If Not Me, Who? If Not Now, When?

If not me, who?  If not now, when?  Pretty pointed questions.  Not that you couldn't say, "Not me, that guy Joe looks good."  Or not that you couldn't say, "Yes, me, but not until next year."  What I am thinking about, however, is, for example, inviting others to church.  There are some issues that are, in the old way of putting it, very important but not urgent.  And the urgent by its nature gets taken up while the important gets put off.  If we are not thinking carefully about all this, it isn't hard to say something that you know is important can be done by someone else and can be done tomorrow.  Of course, until there is no one else and there is no tomorrow.

I was thinking the other day about asking elders to say in the next session meeting who they were going to ask to come to church with them on Easter.  Something in me said, "That'd be putting them on the spot and you can't do that."  Then I thought, "Why?"  What makes that out of bounds?  Who created a value that would say sharing about who you are inviting to church would be putting someone on the spot?  If you were in Toastmasters to improve your speaking ability, someone would surely ask about what date you were signing up for to deliver your speech.  If you were in a church to improve your and others' relationship with God, and inviting them to church would improve your and others' relationship with God, someone would surely ask about when you were bringing whom.  Such invitations to share would help us from letting this important thing be done by someone else, some other day.

Hey, and I need someone to ask me, who are you bringing on Easter?  Hey, and I need someone to ask me, "If not you, who?"  "If not now, when?"

Coworking Space?

In my last blog I mentioned the innovation factor that happens when city blocks are diverse and short.  People, different kinds of people, end up walking and mixing.  Then there is through that interaction a combustion of ideas and partnerships.  And that’s why churches as they measure their health ought to consider as one of their factors their “mix” – especially new members and tenured members, young and old.

USA Today featured Atlanta amongst its articles this week.  Atlanta is becoming a high tech center.  One of the signs of that was how a Coworking space dedicated to high tech sold out even before it was finished. 

Coworking?  It is an open office and people bring in their desks plus computers.  There’s a common coffee pot and drinking fountain.  There’s a common kitchenette.  There’s whatever the “tenants” and the developers come up with that they want to have in common.  But it is space where people under a theme (like, in this case, tech) come together to do their own private work.  But they talk on the way in.  They meet each other and catch lunch together.  One ends up resourcing the other.

It could happen in a chat room or through Linked In.  But there’s something in the face-to-face and serendipity that I suspect can’t be duplicated virtually. 

The thought I had pop up as I read about Coworking Space was how churches could be leaner and brighter if they had coworking space.  In any community draw a radius of three miles and you will find five or ten churches most likely.  Imagine one office centrally located with shared copier, curriculum, coffee pot, secretarial pool, coop purchasing power, library, …. The list of cost saving and … here’s the point … cross fertilizing opportunities is big. 

I’m a Presbyterian and that’s somewhere in our idea of connectionalism.  Problem is we’re spread a pretty good distance and we’re all in the same camp.  Coworking in tighter geographical but broader denominational circles could be pretty exciting for Christ and his kingdom. 

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.