Not Again!!!!

We will be meeting with our launch team on Thursday to nail down our Mission Statement and the Core Values that support that statement.  You have heard me ranting about not simply coming up with something that sound “nice,” posting it on the wall and moving on never to think about it again. 

(Oh no!  He going to blog and blow about this again!)

I am sure I may also take some heat for returning to business writings for clarification on how to do this in a meaningful way, but that is my frame of reference and where I do a fair amount of my reading, and additionally business leaders and writers have probably thought about this more than many in the “church” world have. 

In this week’s Business Week magazine (Jan 14, 2008) Smackin’ Attackin’ Jack & Suzy Welch’s  “State Your Business” column on the final page of the zine answer a question addressing this very issue.  Following are excerpts in bold type from the column. My comments are in parentheses.

Gerald McLaughlin from Shanghai writes, “Like most startups, we launched with a big mission that was going to change the game. Now, several years out, it appears our mission isn’t going to deliver to the extent we had hoped. How do we come up with another?   (My hope is that we do this well and don’t need to “come up with another, so listen up!)

(Jack & Suzy respond,) “What an honest and admirable question. First, because so few leaders have the candor to admit: “Our approach to the market seems to be tanking. We need to change direction.” And second, because few leaders actually get the point of forging a mission with real grit and meaning. Even fewer work with their people to come up with a short list of values that will make their mission come alive. We just don’t get it! Sure, as your case seems to suggest, having a mission doesn’t guarantee winning. But not having one invariably spurs the opposite.  (I love the idea of winning, especially when you put it in the context of winning hearts and minds for Jesus Christ.)

Sound obvious? We would have thought so, too, except that for each of the past three years, we’ve conducted a two-day seminar with about 100 CEOs. The first year we thought we would breeze through mission and values in about a half-hour before moving on to matters more pertinent to top executives. To our shock, more than 60% of the CEOs in the room did not have a company mission, and 80% had no explicit set of company values describing how employees should behave in order to achieve the mission. The second and third years were basically no different except that we were prepared for several hours of discussion on these two messy topics.

Messy because the terms mission and values, hijacked by business school professors and consultants, have largely devolved into fatheaded jargon. Almost no one can figure out what they mean. And so, like the CEOs we’ve worked with, they sort of ignore them or gussy up a vague package deal along the lines of: “Our mission is to be the best fill-in-the-blank company in our industry” and “Our values are excellence, integrity, and customer service.”

In other words, ‘Business as usual.’

To answer your question, then, here’s how we’d suggest you create a new mission for your company, and just as important, a new set of values. Basically, the mission starts with you, the leader, since you’ll be held accountable for it. Yes, listen to everyone with something smart to say about your market and product— especially contrarians and customers. Gather and grok data galore. But then make a choice about how your company will win. Don’t mince words! Remember Nike’s old mission, “Crush Reebok”? That’s directionally correct. And Google’s mission statement isn’t something namby-pamby like “To be the world’s best search engine.” It’s “To organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful.” That’s simultaneously inspirational, achievable, and completely graspable.

With your mission set, more of your team must get involved in establishing values. After all, you are trying to describe the best behaviors of your best employees on their best days with enough clarity to make those behaviors easy to emulate, measure, and reward. Consider some of the best values we’ve heard: Never lose a superstar. Communicate bad news quickly. Take personal ownership of results, not process. Unlike the usual drivel, those mean something. They compel action. And that’s what you want, both with your mission and your values—especially as you change course. Good luck setting sail again.

(We must not “mince words” as we describe the mission that we believe God has given us in this church plant.  We want to reach out with the winning message of Jesus Christ of his uncompromising love for those on every road of life.  No churchy “business as usual.”  No “fatheaded” religious “jargon.”  Our Core Values must describe how we will behave to carry out our Mission.)

Naming The Baby III

We had an interesting exchange of ideas and free flowing discussion as we zeroed in on a name.  We have submitted two to the Covenant for review and approval:  Every Road Covenant Church, and Life Journey Covenant church.

