Climbing The Summit 4,000 Feet!

At one time Gary Hamel was ranked as the #1 influential business thinker by the Wall Street Journal. His book, entitled The Future Of Management, is one I purchased (not read yet) after the Leadership Summit was over. Gary is the next speaker I will try to unpack for you in this series on covering the Leadership Summit I attended, sponsored by Willow Creek via satellite feed. The theme was, “Lead Where You Are!”

Gary asked us a question -- “Is your church changing as fast as the world around us?”
Most of us already realize that the church is typically 10 -20 years behind the times. So it was, to my mind, a loaded question. Because of this fact, it was no surprise that his next statement was, “The church is losing market share in this world!” Here again, another no brainer; we have all known for quite some time the statistics that tell us the church of today is not very effective in reaching out to a lost and dying world. So what is one to do? Gary is convinced that it will take a crisis (Praise God for that. It is already happening.) and a change of the way leaders manage (That’s your call.) to turn the ship around.

Profound paradigm shifts are taking place in the world, and the church is not adapting to these. Our problem is inertia. Lots of organizations are going backward, including the church.

Here are three key imperatives that may help the church regain momentum and thrive once again.

Gary advises us to first of all, conquer denial. Denial oftentime rears its ugly head as dismissal, rationalization, mitigation, and a lack of honest confrontation of self. Face the facts. Deal with the elephant in the room.

Question our beliefs (how we do church or practices). Take some time to listen to the renegades and the dissidents. Let’s not be like the leaders of Jesus’ days. They rejected the radical, the revolutionary (Jesus).
 
Secondly, we need to generate more strategic options. Change needs to seem more exciting than staying pat. There is a need to deconstruct what we already know. If orthodoxy is crippling us, we need to examine that. Are we simply doing what every other church is doing and failing at it? Examine everything we have done at church and what hasn’t changed in the last 3-5 years. Jesus was radical and unconventional. Are we? Are we more committed to changing lives than doing church? Here is a test for all of us -- try sacrificing some of those churchy things we do that are getting in the way of doing what Jesus wants.
  
Do you believe it is dangerous for a few people to control the initiation of change in an existing organization -- when entrenched leaders prohibit needed changes? Top down structures are crippling many churches today. Is there an alternative?

Third, the church needs to get back to more of an organic church model of the first century. We need to reinvent the way we manage and lead, and base it more on the first century Biblical model than the latest corporate model.

There you have it -- more advice at overcoming acedia in our churches. We will advance to the Leadership Summit at 8,000 feet next time!