The Milestone 360 Can Transform Your Ministry

In the years leading up to its 50th anniversary milestone, CCCC reflected on its past, assessed its present state, and planned its desired future. Let’s call this analysis a Milestone 360. A comparison of CCCC in 2010 to what it is today reveals an organization reinvigorated with new life and creativity—it is refreshed with new programs, platforms, strategies, and an expanded vision for what it wants to achieve.

Our founder and his ministry friends accomplished their dreams of what they could do with the resources they had. My predecessor did the same. And, after focusing on membership growth and organizational development, in 2011 it was time for the team and me to dream as well. Our founder had told me he was amazed that we had surpassed his vision for CCCC, so it felt like a new beginning for us. A well-timed sabbatical in 2011 led straight into the discovery process that I’m now calling the Milestone 360. We used the process to dream about how CCCC could make a much greater contribution to the success of Christian ministries. Our 50th anniversary was within a reasonable planning horizon and our goal was to set CCCC up for success over the next 50 years. A looming milestone, such as a 50th anniversary or completion of a major project, is a great reason to pause and prepare the ministry for what comes next. However, since this analysis can be done at any time, there’s no reason to not do it now. How might your ministry be transformed by the Milestone 360 analysis?

The first two posts in this Milestone 360 series looked back over a ministry’s history to determine what to preserve, what to revive, and what to leave behind. This post shifts to the present to look around and assess the ministry as it is today, starting with its corporate values.

Corporate Values are Corporate Decisions in Advance

Corporate values are all about the choices that confront ministries every day. Will you go this way or that way, do this or that? When you define your corporate values, you are at the same time deciding in advance the criteria that will be used to assess the many choices the ministry will face in the future. Of the hundreds of values that could be your corporate values, which ones will you feature as the most significant for your ministry for the foreseeable future?

Selecting your ministry’s corporate values is not a forever decision. Over time, you may find that other values should be featured as corporate values. The previous values will still be good and worthy to be held by the organization, but the issues facing you then may benefit from a different set of featured values. Every so often you need to answer the question, Are your corporate values still the ones to feature today? This post will help you answer that question. And, if you have not yet identified your corporate values, this post will help you choose the ones that will best serve your ministry.

Types of Corporate Values

There are several different starting places for finding values that could become your ministry’s corporate values. I’ve found it helpful to label those starting points because the labels provide an organized approach to developing a well-rounded set of corporate values.

You will note that I have not included cultural or team values in the list below. These values are often called corporate values, but they are inward looking rather than outward looking and they deal with individuals rather than the organization and its needs. CCCC has formally documented its cultural aspirations and its team values, but we don’t call them corporate values. Our corporate values are reserved for what the organization as a whole needs to accomplish its mission.

Christian Values

Christian values apply all the time to all Christians and apply to your ministry whether or not they are your corporate values. A particular Christian value becomes a corporate value when it is deemed so vital to mission success for the ministry that it is worthy of receiving special attention.

Because CCCC is an umbrella organization with members from across the Christian spectrum, we feel we have a duty to model Christian unity. So, we have a top-level corporate value of “Evangelical in identity, ecumenical in service.”

And because we are involved in the “business” side of ministry, we believe it is important that we remind everyone, including ourselves, of the spiritual and faith-based aspects of our work with a corporate value to “Present a strong Christian witness at all times.”

Guardrail Values

Guardrail values keep the ministry safe by preventing it from suffering again from past failures or unwanted experiences. Completing the phrase “Never again will we…” will help you discern these values.

For example, for a number of years people perceived CCCC as being a “watchdog” or “police officer” enforcing the rules within the Christian ministry sector. This was neither the reputation nor the role we wanted. (Accredited CCCC members voluntarily make themselves accountable for complying with our standards, which we do “enforce,” but we do so from the perspective of helping them come back into compliance with the standards they’ve chosen to meet.) We have a guardrail value to prevent CCCC being seen as a “watchdog” or “police officer” again: “We aspire to…serve our peers with the integrity and servant’s heart that are expected of a representative of Jesus Christ.” For a season, we had a tagline that positioned us as among our members, not over them: Advancing Ministry Together. Having fulfilled its purpose, we no longer use this tagline, but the value continues as a guardrail for us.