As “The Rev”  aka “Pastor Tess”  wrote today, “Each one of our stories reflects a unique road of  coming to know and understand our relationship with Jesus Christ.  We all have been drawn into relationship with him, understand our sinfulness and need of His forgiveness, and believe in his death, burial, and resurrection.  Our lives reflect different continents that we were born, different denominational influences, different professional roles, different family structures, and certainly different personalities, strengths, and weaknesses. We have traveled many different roads and Jesus has brought us together for this time and purpose.”

Naming The Baby II

As rudimentary as the process may seem, we have tried to be wise and considerate with the process of naming this new outpost for Christ.  As I wrote before, you suddenly become aware of all the various shades and meanings of words and their juxtaposition with others.We hope to have this nailed down and approved by the Covenant in the next couple of weeks.

Having the name and the core values agreed upon will allow us to do so much more in attracting additional help to our launch team.The discussions among our team have ranged across the possibilities, and the concepts of “journey” “progress” and “road” kept cropping up.  

So we started visiting various scriptures and fairly quickly we realized how often “roads, ways, and streets” were mentioned in various contexts and meanings.   In addition, both journeys and progress are made on roads; and these same scriptures emphasize movement, journey, progress, and action.

Following are a few of the Roads we found in scripture.  We are certain we can help each other find even more examples. 

The Wilderness Road:  The Road of Seeking & Salvation    Acts 8: 26-36 tells the story of Phillip meeting the Ethiopian eunuch on the road and leading him to Jesus. 

The Damascus Road:  The Road of Confrontation                 Acts 9:1-8 & 27 tells the story of Paul being confronted on the road by Christ and called to a new life.         

The Samaritan Road: The Road of Mercy                               Luke 10:30-37 Jesus tells the story of the man being beaten and left for dead on the road until the Samaritan comes and put mercy into action by caring for him.                     

The Prodigal Road:  The Road of Reconciliation & Restoration of Dignity                                                                                     Luke 15:11-32  Jesus tells the story of the prodigal son and how his father ran to meet him when he was still far down the road from home and restored him to his family.

The Jericho Road:  The Road of Healing                                  Mark 10:46-52; Matthew 20: 29-34; Luke 18:35-43 all tell the story of Jesus healing Blind Bartemaeus on the road to Jericho 

The Emmaus Road: The Road of Understanding                   Luke 14:13-35 Luke recounts the story of the disciples  coming to understand that Jesus was truly the Christ when he encountered them on the road to Emmaus.

The Jerusalem Road: The Road of Celebration                            Mark 11:1-10; Matthew 21:1-9;Luke 19:28-40 tell the story of Jesus triumphal entry on the road into Jerusalem

The Road to God: The Road of Decision                                John 14:6-7 Jesus proclaims himself to be the only road to the Father

The Road of Hope: The Street of Gold                          Revelation 21 describes the main street of heaven appearing to be paved with pure gold.

Everyone in life is traveling their own road. Every Road has its shares of joy, sorrow, pain, happiness, and despair.  Life’s Journey has the potential for decision and growth.  The Way requires decision and choice.  The Path provides opportunities for healing and restoration.  The Journey ultimately leads to a confrontation with the Word, the Creator, the Christ.  Ultimately, no one can approach the Father except through Jesus Christ – The New Road.

A general theme seems to be emerging…

Heritage

Growing up in independent Baptist circles had some advantages, but one of them certainly not an attempt to connect us to an appreciation for religious heritage or tradition.  It seemed as if history and tradition were viewed with a high degree of suspicion.   I understand and even appreciate the concept that we were being taught to focus on the person and work of Jesus, and not on symbols, icons, or a traditions.   At the same time, I feel that in this approach I missed a great deal of the mystery and majesty that surrounds God.

We are now associated with the Evangelical Covenant Church and just the little reading I have done of its history, and the church plant training we did a few weeks back has sparked an emerging understanding that we are on the current cutting edge of the movement of  God through human history.  If you grew up in churches that have great traditions and identifications with various creeds and practices, this may seem elementary; and it is, in a good and profound sense.

For the first time I am beginning to grasp the grandness and depth of God’s character and love as it is expressed in symbols and rituals that stretch back through the ages.  I will be excited to see how we incorporate both new and ancient worship practices and rites designed to encourage our sense of awe and devotion of The Creator.

