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"Due to Mike’s two carpal tunnel release surgeries, he is temporarily not writing his blog until his hands are more in a recovered state. Thanks for your patience."

Why Are We All A Little Crazy?

I am sure most of us by now have heard the popular definition of “insanity.” People are insane when they expect different results while doing things the same way as before. In other words, if I want different results, while not changing my means, methods, policies, etc., I am insane.

We could use this axiom in any facet of life. For example, if I continue with the same Christian disciplines (Bible reading, praying, fasting, church attendance, small group attendance, accountability partner) in my life, and I haven’t grown much spiritually, but now all of sudden I expect different results with no changes to my Christian lifestyle, I am in fact “crazy.”

How many people do we know that do the same things day in and day out and aren’t growing spiritually, but today somehow miraculously they will take off without making any changes?

Another example, a church, let's say, that hasn’t grown over the past five years. This church continues with the same methodology that has contributed to its lack of growth over the past five years -- same leaders, same music, same small groups, same building, same outreach -- how can we expect growth to happen by not changing the way we did “business as usual?” We must be “insane.”

Maybe we could generate a new saying to replace the one we have always heard, “We've always done it this way”, or, "We tried that in the past and it didn’t work, so why try it again?”. The new saying could be, "We won’t change a bit, but our outcomes surely will.”

On a scale of 1-10, how crazy are you? If you are like me, insanity seems to fill certain parts of your life and not others. How can a person become more sane in the future? What in our lives should we change so that we can look more like Jesus? What in our churches should we change so that God might once again be able to work among us?

There is one thing for certain we cannot do if we are going to be on track to overcome acedia. We simply cannot keep doing the same things in our lives and expect different results.

I challenge you this month to take a look at your life and the life of your church. What is one thing you can change and maybe God will grant you some more positive results?

THE GLOBAL LEADERSHIP SUMMIT

I have read both Good to Great and How the Mighty Have Fallen, by Jim Collins (on the web at jimcollins.com), who was yet another great speaker at the Summit who addressed specifically The Five Stages of Decline in any organization. This can happen to any organization, including individual churches. All of these stages are self-inflicted. As Collins states on his website, “Whether you prevail or fail depends more on what you do to yourself than on what the world does to you.” He sounds like a preacher!

Stage 1 is “Hubris born of success”

Hubris has been defined as, “excessive pride that brings the hero down.” Outrageous arrogance develops, and neglects all that is important.

The antithesis of this Stage 1 of decline is: it is not about them as leaders, and they never ever give up. They are Level Five leaders, cut from a different cloth. The signature quality that separated Level Five leaders from Level Four was humility.

That humility, a very special type -- burning, passionate ambition to do whatever it takes, no matter what, starts to evaporate in Stage 1 of decline, according to Collins.

Have you or your church become too proud from success in ministry?

Stage 2 “Undisciplined Pursuit of More”

The organization starts to think, “We are really good, therefore we can do more.” Not humble, overreaching, going too far, breaking David Packard’s law (Find Packard at www8.hp.com/us/en/company-information/executive-team/packard.html.) which states, “No company can consistently grow revenues faster than its ability to get enough of the right people to implement that growth and still become a great company.” That's a founder of Hewlett/Packard speaking.

The antithesis of this Stage 2 of decline is: do we have all the seats filled with fantastic people? If not, we cannot move forward. We need the right people on the bus, then we can figure out where to drive the bus.

Have you or your church ever gotten greedy over a good thing?

Stage 3 “Denial of Risk and Peril”

A company starts to deny the signs of things that are not right. They keep moving in the wrong direction. On the outside you really look great, which makes it easy to deny. Are we a team on the way up or a team on the way down?

In the book Love and War, it addresses how POWs survived the torture in prison camps and were eventually freed. How did a prisoner survive, not knowing the end of the story? Admiral Stockdale (Find him on the web at admiralstockdale.com/.) is a POW in this story, and his secret of survival -- now called the “Stockdale Principle” -- was: never ever waver in the belief that you will get out. The prisoners who did not make it out were the "optimists," who thought, "We will be out by Christmas," but Christmas came and went, and they died of broken hearts. Never confuse faith and fact.

Have you or your church never confronted the elephant in the room?

Stage 4 “Grasping for Salvation”

The game is up. The risk you denied throws you over the edge and you are falling. The company went looking for a silver bullet that never was fired -- the revolutionary breakthrough that will save them. They even go outside the company looking for a savior.