Both CCCC examples of Christian corporate values, “Evangelical in identity” and “A strong Christian witness,” also serve as guardrail values. They protect us from mission drift.

Brand Values

Brand values are those values that tell people “We’re different and here’s how.” They set the expectations of those who engage with your ministry as supporters, staff, or beneficiaries about what they will experience. Review your brand guide to find what is particularly distinctive about your ministry and consider making that a corporate value because it is central to your ministry’s identity and reputation.

For example, a pillar of the CCCC brand is Caring, which we’ve defined as encompassing empathy, compassion, Christian spirituality, listening, encouraging, kindness, and being supportive. This pillar captured what we had been doing for years that built tremendous loyalty from our members. Our related corporate value is that we “serve all Christian ministries in Christian love and harmony.” We believe this is what makes membership in CCCC a relational rather than a transactional experience.

Strategic Values

Strategic values are values that your strategy requires. What values must your ministry hold fast to in order to successfully execute its strategy? Make each of those a corporate value.

For instance, CCCC provides information to its members about how to operate a charity so that it is an exemplary, healthy, and effective Christian ministry. We need to show our members how to apply our information by using that same information ourselves to be an exemplary, healthy, and effective Christian ministry. One of our corporate values is to be an “Exemplary model of a Christian ministry” because we aspire to practise what we preach.

Compass Values

Compass values are high-level values that don’t fit under the other value types. Compass values define who or what the ministry is and what it stands for. They keep the ministry on course with its identity and ethos.

CCCC wants to be a good citizen within the community of Christian ministries, so one of our corporate values is to “Demonstrate Christian unity by…always thinking of [other ministries’] welfare, being open to correction, and being ready to find a way forward that honours God.”

We also have a compass value to preserve our Christian identity: “We are Christ-centred and Spirit-led, helping ministries think theologically about all aspects of operating a Christian organization.”

Platitude Values

Platitude values are those that few, if any, people would disagree with. It’s what we mean when we say something is like “motherhood and apple pie.” Who can argue against it? Platitude values are worthy but uncontroversial values that your ministry has no trouble adhering to.

If your ministry has never had to struggle with honesty or integrity, don’t make them corporate values. Most people will assume honesty and integrity are a given, so stating them will make some wonder why you felt it necessary to highlight them. If, however, your ministry has had an experience with dishonesty or lack of integrity, then these are not platitude values for you; they are meaningful corporate values, at least for a time.

Platitudes often become corporate values when people don’t use the starting points listed above to discern a ministry’s corporate values. Instead, they consider in a general way what the corporate values should be rather than analysing what they need to be. One way to tell that you have a platitude for a corporate value is if you never refer to the value when making a decision.

Personal Values

Individuals associated with your ministry may personally hold strongly to some values they want to see adopted as corporate values. This is most likely to happen at the founding of the ministry, but personal preferences for particular values could be suggested at any time. There’s no reason to reject them out-of-hand as they no doubt are good values, but they should not become corporate values if they would be platitudes. Make sure suggested personal values fit one of the other types of values: Christian, Guardrail, Brand, Strategic, or Compass.

Updating Corporate Values

If your ministry already has corporate values, reflect on whether they are still the right values for today. Before you change them, though, consider this: previous leaders set them as corporate values for a reason. You need to understand why. Did they document how the values were chosen? What did your research about the ministry’s history reveal was going on when the values were adopted?

Current leadership can always change decisions made by previous leaders based on current circumstances, but since values are enduring, give serious consideration about what you are losing by deemphasizing the values you want to remove. To be clear, you are not disavowing the values your remove from your corporate values; you are just removing the emphasis on them. In doing so, what would you be walking away from that previous leaders thought was important? Why was it important? Why did they choose to feature that value and not another? Make sure you understand the history before you change a corporate value.

