On Monday the final report was presented to the board.  Although programs are a staff responsibility at CCCC, the board is always responsible for due diligence under any governance model and program evaluations are a good way to show they are doing their due diligence.  They help assure the board that our programs are effective and efficient and that our mission is actually being fulfilled through our programs.  If an evaluation cannot show a program is effective and efficient and moving the mission forward, then it should be re-designed or scrapped.

The leadership team has also reviewed the final report and is beginning the process of revamping the conference.  I don’t expect significant changes for the upcoming September conference, but I do expect several significant changes for the next conference.

You can download the final report, Conference Evaluation Report – Public, if you wish to see the extent of the work.  I think it reflects a fairly comprehensive program review.  Certain parts we have labelled ‘confidential’ either because they refer to information from outside sources that we are not at liberty to make public, or they refer to new initiatives that it is simply premature to make public.

This brings the program evaluation series of posts to an end.  My hope is that you will select a program, any program, and try it out.  Let me know how you do!

CCCC is in the midst of a major strategic review.  If you’d like to interact with us as the review progresses, please visit the Strategic Review Engagement website.  I want to open source the strategic review by having as many non-board, non-staff people engage with us as possible.  In this blog, I am writing about how to do a strategic review.  On the engagement website, I am posting in real-time about how we did it at CCCC as a way of helping you see how to apply these suggestions.  That website also has the results of our strategic review, and I am most interested in any comments you would like to make about them.

Strategic Statements

Here are a few considerations for developing the three major strategic statements I’ve previously described (values, mission, vision) and some suggestions for how you can discern them in a God-honouring way that is faithful to your Christian identity.  Our draft strategic statements are available on the Strategic Review Engagement website.

Values

Values should be assessed on two levels.  First there are the biblical values that should be present in every Christian ministry and then there are the other values held by the people called to serve together in one particular ministry.

As an example of biblical values that might apply to your ministry, in The Church At Work I developed four biblical values related to relationships between ministries (the book’s subject):

• Love – In John 13:34-35 Jesus commanded his followers to love one another and Paul affirms it in Romans 12:10;
• Order – From Genesis to Revelation, we see that God is a God of order, not confusion.  Paul’s instruction in 1 Corinthians 14:40 and 12:16 is that “Everything should be done in a fitting and orderly way….Live in harmony with one another;”
• Unity – Our God is one, and he is Lord of all.  Christ is not divided and neither should his church be divided (Ephesians 4:4-6 and 1 Corinthians 1:13); and
• Voluntary mutual submission – We see voluntary mutual submission modeled in the life of Jesus (who made himself a servant to his own followers) and made explicit by Paul (John 13:5-10 and Ephesians 5:21).

These values suggest a strategy of collaboration, consultation, and coordination with other ministries.  Your Bible study could lead to a different set of values that are significant to your ministry.  All biblical values apply to your ministry, but some are especially significant to your ministry’s work and should become your organizational values.  Whatever you do, don’t try to make every value an organizational value or you’ll just have a list of platitudes.  Every ministry is expected to be honest, so unless lack of honesty has been a problem for your ministry, don’t include it.

Values can also be developed by asking people associated with your ministry (past and present) what they think the corporate values are.  You might ask staff what would cause them to raise or lower their pride in being associated with your ministry as a way of discovering the ministry’s key values.  Here’s how I’ve asked about our CCCC values in the current survey:

We believe that before God has called CCCC to do something, he has called us first to be a Christian ministry. How we do our work is arguably more important in God’s eyes than the actual work we do. So before we get to God’s purpose for CCCC, we’re going to explore the Christian values that we live by.  As an example, I believe that we must demonstrate just as much care for the smallest ministry as we do for the largest.  Jesus paid attention to everyone, and so must we.

This is one question, but I will ask it several different ways to help you think about values from different angles:

- What values or aspects of CCCC would you NOT be willing to sacrifice for the sake of our mission and identity?

- What would you not give up regardless of what changes in society?

- What would you not give up even if we were penalized for holding those values, or were put at a disadvantage because of them?

- Which corporate values would you keep even if they produced no tangible benefit for CCCC?

 Here’s how we developed our values for CCCC in the current strategic review.

God’s Call

The starting place for discerning God’s purpose for your ministry is to ask how people came to be associated with your ministry, since God calls people, not organizations.  Ask them how your ministry fits their own personal call to ministry and their answers will provide clues to God’s intentions for the ministry.  This information provides insight and context as you develop the strategic statements.

But be careful how you ask about a personal call because not everyone has had that experience.  You don’t want them to feel devalued or second-class.   They are faithfully serving the Lord as much as someone who has experienced a specific call. Here’s how I asked it in the survey given to staff, directors and corporate members:

For most people, their association with CCCC began because they felt they had gifts to contribute to a Christian ministry that they cared about.  Some may have felt that their association fit well with a pre-existing call of God on their lives, or a call that was discerned when they discovered CCCC.  If you have a story to tell related to a sense of personal call to the ministry of CCCC, please share it.

I asked this question of the four senior leaders: myself (CEO since 2003), my predecessor Frank Luellau (the first employee and executive director from 1983 - 2003), Ken Dick, board chair from 1978 – 1985 (when it was mostly a working board), and our founder Ian Stanley (board chair 1972 – 1978).  I also asked all current staff, board and corporate members, and as many former board members as I could locate.

Here’s how we developed our  Statement of Call.

Mission

Which came first, the chicken or the egg?  Vision or mission?  Normally we expect to start with a goal (the vision) and then develop the mission that is the means of achieving the goal.  But when God calls people in the Bible, he calls them either to do a task (Paul to proclaim Christ to the gentiles – Acts 9:15) or to fulfill a role (eg. Jeremiah as a prophet Jer 1:5).  I can’t think of anyone called to fulfill a vision.