Greatness is never a single event. It is a process. An organization needs to get back to the “flywheel principle” to overcome this stage. Turn upon turn, push upon push, disciplined and intentional -- that is how you climb out of this Stage 4 of decline. It does not happen any other way.

Have you or your church looked for a quick fix, or new hire to get you out of trouble?

Stage 5 “Capitulation to Irrelevance or Death”

This is the stage in which we give up. We have squandered everything away and the game is over.

Why are companies still standing? Why are they still strong all through the struggles? Because they had a reason to endure, so they thought. But if we measure success by money we will always lose. The question we should ask ourselves is, “What would be lost if we disappeared?”

You have to have core values that will not be compromised. Do not forget: the signature of mediocrity is inconsistency. To survive and be revived one must preserve the core values, and set big, hairy, audacious goals (BHAGs). This will in turn stimulate progress.

Have you or your church ever faced the inevitable situation of "Change or die"?

These are some principles to consider as we look at our own lives and the lives of our churches.

I encourage you to purchase Jim Collins' books (starting with Built to Last, which he co-authored with a fellow Stanford faculty member), and read further if this sparked interest in you. These stages of decline are all about apathy. Collins' books will help give you some answers as to how you might turn you or your church around before you fall. They are great principles, and, ironically, just like all great principles, I believe you can find a Biblical basis for each one of them.

The Global Leadership Summit

I can remember reading the book, Winning, by Jack Welch, several years back. It was an instant success with me, probably because of my coaching background. Who doesn’t want to win? "Winning" souls is what the church is all about.

Another thing I liked about the book was Jack is a no-nonsense guy. Honesty and integrity are musts -- these characteristics are often missing in secular leaders as well as in religious sectors. You can find out more about Welch's philosophy and principles on the web at welchway.com.

Bill Hybels interviewed Welch at the Global Leadership Summit. They talked about "getting the right people on the bus" and the controversial “Differentiation Principle.”

The interview started out with a hodge podge of statements on leaders. Leaders have to be authentic people. You have to be comfortable in your own shoes. You have to be who you portray yourself to be. You cannot take on a persona of who you are not. If you are a leader people need to know that they can count on you. You will excite people around you to follow the vision. You will energize people in a meeting. The leader has to speak with candor not mincing words. (Sounds like the Biblical Principle of speaking the truth in love. I am always amazed at how these guys use Biblical Principles even though they might not know it.)

The Differentiation Principle basically states that there are three groups of people in every organization. The "A" people represent the Top 20% of the people in any organization. They are characterized by energy, are likeable, have good values; they have a gene in them that says I want people to grow and succeed. (A friend of mine's educational services business had this slogan -- "Advancing one advances everyone." That's "A" type thinking.) They are not mean-spirited, not cheap or stingy; they will hire great people and they do not have trouble with envy. You can never compensate these people enough in an organization. They are the people you want to get on the bus if at all possible. Do you have people like this in your church? Are they on your leadership bus?

The "B" people are the Vital 70% in any organization. Some of their characteristics would be that they are smart, good, valuable, hard working. Since most people are in this group, I would consider them the average person in an organization. They are vital in the sense that without them the organization would not exist. The major problem with this group is that there is a big difference between the top half of this group and the bottom half. I am sure we have these type of people in our churches. We might even have some of them on the leadership bus.

The "C" peole are the Bottom 10% in any organization. They are characterized by not being team players, suffer from acedia, pooh-pooh ideas, disrupt, hate "bosses," antagonize, and are just simply a pain in the rear. It is hard to shut down the negative noise caused by some of the "C" people. You have to try to stop the deadly meetings they organize after the real meeting.

You have to tolerate them and try to shape them up, or ship them out (not out of the church, but out of participation in leadership). You have people like this in your church. Are they on your leadership bus?

Where this theory gets controversial is admitting that we all do differentiate between people. Sports teams do it and pay the best athletes the most. We in the churches know who the A, B, and C people are. God has blessed all people with different gifts and abilities. Some are more gifted then others. We know that. How about when Jesus chose the 12, can you figure out who might be the

A, B, and C people in that group? In the battle of spiritual warfare, Satan would probably attack the A’s first, and so on?

In retrospect it seems like we would all want to be more like Jesus. Is that an A person? At the same time if I am in the B category, wouldn’t I want to continue to grow spiritually to become more like Jesus? And if I am a C person, shame on me. Overcoming acedia would be about becoming the best servant for God that we can be.

Compare the characteristics of the three groups. Which one seems more like Jesus? Which type do you want to at least be in the majority on your leadership bus?