Though we don’t know when CCCC adopted its first corporate values, the 2002 strategic plan listed eight corporate values that had been in place for some years. In 2012, we updated the language for five of the values, and those values are still with us today because they are still relevant. The three values we dropped had all become platitudes since they are part of the very essence of CCCC today, in our strategy, programs, or way of life.

At the same time, we added two new values. One is about the place of the local church in the life of a believer. This was important as it is a key recommendation in my book, The Church at Work, and it was important that CCCC model it. The other new value was about continuous improvement. This was important at the time because we hadn’t kept up with changes in technology and how people use it. We also had a lot of infrastructure that needed updating. We’re doing much better now, but the value is still useful.

If you create or update corporate values, do a favour for future leadership by documenting why you chose to feature each value. This will help future leadership appreciate the reasons for the value and know if it is time to drop the value and replace it with another.

CCCC’s Corporate Values

1. Evangelical in identity, ecumenical in service

• We demonstrate Christian unity by serving all Christian ministries in Christian love and harmony, always
  • thinking of their welfare.
  • being open to correction.
  • being ready to find a way forward that honours God in keeping with the direction of the Holy Spirit as discerned by all parties involved.
• We are Christ-centred and Spirit-led, helping ministries think theologically about all aspects of operating a Christian organization.
• We recognize the biblically mandated special place of the local church in the life of the believer. We respect it as the primary gathering place of Christ’s followers, and we respect its denomination’s oversight.
• We present a strong Christian witness at all times.

2. Excellence in our work

• We aspire to excellence in all that we do, serving our peers with the integrity and servant’s heart that are expected of a representative of Jesus Christ.
• We commit to continuous improvement by
  • building our knowledge and expertise.
  • being an innovative provider of leading-edge services.
  • helping our staff become thought-leaders in their respective fields.

3. Exemplary model for Christian ministries

• The board and staff aspire to model faithfulness and excellence as a witness and an encouragement to other ministries.

You can read about the historical review we did and the consultation process we used to develop these corporate values here.

The post Looking Around: Corporate Values appeared first on CCCC Blogs.

From the previous post, we know that anyone wanting to influence culture must be partly outside the mainstream of that culture. That is, they must be counter-cultural in some way in order to have something new to contribute.

So if the church wants to influence culture, it must maintain its own cultural distinctiveness in thought and deed. Fortunately, Christians have three aids to help us do this: our theology, the Holy Spirit, and the church itself.

Theology: A Strong Foundation

Christian theology gives us a very distinctive understanding of the world and how it works. For example, our theology of the human person gives us a very high view of human life, seeing humanity as the pinnacle of God’s creation. We have a lot to say to society about life itself and our relationships with each other because we believe:

• Male and female, we are created in God’s image
• We were made a little lower than God, and crowned with glory and majesty
• We all stand as equals before God. Even our political rulers stand equally with us under God.
• Life is a gift from God, who knows people even before they are born (eg., Psa 139:13-16, Isa 49:1, Gal 1:15)
• The termination of a life is abhorrent to God

If we don’t know what we believe, we will inevitably lose our distinctiveness and become just like our culture, such as by adopting secular attitudes about power and status. This is why Christians need theological vitality. It gives us a strong foundation.

The Holy Spirit: Our Creative Guide

Having a strong theological foundation is great, but then the question becomes “What do we do with our theology?” Fortunately, Christians are not left to our own devices to figure out how to apply our theology to present day circumstances. We have the Holy Spirit as our guide.The Holy Spirit is the reason why our Bible is not just an historical record, but is a living book that speaks freshly to us today.

When we reflect on our theology and our culture, it is vital that we do so through the correct lens. If we think about theology from within existing culture, we could read it the way we want to read it. But the Holy Spirit helps us do our theological reflection from God’s perspective, and then decide what action to take. If society is moving towards God’s eschatological future, then we support it. If it isn’t, then we critique it and offer a better way.

In the case of how society thinks about human life, the Greco-Roman culture in the first century was quite at odds with the Christian perspective. In distinction to the high view of life taken by Christians, the non-Christian culture had a very low view of human life; it was cheap and expendable.