In practice, developing your mission and vision statements will likely be an iterative process.  You’ll start with mission and from that develop a vision for the future that will result.  But doing that future thinking will likely help you refine your mission.  Don’t get hung up on the order – just get it done!

I asked the mission question this way in our survey:

Here we get to the heart of what we are to do. To fulfill God’s vision and purpose for CCCC, what is our specific mission?  The following questions (from What to Ask the Person in the Mirror) will help us discern our mission:

- Why do you work or volunteer with CCCC? When you could invest your time elsewhere, why do you invest it here? What do you love about CCCC?

- What would you like to tell your grandchildren or extended family about why you served at CCCC for such a long period of your life?

- What would you like CCCC to look like in ten years? What would you hope to say that it accomplished?

- What are the distinctive competencies of CCCC? What would the world lose if it did not exist?

- Do you think God had any specific intentions for how we would operate, or any conditions that he has set as boundaries? If so, please let us know what you think they are.

- We would like to know what your hopes and dreams are for the future of CCCC.  What are your aspirations for CCCC? What hopes and dreams do you have for it?

Here’s how we developed the draft mission statement for CCCC.

Vision

A vision statement always propels us towards the ideal.  It does not settle for anything less than the way it should be, in terms of our mission.  It should be aspirational, evocative and highly emotional.  Upon reading it, people should be inspired to join your cause (or at least say “That’s a great mission!”).

The vision needs to align both with whatever Scripture says that relates to your mission and vision, and also to your core values.  It needs to align with the activity of the Holy Spirit in this world.

In our survey, we asked about vision this way:

We believe that the Lord led Ian Stanley and his six friends to found CCCC for God’s own purposes. That means that we exist as part of the Christian ministry community in Canada and that there is some particular way the Lord intends us to help the church fulfill its mission.

Given that we are a support to frontline ministries, can you describe the difference that you think God created us to make?  Another way to think about this is, What is God’s vision for the state of Christian ministries in Canada that we will help him achieve?

What are you seeing that God is up to that affects CCCC?  What shifts or trends do you see in Christian ministry that might affect our strategy?

Again, you can read about how we developed our vision statement.

Written in stone?

While your strategic statements should serve you well for many years at a time, your ministry is a like a living organism that responds to the continuing work and leadership of the Holy Spirit.  Over time, aspects of your mission may be accomplished, so you move on to something else.  Also over time, your staff and board gain more insight into the possibilities for what might be, and the vision could become more detailed or more expansive.  A new or revised vision could cause a review of the mission, and the mission might be redefined, tightened up, or expanded to better fit the vision.

So don’t change your strategic statements every year, but do be willing to change them as circumstances warrant.  Next I’ll get into some other secondary matters related to your strategic statements, such as your Value Proposition and the Key Success Indicators.

“People lack trust in leaders because of the poor character demonstrated by so many leaders. My interviews with 6,000 Christian leaders show that one of the greatest struggles they have is demonstrating godly wisdom. The issue is how worldly wisdom aligns with godly wisdom and how to discern the difference.”

I quickly wrote the quote down because it is exactly the reason why I write this blog.  My purpose is to help Christians who are leaders become more authentically Christian in their leadership practices.  I don’t think it is that hard to figure out a Christian approach to leadership, but it does take time to reflect on your faith and your work and how they intersect.  That’s why I call this blog Leadership Reflections.  By sharing my own reflections, I hope to help you with yours.

Worldly Wisdom

Worldly wisdom is developed from a human perspective without any reference to God or his ways.  It is often positioned as the opposite of godly wisdom, as if the two were diametrically opposed to each other.  In this paradigm, worldly is bad and godly is good.  But it is not as simple as that:

• If we believe that God created our universe with certain rules for how it works, then we can study it and learn about it.
• And if God gave us the ability to think, to discover and to create new knowledge, then we should do so.

It is inevitable then, that quite apart from God’s revelation humans will work out some knowledge and wisdom about how things work, or the way things are, that is right and aligns with God’s design or his ways.  Don’t be surprised when this happens because it is simply the result of the orderly ways of God.

But sometimes we get it wrong and develop ideas that are not in alignment with God’s ways.  This happens because our values are not in alignment with God’s or we have forgotten to leave room for God.  Most often it is just a case of someone who doesn’t know God and doesn’t know any better, but sometimes a person develops something with evil intent such as when a con artist develops a con game based on understanding our (fallen) human nature.

Worldly wisdom, therefore, is not like godly wisdom.  Godly wisdom is always 100% right.  Worldly wisdom has a range, from downright ungodly to wisdom that unintentionally aligns with God’s ways.  For example, people with no awareness of God can still do good deeds because they believe it is the right thing to do.

The issue isn’t that worldly wisdom is the opposite of godly wisdom, but that even at its very best it is incomplete without godly wisdom.  On a continuum from foolishness/ignorance to godly wisdom, worldly wisdom can be anywhere from 100% wrong to being 100% right (about the topic at hand), except for its source.  If worldly wisdom meets godly standards, then feel free to use it.

Godly or worldly? Discerning the difference

So when it comes to Christian leadership, there is much worldly wisdom we can draw upon to understand group dynamics, organizational theory, governance, motivation, planning and so forth.  There are many very good secular writers whose models and advice are just fine for Christian ministries.  But we must be careful to discern where worldly leadership wisdom is deficient and falls too far short of godly wisdom to be able to use with integrity.  And that is why a Christian leader needs to take time to reflect on his or her leadership practices.