Naming the Baby

Since this is a brand new church plant, one of the things we will need to do is name it.  The launch team and the ECC will be very involved in this.   There was a time when naming a church was very straight forward; if you were first Baptists in town, then, hot diggity, you got to nail down that fact for posterity.  No question about it you were “First Baptist Church.”  (I’m not sure what how that squares with Jesus and the whole “first shall be last” thing, but that’s a whole ‘nother subject.)   If you were really wily about it you made sure it was First Baptist Church of Podunk – that way, when one of deacons inevitably got mad over losing a vote on the carpet color in the fellowship hall – the people he took in the split could not call themselves the Podunk Baptist Church.  My guess is we will not use our ciy’s name – but who knows?  One of my favorite town name churches is the Dinosaur Baptist Church in Dinosaur, Colorado

One of the churches my Dad pastored was in a small Northwest community with a strong Dutch settlers influence; I am not kidding, there were probably 14 Dutch Christian Reformed Churches inside the city limits of a town that had less than 3,000 souls in it.  Some of them were big too, the town population probably quintupled every Sunday as all the families out on the farms in the county went Sunday-Go-To-Meeting.  They handled the first four churches simply by calling them First through Fourth.  It would have been cool have them keep that up through 14th.

 Then there is the tradition of naming your church after the road it sits on; there is 19th Baptist Church in San Francisco and everybody has heard of Thomas Road Baptist (R.I.P  J.F.), but that is kind of boring and could be problematic depending on the name of the road; imagine a church on Stoner Ave, in Fayetteville, AR, or Kitchen Dick Road in Sequim, WA.

For a while you had to have “Community” in your name, but that appears to be a fading fashion.  Now it seems to be hip and fabulous to give your church a more exotic moniker: there are a couple of Mars Hills (think Paul in Athens,) an Imago Dei in Portland,  and there is even a “God’s Party” In Culver City, CA.  

You suddenly become very conscious of shaded meanings and possible problems as you start thinking of a name.

Hello world!

Hello world!   

I am the husband of a pastor who is planting a new church in the city of Santa Clarita, California.  You will probably often hear me use the term “we” when I should probably use “her” or “me” or “I.”   I will try to be as accurate as I can, and I am confident that unless you are unusually or purposefully obtuse, you will understand what I mean in the context.

My wife’s name is Tess Cox.  She is a Master of Divinity graduate of Fuller Seminary in Pasadena, California.  We have been married for 27 years as of this writing and have endured, survived and thrived.    I wake up every morning completely delighted, amused, amazed, shocked and thrilled that we are locked into this “until death do us part” agreement.   Steel DOES sharpen steel.   If sparks ensue….then so much the better!  I love her dearly, even when we don’t agree or I get pissed off.  I am humbled and in awe of her spiritual capacity, her depth of love for Jesus, her love for humanity, and her pastor’s heart.

We recently spent 4 days in Littleton, Colorado at an assessment process run by the Evangelical Covenant Church designed to probe and examine the nooks and cranny of our lives, psyches, personalities, spiritual processes (and a zillion other things I missed) in order to find out whether the Evangelical Covenant Church (ECC) and ourselves were a good fit.  After a whole bunch of thought and prayer we all agreed to move forward.

Our next steps are to finishing forming our core team/launch team, discuss and form our vision and core values and begin to look forward to actually launching a new church for Jesus Christ in the  Santa Clarita Valley sometime on 2009.

As I have looked at many, many websites, read 4 billion blogs, lurked on another trillion web forums,  read magazines, papers, and books….I see very little written from the pastor’s husband’s point of view.   So, for better or worse, here we go…stay tuned!

Core values vs. marketing

The launch team will meet tomorrow for the first time to do some shaping of this new community.  We want to talk about our mission statement/vision and core values, start thinking about a church name, etc.

It’s weird because of my business background this feels a bit like branding and marketing, which I suppose it is when I stop to think about it.   I have always drawn a fairly bright line between my business and church worlds, now I find them converging.  Without being cheesy or manipulative (both of which I am good at) we will need to be able to convey in a simple and meaningful way what we stand for as a church.

 This should be interesting