Medici

MEDICI

I’m not sure where I read it.  I think it might have been THE MEDICI EFFECT.  The theme was innovation and what I found fascinating was that the most creative centers were city sections where the city blocks were not long and had a mixture of business tenants.  By mixture what they meant was that some were in little, tiny offices and some were in big, giant ones; some were established and had been there for several years and others were new and had been there only several months.  Some did high end business and some did low end.  Some did art.  Some, food.  Some, computers. 

Because of the mix and layout, people walked.  The people who walked were different – wearing suits, wearing t-shirts, business comfortable, business hungry, and so on.  They passed each other’s stores.  They stood at the traffic lights together.  They chatted together at the hot-dog vendor. 

With long blocks people didn’t walk.  When the tenants were all big law firms they just wore suits and nobody went to the hot-dog vendor.  When the tenants were all start-ups in storefronts there wasn’t really much cash floating around.  What the mix and layout did was bring new and old, lean and fat, this outlook and that expertise, this need and that asset all together. 

How could churches get this cross pollination going?  If most of the members have belonged for three years or more, there's not much pollination.  If most of the leadership is what it was five years ago, there's not much pollination.  But diagnosing "not much pollination" or prescribing "pollination" is not as easy as saying how it happens.  How can it happen in churches?  Let's talk.

The Way We Do It Here

I grew up in a military family and one of the features of that life is moving.  We moved every couple of years.  What's behind moving personnel?  Is it just filling vacancies as when someone has retired or been promoted?  Yes, that's some of it.  But some of it has to do with keeping things fresh. 

No doubt there is a lot of positive power associated with people being in place for a long period of time.  They know who's who and what's what.  Call so and so if you want this done.  The thing-a-ma-bob is under the copy machine.  The reason we don't have one of those is that the hurricane twenty years ago knocked it down. 

That same positive can be also restricting.  "We've always done it that way" may have been fine for yesteryear and for all of us.  But what if it isn't for today and the people we need to gain for tomorrow?  What if there is new wine needed and all there are are old wineskins?  It's a pain to move house but it is good for throwing out stuff you don't need anymore that you would have held on to if you weren't moving. 

Sometimes I think the Methodists have it right to move pastors every five or six years.  It keeps a congregation from getting too in a rut.  Upsetting?  Yes.  Helpful?  Perhaps. 

And if you change the pastor but the session and staff stays the same throughout the pastoral changes? 

I don't know where I am going with all this except perhaps to say that we may need an earthquake to rearrange things and sometimes they come in nature or by accident.  How could we get the benefits of restructure by design? 

Most, Fastest, Cheapest

In Made to Stick by Chip and Dan Heath the true story is told of a Brazilian railroad that GP Investments Ltd. bought from the government in 1995.  It was delapidated and losing cash.  Enter the picture Alexander Behring.  There were too many requests to fix things like bridges and no money to work with.  So he instituted four rules to guide them. 

a.  only invest in that which would make them money quick
b.  the best solution was the cheapest one up front even if it cost more in the long run
c.  faster fixes are better
d.  recycle old rather than buy new whenever possible. 

Pretty soon they had some money.  Pretty soon they could fix more with that money.  Pretty soon they could do more and got even more money. 

Some churches, and Cocoa is one, needs to think

a.  only do what makes new Cocoa fans (attenders, members, belongers, fans)
b.  do what makes the most fans
c.  do what can be started the quickest
d.  do what is the cheapest

Does it make fans?  Answer:  No.  Then don't do it.  Find something that does.  If it does, choose the one that does it the most, fastest, and cheapest. 

Brings a whole new world of thought to church discipline, doesn't it? 

Feels Hard But ...

This feels hard to post but I'll put it out there.

Losing to Gain. 

We’re at the time of year when people are trying to lose the holiday pounds they put on.  Oddly enough, with our bodies less weight generally is more health.  Because we are Christians (translated too many times nice rather than truthful or courageous) in churches we assume that losing someone could never mean better health.  But that’s not true.  Many an organization has had a low skill and low attitude person drag down the whole staff and adversely effect sales.  Tougher is the high skill and low attitude person.  He or she may bring in lots of sales but create a lot of yuck among good people in the ranks.  (Sometimes the ranks can be filled with complainers but let’s, for this example, say that this is not that way.)  The boss of that company keeps the employee on but the morale goes down.  While that difficult employee may have good numbers, the net output of the whole team eventually goes down.  So if rehabilitation of the difficult employee doesn’t work, losing him or her is gaining.  And that can be true in a church as well. 