How to distinguish the difference?  How to tell if a secular leadership technique is appropriate for a Christian to use?  Here’s some advice from a great little book:

“From a Christian point of view, it is only when the direction and the method are in line with God’s purposes, character, and ways of operating that godly leadership takes place.”
(Reviewing Leadership by Robert Banks and Bernice Ledbetter)

That is how you tell.  Ask the question, Does this align with God’s purposes, character and ways of operating?  This is why I say it is helpful if at least one of your ministry’s senior leaders has formal theological education.  It is not good enough to just find a verse here or there to justify something.  In this context, verses are little thoughts, and you need BIG thoughts.  You need to know not just the verses, but taken as a whole, what does Scripture say about God and his ways?  What’s the big theological picture?  You also need a vibrant personal relationship with God in which you submit to and then experience his leadership.  You will get to know pretty quickly how to assess opportunities or methods for suitability.

Here are some illustrations that may help:

• In a commissioned sales environment, sales managers are trained to motivate their staff by appealing to their self-interest and greed.  They have them develop vision boards – pictures of all the good things in life they want to have or experience.  Looking at these every day motivates them to sell more.  Since when would God have us motivate people by appealing to their greed or self-interest?  What relationship does this build between the salesperson and the customer?  Instead of truly helping customers, the salesperson has objectified them into a means to an end, an end in the best interest of the salesperson, not the client!  Does the technique work?  I guess so.   Is it godly?  No.  This style of management cannot be introduced into a Christian workplace.
• Traditional strategic planning is based on analyzing the past to predict the future.  To ensure the plan is achieved, staff are evaluated based on achieving goals that support the plan.  Where does this leave room for God to do something new?  When God told Paul to go to Europe, Paul went.  He didn’t say, “I’ll fit do it on to my next mission trip” or even worse, “I’ll have to work it into my next 5 year plan.”  The Holy Spirit blows where he will, and we have to stay nimble and flexible to respond quickly to his leading.  Traditional strategic plan also relies heavily on setting your strategy based on distinguishing yourself from a competitor, but God wants you focused on what he has called you to do.  In traditional strategic planning, your strategic options are limited by your SWOT analysis.  Since when has God been restrained by your weakness?  I’ve written more about this in Strategic Planning for Christian ministries.  Strategic planning can be done, but be careful to design the process to include God!

So when I am confronted with a new leadership technique, I look for the aspects of it that need to be tested against God’s purposes, character or ways of being by asking:

1. What is this advice or method based upon?  What assumptions does it make?  Why does it ‘work’?
2. How would this affect the way I relate to another person or group?
3. Why does this appeal to me?  What emotion or motivation makes this solution desirable?  Does the appeal call upon something in me that runs counter to the fruit of the Spirit?
4. How does it maintain or contribute to my status as “a holy vessel, consecrated to God” and to our ministry’s representation of what life in the kingdom of God looks like?

Then compare your answers to what you know of God. Be wise.  Be discerning.  Take time to reflect.

The Strategic Statements

Every organization has a core ideology (its vision, mission and values) that is the underpinning for everything that it does.  This ideology is the driving force that inspires and propels the organization forward.  Vision explains why the organization exists (what it wants to accomplish), mission is its overarching strategy for accomplishing the vision, and values are the rules it lives by.

A hypothetical example will show the difference between vision and mission.  Two ministries might have the same vision: Local churches thriving under excellent leadership, but have very different missions because they have different strategies to grow excellent leadership.  One mission might to be provide excellent seminary training while the other ministry might be to provide coaching services or to publish church leadership books.

Three other items should be part of the strategic statement package:  the Tagline, the Value Proposition and the Key Success Indicators.

The tagline is a three to five word phrase that clearly positions your ministry for your audience.  It is what you want to be known for and evokes the first thought or feeling you want people to have when they hear your ministry’s name.

The value proposition:

• defines what you believe your ministry’s contribution to the church’s mission is, and is one of the justifications for your ministry’s existence as a separate entity,
• can be a key component of your fundraising, marketing and recruiting literature, and
• provides focus for strategy development.

The value proposition for a local church might answer the question, “With so many churches in your town, why should there be another one?”  For an independent agency, it could answer the question, “Why not merge with another ministry and save the duplicated overhead costs?”  Perhaps your methodology is different, or you have a denominational distinctive in theology or culture you want to maintain.  Perhaps it is the mix of what you do that is valuable.

People writing about strategy and marketing use the term ‘unique value proposition,’ but I’m not keen on using unique in a ministry environment where every church has the same mission and every other ministry is working on some part of that same mission.  I do, however, think you should be very clear about your ministry’s contribution to the church’s mission.  What makes you stand out from the crowd?

The value proposition needs to be defined before the programs are designed because it should have a key influence in designing your strategic initiatives and programs.

The success indicators:

• provide evidence that your ministry is moving forward with its mission,
• build a compelling case for support for your fundraising program, and
• ensure board and staff stay focused on mission as the priority, and not programs.  (It’s easy to get so wrapped up in programs that the mission they serve becomes just an after-thought.)

The success indicators need to be defined early in the strategic review because they will be used later to assess the effectiveness of your current strategies and programs.  In this regard, be especially careful that success indicators are set based on the strategic statements alone, because only the strategic statements define organizational success. 

You must fight the tendency to define success in terms of your programs. 

Some people have pet strategies and programs they want to ensure will survive the strategic review, and if you give them the opportunity they will craft these statements accordingly!  That would be the tail wagging the dog!  Whether or not a program is successful can only be determined in light of what constitutes organizational success.  (A program could be highly successful on its own and yet not contribute to an organization’s mission success.)

A Christian perspective

The source of a Christian ministry’s core ideology is the revelation of God through Scripture and the guidance of the Holy Spirit.

The Bible provides the context for all Christian ministry, so you must know it very well.  At least a few senior leaders on your team should have some formal theological education.  Scripture lays out the ideal future that God is leading us towards, the values he wants us to have, and the character traits that should guide us in all our work and relationships.

