My job as the administrator at my church gives me a key part in leading the planning of our church events, ministries and strategy. We normally do this a year in advance, producing an annual plan for the church running from September to August.

I believe there are three key factors you need to focus on to be effective in planning - Aim, Process, Review

AIM
The clearer you are about where you want to get to - your vision - the easier it is to get there. Sounds such a simple common sense thing to do, but so rarely is it done.

So before you start to plan ask, "What do you want to achieve?". Whatever time frame you are planning for, do you have a vision of what success will look like if you get there. Another way of thinking about this is to imagine you are writing a summary looking back over what has happened in achieving your vision. What can you envisage writing about? If your vision is to see your small groups increase from 10 to 20 then looking back after getting to 20 groups we might see the highlights were the:
- small group training course(s) that successfully identified the leaders,
- the successful launching of new groups,
- the focus and priority of small groups in church life.

Developing activities, actions and strategies is easier if you can picture where you want to get to and start to visualise what you will need to do, consider, think about to get there.

PROCESS
Both the development of vision and the planning process itself will benefit from the widest possible inclusion of people.

Over the years the steps I have used to plan have changed and developed but the process I have found best is in three parts as follows:
Session 1 - very much sets the scene, paints the big picture, and generates ideas and actions
Session 2 - is the nitty gritty of details and choices
Session 3 - reviews the process and agrees the detail of output and actions

Session 1
Gather together as many as is possible of elders, ministry leaders and staff (ideally you have people covering evangelism, kids work, youth work, small groups, worship, social action, men, women, teaching, etc.)
Over the course of 2-4 hours you will:
- Review our long term goals and vision and what God has been saying to us?
- Decide on your priorities for this year?
- Agree the principles of planning- e.g. no more than X sat events in a month
- Generate list of ideas* for activities, events and actions to help us achieve our priorities (and vision)
- Map these ideas onto a year plan

* we can and do use last years plan and activities as a start point
NB - the output of Session 1 is written up and circulated for reading before Session 2

Session 2
Again as many as possible of the people from the first session should attend this next session.
This session should last about 1-2 hours where you will:
- Review the notes / big picture plan from the first session
- Work through the details:
   > are there any date clashes?
   > does it actually help our priorities / vision?
   > can we deliver it? over crowded diaries / not enough resources?
   > does it meet our planning principles?
- Check if you have missed anything? A chance to add other bright ideas!

Session 3
A final session reviewing changes from the previous session, probably just a core team needed for this part of the process.
This session will review:
- dates and activities.
- communication of plans - see my previous post on communication
- action list
- agree review points for the plan over the course of the year

REVIEW
If you have a goal and a plan of how to move towards achieving that goal. It is madness if you wait until you've done everything or got to the end of your plan to see if it has been successful.

W Edwards Deming the man who is generally credited with helping the revival of the Japanese economy after World War II taught people, amongst many other things, about the PDCA cycle, Plan - Do - Check - Act.
After planning and starting to work on or towards your goal we should study how we are doing. Is it working? Do we need to refine things? This leads to action which is planned and so the cycle continues.

Does this sound too business like for a church? What if I was to replace the word Check with the word Listen - listen to God, listen to what any measures may be telling you, listen to what the church says (the wisdom of the crowd).

How often you review things probably depends on how long you are planning for. If you are planning for the year Sept-Aug, review in Jan/Feb then again around Easter. The Easter review could immediately precede or be part of the start of planning for the next year.

In summary...
No system or process for planning is perfect and can it always be improved. But being systematic whilst being open to change gives you a framework to achieve your vision, God willing :-). I would love to hear your thoughts and comments on planning, what works, your struggles, what you think of my structure, and anything else.

Characteristics of true leadership

For a while I have been following a blog written by Paul Allen, he writes on a numbers of subjects and I love his motto - Lumen Accipe et Imperti (Receive the light & pass it on).

One of the areas that he writes on is is leadership, essentially on the character of true leadership. I like that he is very happy to disagree with other people's quotes about leadership. One of these disagreements that has stayed with me is the quote from Ralph Nader "The function of leadership is to produce more leaders, not more followers." Allen comments on this quote by saying, "I believe it misses the point about why leadership is needed at all... If the development of leadership is a byproduct of working to achieve the vision then it is beneficial... So what is the purpose of leadership? To do what it takes to ensure the attainment of the vision." Click here to see the full article.

I've found his writing to be a breath of fresh air on the subject of leadership, maybe because it is not all he is about, he is a musician, songwriter, photographer and he cares for his wife who has chronic illness. His articles are full of humility with a heart to help people develop and grow, I can only hope my blog is thought of in this way. Click here to see his blog\website.