“Liberating Your Organization: Creating A Leadership-Friendly Culture”
Introduction
- There are organizational systems that are conducive to ministry, and there are those that impede ministry.
- There are organizational systems that free leaders to lead, and there are those that obstruct leaders.
- “System” defined: Your organization’s approach to getting things done.
- Systems Create Behaviors
- Preaching doesn’t. Curriculum doesn’t. Talks don’t.
- Examples:
- Family vs. Student Ministry
- Marriage vs. Marriage Sermon Series
- Western vs. Middle Eastern
- The systems you inherit, adopt, or create will eventually what staff and volunteers do.
- Anytime you hear, “Well, our people won’t…” you’re listening to someone who doesn’t understand the influence of systems.
- Components of a System:
- Expectations (rules)
- Rewards (or lack of)
- Consequences (or lack of)
- Communication (content and style)
- Behavior (of those in charge)
- Systems have a greater impact on organizational behavior than do mission statements.
- This principle explains why it’s so hard to transition an organization.
- If a leader casts a vision and never addresses old systems, nothing changes.
- “What’s happening down the hall trumps what’s hanging on the wall.”
- People in your organization are only doing what you’ve led and rewarded them to do.
- Ask, “What are the expectations in our organization? What’s rewarded? (Because that’s what will be repeated.) What brings consequences?
- The New Testament does not present us with a comprehensive system or model.
- In the NT we discover what the early church did. The NT does not lay out a comprehensive plan instruction church leaders what to do.
- Think about it: They had a direct WWJD link, something that we don’t have. They had apostles. We don’t. We have the great opportunity to create the system that carries out the Great Commission.
- Always differetiate between what is prescriptive and what is descriptive.
- We can’t be a 1st Century church because we don’t live in the 1st Century!
- The Old and New Testaments do offer some principles that should be integrated into our systems.
- Delegation : Acts 6 / Exodus 18
- Accountability: Acts 15
- Authority : Romans 13
- Interdependence : Paul’s discussion of spritual gifts
- Point Leadership : Modeled in OT and NT
- Seeking Counsel : Proverbs / Acts 15
- Something not on the list is Congregational Rule. Some examples of its outcome: Golden Calves, Brothers Thrown into Pits, Following Kings not Prophets
- System Imperatives
- Your system should allow you to involve and hire the best person for the job.
- Your system should provide you with the flexibility to get the right people to the table.
- i.e. position of Youth Director does not automatically influence decisions regardless of inept person in position.
- Your system should allow you to make complex decisions within the context of a small group of empowered individuals.
- Simply cannot communicate complex decisions to large groups of people effectively.
- Your system should ensure that only one person answers to “They”
Concluding Remarks:
- “We have different gifts, according to the grave given us. If a man’s gift is prophesying, let him use it in proportion to his faith. If it is serving, let him serve; if it is teaching, let him teach; if it is encouraging, let him encourage; if it is contributing to the needs of others, let him give generously; if it is leadership, let him govern diligently.” Romans 12:6-8
- You create a system where leaders are free to lead, and guess who will flock… leaders!
- Congregations led by the “We/They” tend to end up with system dysfunctions.
- The current system you’re gonna take all your notes back to has the potential to crush everything you’ll bring back. So, learning as leaders to deal with the nuts and bolts is absolutely necessary.
- Before God created man, He created systems (solar, ecological, etc.)
- But even in man, the human body is the most sophisticated system in existence.
- Because the body is a system, it’s a meaningful experience to go to the doctor, a medical systems expert. This is why you don’t just pray when you get sick.
- If you don’t approach problem solving systematically, you’ll spend the rest of your career blaming, firing, and being critical of people, and never getting anywhere.
Wrapup/Debriefing Questions:
- List 3 behaviors that you wish characterize your organization (apply on many levels: church, youth ministry, staff).
- List one thing you’re systematically doing to encourage each of those behaviors.
- List the things you’re doing (maybe inadvertently) to encourage the opposite behavior.
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More Questions Than Answers 