Some aspects of the ideal kingdom life may have more relevance to your mission than others, just as some values and traits may be more central to your mission than others.  So feel free to highlight those and make them prominent in the life and work of your ministry.  For example, God’s love for all humanity, his concern for the poor, or what he views as proper worship could each have greater significance in a ministry devoted to one of those issues.  Perhaps you have been quite isolationist as a ministry and you want to take special care to be more relational in the future.  Highlight that.

As you go through your strategic planning process, keep asking, “What in Scripture relates to this?  What do we know about God and his work that should inform how we think about this?”  These questions need to permeate every aspect of the strategy review process.

You must pay close attention to the Holy Spirit because he is the one who:

• calls us to a particular part of the mission,
• gives us a vision for what we can accomplish through our part of the mission, and
• guides us as we make decisions so that we can work faithfully as God’s agents.

It is critical that you are willing to be led by the Spirit, and are not just bringing your plans to God for his blessing.  If you don’t give the Spirit time to lead you, all you have is what the human mind can conceive.  I learned years ago that my mind is no match for God’s.  Give God space by practising the Christian disciplines of silence and solitude.  A great book to help you do this is Space for God.

Strategy making in the 4th Dimension

God has a specific purpose for your ministry, and to discern what it is I suggest that you consult with the directors and staff whom God has called to serve in your ministry, not just in the present, but in the past as well.  Churches should also consult with their members.

Why should you pay any attention to people who are no longer active in your ministry?  Because God spoke to them, and their voices must be heard.  I love this quote from G.K. Chesterton in which he talks of a democracy that crosses time and death:

Tradition may be defined as an extension of the [voting] franchise. Tradition means giving votes to the most obscure of all classes, our ancestors. It is the democracy of the dead. Tradition refuses to submit to the small and arrogant oligarchy of those who merely happen to be walking about. All democrats object to men being disqualified by the accident of birth; tradition objects to their being disqualified by the accident of death. Democracy tells us not to neglect a good man’s opinion, even if he is our groom; tradition asks us not to neglect a good man’s opinion, even if he is our father. I, at any rate, cannot separate the two ideas of democracy and tradition; it seems evident to me that they are the same idea. We will have the dead at our councils.

While the present board and staff can make strategic changes, they are not free to do so without due respect to the past. Are the old strategies outdated? Has the mission been accomplished? Are there new aspects to the mission that didn’t exist before? By all means, make the necessary changes, but don’t just arbitrarily think that you know better than your predecessors. That would be chronological arrogance!

To fully understand God’s purpose for your ministry today, do a chronological review of the strategic statements to see if there is a trajectory that ties them together. Is there an overarching common vision? Talk with the people who led the ministry over the years (if they are still available to you) or read their plans and other documents.

If there is a trajectory, look carefully at what changed between the versions and look for underlying trends. Perhaps there is movement from crisis intervention (shelters, food banks, etc.) to advocacy for systemic change to prevent poverty in the first place. Maybe your congregation is expanding its view of what church is all about. Most ministries will show some development over the years.  Try extending the trajectory forward to see where your ministry is headed.  Is this where you want to be?

Special attention must be given to the people whom God has placed in senior leadership because they acted in the capacity of stewards of the ministry and its mission, and presumably were placed in the senior leadership role by God for a reason. Each may have contributed to a different understanding of the mission while also adhering to the core ideology.  At this point, keep your focus on the the strategic statements and leave their strategies and programs, which are secondary and tertiary matters, for later.

In part two of this post I will give you specific practices and questions to help you discern your strategic statements.

Watch a guy on a unicycle catch five flying flaming chickens at a time!  And remember, each one ends up delivered to a customer for dinner.

If flying chickens aren’t your thing, perhaps flying fish at Pike Place Market in Seattle are. When someone buys a fish, the employees first have fun throwing it around to each other. It’s for real and is what makes this fish stall fabulously successful.

What does this have to do with Christian leadership?  Well, I’m having fun sharing these, and more to the point I’m sure the employees in the restaurant and market are having fun too!

We in Christian ministry are in the serious business of introducing people to a loving relationship with their Creator and in bringing our Creator’s love and care to all parts of the Earth.  But must we be only serious in doing our work?  Is there any room for fun?  In Fun Works, Leslie Yerkes makes the claim that fun creates energy, is a stress reliever, builds relationships, stimulates creativity and improves performance.   But you can’t ‘do’ fun.  You can’t institutionalize it, program it or tell people to have it!  Leaders can support a fun environment, but they can’t make it happen.  Yerkes says that having fun is a grassroots thing.  It is spontaneous.  It bubbles up.

Yerkes details eleven businesses that are very serious about getting hard, tangible results.  Employees are held accountable for performance.  Make no mistake, a fun work environment does not mean that serious results aren’t achieved.  No workplace will survive without results.  But each of the eleven workplaces has found ways to allow employees to incorporate fun into the workplace while maintaining professional standards of service.

I have no idea what fun might look like in your ministry or mine, because if you try to copy someone else’s fun it won’t be fun anymore.  So take a risk and as a leader, when you see fun happening in your office, encourage it as much as you can.  If it goes too far you can gently set some guidelines, but I think most people are quite aware of what is appropriate for the ministry and what is not.  It’s worth a try to see what develops!  I enjoy Pizza Tuesdays at CCCC and hearing laughter in the halls and wonder what else might develop.

Do you have a fun work environment?  Why not describe it here and how it developed?