Unfortunately, what mostly happens in churches is that the good people leave because the bads one won’t or don’t.  I’m not talking about employees but members too.  They just continue to rub and rub and rub people the wrong way.  Nobody says, “Knock it off or move along.”  If you are a steward of the whole, letting one hurt the whole or the whole’s potential is serious.   It isn’t very loving. 

It isn’t very loving is what we say that puts us in the place of continuing to tolerate off-putting behavior.  But continuing to deal with it isn’t very good for the person doing it or for the rest of the church. 

Some of our problem in this matter is that we know what egregious, criminal behavior is and we won’t abide that.  But when someone is just glib and glares while telling someone to get out of their pew, that’s just being ornery.  We know we should eject criminal behavior but we are not sure if we should ornery behavior. 

Listen to Those NOT Here

Let’s ask our people what they want.  Session's hear and say this all the time.  This is very important.  However, consider this.  What if as a part of McDonalds you went into McDonalds and asked all 20 patrons there if they liked McDonalds?  They’d say yes.  So you’d keep serving Big Macs and all.  But what if you were a part of McDonalds and went into Burger King?  At Burger King ask, “Do you like Big Macs?”  Maybe you’d get the answer, “No and that’s why we’re at Burger King!”  Then you look around and see there are twice as many patrons here as at your McDonalds.

Go back to your McDonalds and say, “Let’s make something like a Whopper.  We’ll charbroil it and make it wide.  We can call it McOpper.”   Five of your patrons say, Ok.  Five say, “Maybe.”  And five say very loudly, “NO and if you do, we’ll leave.”  So you don’t.  You still have 20 patrons. 

What if you had said, not to be mean, but because you have a responsibility to the stock holders to sell as many burgers as possible, to the five loud “no” people, “Bye.”  Then you did your McOpper.  Three weeks later you counted patrons.  There were 35. 

Now think about this – you lost five and got fifteen.  Net gain – 10.  You could have kept the five happy and made the stockholders sad.  You could have kept the five and turned your back on the fifteen.  That would have been easier because you would have avoided conflict or saying goodbye.  But you’d be static and have, whatever it is, grumpies or fearfuls or naysayers or??? 

Leadership may not be about saving everyone you already have but saving the most that there are. 

YOU DON'T GET WHAT YOU EXPECT

We have had some really great worship times at Cocoa lately.  Yesterday there were fourteen children for the Children's Message and, once again, Sarah and Heidi were outstanding.  I hate that the 12 Days of Christmastide are over and we will take down all the gorgeous decorations.  But that will indeed help us to enjoy them fully next year. 

So you know the adage that you don't get what you expect but what you inspect.  The word for churches, and especially sessions, in this is DON'T RECEIVE REPORTS from your committees or staff.  Rather SAY WHAT YOU WANT REPORTED.  Sessions should say what measurable results they want to see for the church (and this is really tough work that often gets avoided by getting absorbed with daily maintenance details -- hugging the trees instead of climbing the ladder to look at the forest).  For example, you can have an evangelism committee and they give a report to the session once a quarter that says something like, "We put an ad in the newspaper for $35/week."  But if you have said that the most effective, cheapest, fastest way to get more people to come to church is to increase the number of times each member invites someone, then that is what you ask to have reported.  "Please, Evangelism Committee, report to us the average number of times each member is inviting someone to church."   Or, more simply, report to us if the average number of invites per member is up, down, or the same.

Sessions need to say what they want and know why.  Then they need to ask for reporting on that.  If they do not, they have delegated and abdicated at the same time. 

Great Day Yesterday

Wow.  What a great day we had yesterday!  The music was outstanding.  The instruments shined.  The house looked beautiful.  The sanctuary was full.  Thank you to all who made it so special.