Deciding what research needs to be done

Having:

1. selected the program we want to evaluate,
2. developed the program rationale (theory of change and logic model), and
3. completed the literature review,

we next reviewed every part of the program rationale (theory of change and logic model) looking for assumptions that we already know about and assumptions that come to light only as we think more deeply about the program.  The goal is to develop a list of questions we want to answer.  If we can answer those questions, we will know how well the program is working and how to improve it.  We also looked at the research questions that were developed at the start and thought about what questions we need to ask in order to answer the research questions.  Other ways we used to develop our questions included:

• Reading the literature review to find decision points where we’d like to know what our members think about the options.  In our case, the literature review did not spark any questions that had not already arisen from our analysis of the program rationale, but it did provide ideas for improvement.  Decision points include such things as length, plenary/workshop mix, use of technology, etc.
• We asked the senior team for their questions.
• We keep a statistical analysis of each conference and have extensive feedback forms for both the conference as a whole and all of its components.  We ran reports that showed that 25-30% of the participants each year are first-timers, but conference attendance is not growing at that rate, so we’d like to understand better how the decision is made whether or not to come again.  The feedback showed that our conference is considered by most to be the best run conference they attend.  There is only one question of logistics or conference administration to ask.
• Finally, overall responsibility for the conference rests with me, so I sat back, closed my eyes, and just thought about what I’d like to know more about.

Keep in mind that in any program evaluation you want to essentially answer two questions:

1. Were we effective?  You need to compare the actual output to the expected output to discover if you did what you wanted to do.  That’s effectiveness.  The theory of change helps you answer the effectiveness question: Did we do the right things?
2. Were we efficient? You need to compare the ratio of actual output to actual inputs and ask if you were good stewards of your resources.  That’s efficiency.  The logic model helps you answer the efficiency question: Did we do things right?

Specific Questions

We developed specific questions to guide the development of surveys and further research, sorted by category.

Assumed Problem and Assumed Causes questions

We wanted to know how people feel about conferences and the other means they use to stay current in their fields.  We wondered how people challenge and stimulate their own thinking.

Assumed Assets and Other Attendee Needs

These questions related to their habits, preferences and decisions about conference attendance.

Interventions

We wanted to probe what happens pre-conference, during the conference, and post-conference from the attendee’s perspective.  How does an event fit within a person’s larger context?

Short Term Outcomes

Moving away from the conference itself, we wanted to know what people do with the material afterwards.

Long Term Outcomes

Stepping back from any particular conference, respondents to our surveys were asked about their employer’s overall assessment of the usefulness of attending conferences.

Inputs

There were some questions, not for surveys but for further research, that we asked to improve the use of our time, the locations we rent, and the handout materials.

Success criteria

If there are benchmarks or standards available for the program you are reviewing, you would determine what threshold must be crossed in order to consider your program a success.  It is very difficult to set a threshold once you know what the results are because biases will enter the equation!

Ministries might ask questions such as:

• What recidivism rate is acceptable?
• What is an acceptable percentage of new believers who are still attending church and being discipled a year later?
• What percentage of clients should have a job a year from now with at least three months of steady employment?
• What percentage of our congregation is involved in some form of Christian ministry, whether with our church or with another ministry?

In our case, I cannot find any benchmarks for success, so as part of the research we will attempt to create some benchmarks by asking other associations with voluntary attendance at their conferences about their results.  We will also ask ourselves: In light of the number of ministries that benefit from the conference compared to our resources that it consumes, is it good stewardship to continue running a conference?  This criteria is a bit fuzzy for evaluation purists, but it is good enough for me given that we are primarily looking for ways to improve the conference rather than make a continue/discontinue decision.

 Methodology

We then reviewed each question and decided two things:

1. Who should we ask this question of?
2. How should we ask it?

We decided we would find the answers in the following ways:

• Ask people who have attended the conference at least once since 2006 (includes members and non-members)
• Ask members who have not attended the conference since 2005 (the conference is designed for our members so we expect them to come; non-members are not our target for the conference)
• Ask speakers who have presented in three of the past six years
• Review possible venues at certain locations
• Analyze our database for attendance patterns
• Talk with other organizations that run conferences
• Based on the results of all the above inquiries, select a small group of people for one-on-one interviews to delve deeper to get more insight on any remaining questions.

While we chose to base the review on surveys for the most part, there are many research methodologies you could choose from:

• Verbal data: Conduct interviews either one-on-one or in groups (focus groups)
• Client surveys: expectations of services, use of services, satisfaction, rating of quality
• Outcomes surveys: behaviours, beliefs and conditions that have changed as a result of your service
• Observational data: Watch and see what happens
• Archival data: Check data collected from running the program, your own records, plans etc.

While benchmarks may be helpful, there are always so many differences between organizations or even divisions within the same organization – circumstances, conditions, history etc. – that the best comparison is really between your current results and your past results.  Is your performance improving?

You are now ready to go ahead and do the evaluation.

You can get The Church At Work through the CCCC store (as an e-book and in hard copy with shipping included in the price).  Login as a member to get the member discount.  The newest CCCC publication is designed to help Christian ministries work better together and present a better witness to the relational life of the kingdom of God.  It examines the most strained relationship, that between churches and independent Christian agencies, and provides both a theology for how they are related to each other and a practical set of principles for how to ensure they have good relations.

The research was based on:

• a theological forum I hosted on church structure,
• a large attitude survey of pastors and agency leaders and what they think of each other,
• a study of specific church-agency relationships in which both parties thought the relationship was great, and
• a demographic survey of 100 agency leaders to find out who they are and how they got to their positions.

The research and illustrations are 100% Canadian, although we know the research is equally applicable in the United States.  My new baby has practical ‘workbooks’ for churches and agencies to work through to examine themselves and help them be more responsible for their part of the relationship.  It also includes a helpful paper that John Stackhouse wrote for the theological forum and sample covenant agreements that some ministries use.

You’ll enjoy reading the stories of people just like you.  Some of the people you may know and others may be new to you, but their stories of successful ministry relationships will inspire you to think again about the possibilities that open up when you collaborate with other ministries.

Jerry White, International President Emeritus of The Navigators, wrote the foreword of this book and says in it:

“This is the most complete discussion on the topic that exists. It is an invaluable resource for pastors and Christian workers across the range of ministries in the broader Body of Christ. Dr. Pellowe not only delves into the scriptures and into history, but also gives practical guidelines for relating among the structures. Anyone who is concerned about advancing the Kingdom of God and who wants to see unity in the Body of Christ needs this study and its practical applications.”

I have no financial interest in the success of this book, so I will shamelessly plug it and say, if you are in ministry, “You need to read it!”

In a sermon I heard in Sunday School, Andy Stanley made the point that there is only one time in Scripture that it says Jesus was amazed, and it was the big faith of a Roman centurian of all people that amazed him!

When Jesus heard this, he was amazed and said to those following him, “Truly I tell you, I have not found anyone in Israel with such great faith.”
Matthew 8:10

A personal challenge

Stanley challenges us asking, “What would your life be like if you knew for sure there is a God who is all powerful, who knows you and has promised never to leave you nor forsake you?  What if you had perfect peace and no fears or anxiety about anything?”  What would we dare try for the sake of Christ?  What might we do that would demonstrate a faith that could amaze Jesus?

A ministry challenge

What would it look like if your ministry assumed no limitations that God couldn’t easily overcome?  What if we decided to trust God for the things that keep us from daring to do all that we can dream of?  If we believed God could provide the “if onlys” that we are wishing for?  Better yet, what if we prayed for them?  What if the exploits of our ministries demonstrated a faith that would amaze Jesus just like the centurion’s did?  What if…?

A planning challenge

What if our strategic plans required divine rather than human capacity?  What if our plans were so big, so bold, so far-reaching that we’d have to assign responsibility for executing parts of them to the Lord?

If we can complete the plan ourselves, I’m sure God will allow us to do it ourselves.  But maybe he wants us to plan something so stupendous and awe-inspiring that it gives him a unique role to play.  The Bible is full of stories of how God worked through individuals to accomplish great things.  What if we inserted into our plans something that only God could do?  That means, of course, that by definition our plans will be unrealistic.  Would a staff be bold enough to recommend such a plan?  Would a board be daring enough to approve such a plan?  Just wondering!!

Are we:

• too cautious?
• too realistic?
• too self-reliant?

I admit that as I read these paragraphs, they scare me!  But I think they are also a healthy challenge to think about with the board and staff.

Living by faith

If we try to increase the faith component of our plans, we face the question of whether we should act first and depend on God to provide subsequently or let God act first and be ready to do what he has provided for.

In Acts 1, Jesus tells his followers not to do anything yet, but wait in Jerusalem until the Father sends his promised gift.

In Exodus 14, God told Moses to take the people of Israel to a specific place where they could be easily cornered by the Egyptians.  He basically told Moses to deliberately lead them into a trap!  Moses obeyed God and only then did the Lord part the waters and provide a way of escape.

I think there are some different approaches to the topic and each of them has a biblical basis.  I believe that which one we use will depend on how the board and staff together discern God’s will in a specific matter.

Pray and act with human wisdom

It might seem strange to start with human wisdom, but Scripture takes it seriously and so should we.  The book of Proverbs consists of the best of ‘worldly wisdom’ in that it sets out “the way things are” or “the way things work.”  God has given us great intellectual power to work out for ourselves some of the mystery behind God’s work, such as the hard and soft sciences.  Jesus commended the use of human wisdom in Luke 16:8.  French Arrington discusses the surprising position Jesus takes on human wisdom in his New Life Bible Commentary on Luke, saying:

…the sinful “people of this world” are favorably compared with the “people of the light.”  It is their resourcefulness and their dedication to the achievement of their intended goals that are held up as examples for emulation.  The implication is that the “people of the light,”  whose goal is infinitely more valuable, should be all the more resourceful and dedicated as they work toward their goal of a ‘treasure in heaven that will not be exhausted.”

Furthermore, Jesus’ advises in Luke 14:28 and 31: “Suppose one of you wants to build a tower. Won’t you first sit down and estimate the cost to see if you have enough money to complete it?…Or suppose a king is about to go to war against another king. Won’t he first sit down and consider whether he is able with ten thousand men to oppose the one coming against him with twenty thousand?”  It seems that Jesus believes that thinking ahead is just good common sense.  His point is, “Don’t become a disciple if you are not willing to go the whole way.”

Finally, Paul advises Timothy (1 Tim 5) to drink a little wine because of his stomach and many illnesses.  I’m sure Paul had already done the spiritual thing and prayed for his healing, but he also gave Timothy the best human wisdom he had to help him with his stomach problems.

My position is that, unless he has otherwise directed us, God expects us to use the best of human wisdom in leading our ministries.  Use your noggin!

Pray and wait for God to act

We can also think big, figure out what is humanly possible, pray for God to do the rest and then act when he has made it possible.  There is Scriptural support for this option.  Jesus’ instruction to wait for the gift of the Spirit is one example.  Paul raising the collection for the Jerusalem relief effort is another.  Paul committed to no specific amount, just that he would bring an offering.  The prayers of the saints for Peter in prison are yet another example.  They did not mount an attack on the prison to free him, but were waiting in prayer, and God acted and miraculously freed Peter.

This is also an approach recommended by Jesus: “Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you…If you, then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give good gifts to those who ask him!” Matthew 7:7, 11.  What Jesus is telling us is: ask, receive, proceed.

Pray and then act in anticipation of God’s action

This is the basis behind faith missions.  Sometimes we have to act first and then we will see God do something wonderful.

• Joshua had to march around Jericho seven times before he saw God bring down its walls.
• The disciples handed out the fish and bread not knowing what was going to happen, but God provided.
• Jesus had to go to the cross trusting that his Father would resurrect him.

Virtually all Christian ministries operate to some degree on faith because their revenue comes mostly from donations, and who knows what will come in next month?  They make long term commitments by hiring staff and acquiring property and trust that money will continue to come in.  But while some are very good at active fundraising, writing persuasive appeals and so forth, others will only do passive fundraising.  This group will pray but not tell anyone of their financial needs.  Hudson Taylor ran CIM this way, on the  assumption that “the Lord will provide.”  God has blessed this approach too.

Some advice

Any of the three strategies may be the appropriate one for you.  My comfort level is to operate the very best we can with the best knowledge we have (option 1) and to think big and wait for God to provide (option 2).

Which should you follow?  It all depends.  I think it comes down to group discernment.  I believe that God will lead the entire leadership team to one of the three options.  The board, the chief staff officer and the senior leadership team should all be in agreement about their position on faith and risk.  If one person feels the ministry should take on more risk with higher faith, then the whole group should enter into a discernment process to determine if they also feel the same.  This is what Paul did with his group.  He alone heard the call of God to go to Europe, but the whole team decided it was the right thing to do.  When Paul felt he had the answer to how to evangelise the gentiles, James and the apostles in Jerusalem discussed the issue and came to a collective decision.

If someone gave your ministry a million dollars, how would you use it?  If you don’t know, then maybe you aren’t ready to receive a million dollars!  If God said he would do anything you asked him to do to help with your ministry’s mission, what would you ask him to do?  If you don’t know, then maybe you aren’t ready to receive his miraculous help.  At the very least, have a list!!

Think BIG, pray HARD and follow the option that seems best to the team.  “It seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to us” (Acts 15:28) needs to be what you say when you announce your decisions.

What really happened in Fleming’s lab

Fleming's lab fills the tower bay. It is the middle level of the three vertical windows.

Wikipedia and other sites describe Fleming and his lab as untidy, messy, or cluttered, but if you visit the lab, which is set up exactly as it was in 1928, you will find out that what appears messy and cluttered is just another aspect of his experimental work.  (Sorry, no pictures are allowed inside the lab.)  The museum guide told me that when Fleming was done with an experiment (the experiment he intended to do), he always left samples of his experiment out for at least several days (as an experiment to find something unintended that he obviously wasn’t looking for).

Another practice was to combine things just to see what happens.  In 1921 he had a cold, and put some of his nasal mucous in a petri dish and saw that it dissolved the bacteria in the dish.  He discovered a natural human antiseptic, lysozyme, which would have guaranteed his place in history even if he had never discovered penicillin!

Practices such as these made it possible for Fleming to be surprised by the unexpected.  He was very intentional about creating opportunities for discoveries to be made.  If this made his lab untidy or cluttered, so be it.

Furthermore, it wasn’t an accident that he just happened to notice something unusual in a sample.  He always inspected the samples very carefully, and this time he noticed a clear spot on the slide where the bacteria that he was experimenting on should have been.  The organism had been killed by something on this one part of the slide, and the killer agent turned out to be a mould that he first called mould juice and (wisely) later called penicillin!

The real story is that the discovery of penicillin was not so accidental.  Fleming deliberately left the cultures out to allow time for something unexpected to happen.  He deliberately inspected the samples to see what, if anything, had developed.  He deliberately followed up an unexpected observation to find an explanation for it.  And he deliberately invested time to think about the implications of what he had discovered.  Anyone who does what Fleming did is likely to discover something sooner or later.

In summary, Fleming’s method was:

1. Create opportunity to be surprised
2. Be on the lookout for surprising things
3. Be curious about the surprises you find
4. Look for ways to take advantage of the surprises

My discovery using Fleming’s methods

Although I did not realize I was using Fleming’s methods at the time, I discovered the idea for this post following the same principles as Fleming.  It was no accident that I stumbled upon the lab that led to the story that inspired this post.  Here’s an example of Fleming’s method at work:

Create opportunity to be surprised

• I was on a layover in London while returning home from Zürich on the last leg of my round-the-world sabbatical trip.  I had not intended to visit the lab, but I had made the decision to make the most of my time on this once-in-a-lifetime trip by taking every opportunity to explore.  So when I had two extra hours available before I needed to leave for Heathrow airport, instead of killing time at the airport or the hotel I got out my GPS and looked to see what tourist attractions were nearby.  Fleming’s lab was the closest attraction and it was only a mile a way.  Using the GPS as my guide, I walked to St. Mary’s Hospital and found the museum.

Be on the lookout for surprising things

• As the guide told the story of Fleming’s discovery, he made it clear that Fleming had deliberately left the cultures out after he finished his experiments with them.  He said it was not a case of being messy, but that this was his usual practice.  That I found surprising.

Be curious about the surprises you find

• I had never heard this aspect of the story before, so I asked why he would do that.  That’s when I heard about his looking for the unexpected.  This was a surprising idea because I thought scientists always had some concept of what they were looking for, an hypothesis to prove or disprove.  Simply putting something ‘out there’ to see what happens is quite different from the scientific method I learned in high school.

Look for ways to take advantage of the surprises

• I was not expecting to find something to blog about in that two extra hours I had, but as I heard the true story behind the discovery of penicillin I realized I had accidentally discovered a great leadership practice just as Fleming accidently discovered penicillin and I should share it on this blog.

My ‘accidents’ at CCCC

When I arrived at CCCC in September 2003 I decided to provide leadership that was open to opportunity.  In fact, we would search it out.  I decided that we would be willing to shift priorities based on comparing new opportunities with our current action plan.  To make this happen, the board and staff were told our action plans were simply default plans that we would follow as long as nothing better came up.  Then staff performance review criteria were set based on exhibiting our team values rather than reaching pre-set goals.  That way we could be flexible and nimble.  Here are a few examples of how that has worked out:

• CCCC sponsors the Best Christian Workplace survey in Canada, and it all started because I just ‘happened’ to be attending a conference in the States where I saw the second annual presentation of awards for the American Best Christian Workplace survey.  But I was at the conference because I was looking to see what’s new and different, so I set the stage for opportunity.  I immediately connected what I saw with what I thought Canadian ministries needed because I was already on the alert for new ideas.  Within a couple of weeks, we had an agreement to do it in Canada.  I took action on an idea instead of just thinking, “That was interesting.”
• CCCC was a partner in the 35<35 program that recognized young Christian leaders because I just ‘happened’ to run into Carson Pue in a hotel hallway.  But I attend EFC’s Presidents Day each year because it is the best place for me to meet a lot of ministry leaders at one time when I have no responsibilities of my own to attend to.  I was open to some collaborative work and wanted to talk with as many people as I could about what they are doing.  When Carson Pue and I crossed paths, we chatted a bit and when he asked what was on my mind, I told him we wanted to do something to recognize and encourage young Christian leaders at our next conference.  Wouldn’t you know it, he was wanting to find some partners to promote young leaders too and he had the idea for the 35<35 recognition program.  That turned out to be a great success for both of us (and Bridgeway Foundation and Christian Week – our other partners in that program).
• Jerry White, International President Emeritus of The Navigators, is probably the highest ranked speaker we’ve ever had at our conference.  I ‘happened’ to have a personal connection with him that made me think of him as a speaker.  But I didn’t just ‘happen’ to meet him.  While writing my first doctoral research project in 2005 I was critiquing his 1983 book on my topic and I wondered if this author were still alive.  I tracked him down, and since then we’ve met a couple of times and had some phone calls, and he ended up not only speaking at the CCCC conference but also writing the foreword for my new book, The Church at Work.  Lots of good has come about because I didn’t just read and critique a book but took the additional step of contacting the author, not knowing at the time what was going to come of it.  I had no expectations at the beginning that anything would develop.  I just thought Jerry would be an interesting person to talk with and get to know.  But that created the environment in which other good things could develop.
• Our horizons at CCCC are rapidly expanding as other staff members are also creating intential opportunities for ‘accidental’ discoveries!

Creating intentional accidents at your ministry

How much do you leave out to see “what might happen”?  In what ways do you create opportunity to be surprised?  To find opportunity you did not know existed?  Do you have an intentional plan to find the unexpected?  Some things you could do are:

• Talk with people outside of your usual circles who might introduce a new idea from their sphere into your sphere.
• Investigate what beneficiaries or clients do outside of your programs that might affect your program design.
• Read a good book like The Eureka Effect, to stimulate your creativity.
• Encourage your team to experiment on their own and be willing to try a small-scale pilot project.
• Visit unrelated ministries doing a different part of the Christian mission and find out what’s new with them.
• Just tell everyone you meet what your ministry does.  The more people who know about you, the more you are likely to hear about opportunities.
• If you have field staff, pay close attention to what they are actually doing.  You’ll probably find a lot of good creativity on the front lines!
• And of course, pray hard that God would bring unexpected opportunities your way!

You can never know in advance, of course, what will be discovered by following a strategy of intentional accidental discoveries, but that’s the fun and amazing part of it!  All you know at the start is that discoveries will be more likely because you have put yourself in a place that is conducive to discovery.  You won’t believe what good things will happen once you set the ball in motion by stepping outside of your zone.  Just watch what develops!

I’m sure I’ve only scratched the surface of how to make accidental discoveries more likely.  Please add your own ideas by making a comment.

As you and I both know, there is no one single way to lead.  There is no single formulaic five step process to successful leadership.  There are all sorts of ways one can lead, and which way you choose may be highly dependent on circumstances, your nature, and a whole bunch of other factors.

My caveat

This blog is a series of reflections on how to provide Christian leadership.  I’ve made some strong statements and I know I say ‘should’ quite a lot.  That sounds pretty directive!  Since I write based on my experience, my circumstances, my personality and so on, I think my suggestions will work well for me, but will they for you?  You must decide that for yourself.  My goal is to get you thinking and provide you with some help along the way by sharing the very best information I can find or think of about Christian leadership.  I am sure my thoughts have widespread application (or I wouldn’t bother writing), but in the end they are just observations.  They are my contribution to Christian ministry written in response to the question I assume readers are asking: ”I wonder what a Christian leader who has time to think and write about leadership issues thinks about leading in a Christian way?”

Your caveat

You as a leader are in a similar position.  You have your opinions about issues facing your ministry’s leadership and as a leader you should be sharing them.  We lead from our convictions knowing that people want to have confidence in their leaders, but that means that we tend to lead with a high degree of certainty.  Let’s not be more certain about things than we have a right to be.  In many cases, there is more than one way to “skin the cat.”  (What an awful expression, but it expresses the thought perfectly.)  This is why it is best to lead with consensus decisions, or decisions that you make but which have been shaped by group discussion.

In closing

• Knowing that I could be wrong, or that there is more than one way to lead, is why I allow comments on this blog.  I want you to participate with me and my readers in a group discussion so we can all learn together.
• Knowing that you could be wrong or that there is more than one way to address whatever issues face you, is why you have a team to consult with and to help you lead.  Two heads are better than one and all that!

Leaders are not required to have all the answers, but to know how to develop a good answer and to make a decision.

Plans fail for lack of counsel,
   but with many advisers they succeed.
Proverbs 15:22