The perception of all human beings as equal, and equally valuable, as persons worthy of respect and equal treatment before the law, is a relatively rare and recent achievement in human history. The concept that women, children, racial minorities, immigrants, refugees and the poor are to be treated not only equally but with special concern because of their frequent marginalization and vulnerability is a central biblical teaching rarely actualized in public life.

Glen Stassen & David Gushee in Kingdom Ethics: Following Jesus in Contemporary Context

Here are a couple of examples of what the early Christians challenged in their society based on their theology of the human person and how the Spirit led them to assess their culture.

Infanticide

Infanticide was common in Rome and Greece (and also in China, Japan, Brazil, Africa, and among the Inuit).¹ It was so common in ancient Greece that it was blamed for its population decline. Children were left exposed outside or thrown into rivers and left to die, and no one had a moral problem with it.

Christians alone stood firmly against the killing of babies because it was murder, because Jesus gave them importance by saying they should not be hindered in coming to him, and because children are seen as a blessing throughout Scripture.

Subjugation of Women

Greek and Roman women had essentially no rights and no freedom. Plutarch wrote that Greek men keep their wives “under lock and key.” The average Athenian woman had the social status of a slave. Greek girls were not educated and throughout her entire life, a female was not allowed to speak in public at all. Neither were Roman women. When some Roman women entered the Forum (which they were not allowed to enter) to protest and ask for a law to be repealed (breaking convention by speaking in public), Cato asked, “Could you not have asked your own husbands the same thing at home?”²

A Roman girl grew up under patria potestas, a law that gave the man who led a household complete control over all members of his household (including the power of life and death). A woman could not own property, receive any inheritance, or have any freedom until the male head of her household died.

A Christian who is not spiritually sensitive may not be able to discern the Spirit’s leading in how to assess society against Christian theology. This is why I’ve also said that all Christians must have spiritual vitality. If we can’t sense the Spirit’s leading, we’re basically on our own to decide what we think is the appropriate interpretation and application of theology.

The Church: A Community in Action

When Christians understand their theology and discern what the Spirit has to say about culture in light of that theology, it is time to take action. In terms of infanticide and the place of women in society, there was nothing to affirm, so the church had to take action to move society closer to God’s ideal. Here’s what they did.

Child Abandonment

In the ancient writings of the church, infanticide was soundly condemned. Within fifty years or so of becoming a legal religion, Christians were able to persuade the Roman emperor to outlaw infanticide. Until that time, children who were not directly killed by their parents were usually exposed or thrown into a river, and Christians rescued them and adopted them as their own.

Subjugation of Women

To improve the lot of women, the church modeled what their role in society should be. The resulting effect of the church on the status of women was revolutionary. The church gave women the only opportunity they had to hold leadership roles and be socially active outside the family home. Female leaders in the church are frequently mentioned in the New Testament, including among them Col 4:15, 1 Cor 16:19, and Rom 16:1-3.

Women were evangelists and missionaries, and they were a significant factor in the early church’s spiritual and numerical growth. An early church father, Chrysostom, writing in the late 300s, wrote “The women of those days were more spirited than men.” Historian W.E.H. Lecky wrote “In the ages of persecution female figures occupy many of the foremost places and ranks of martyrdom.” Another historian wrote “Christendom dare not forget that it was primarily the female sex that for the greater part brought about its rapid growth. It was the evangelistic zeal of women in the early years of the church, and later, which won the weak and the mighty.”³

Christianity was responsible for the repeal of the patria potestas law in 374. Women no longer needed their father’s permission to marry (and whom to marry), they held substantially the same property rights as their husbands, and the veil was done away with. This is why women flocked to the ancient church. It was liberating!

Challenge

The early church is a great example for us today. It knew its theology, discerned the Spirit’s leadership, and then put their ideas into action to demonstrate Christian values at work for the good of the marginalized, the oppressed, and in fact for all members of their society.

Given the many issues which challenge our society today, which ones are you most passionate about? Which ones relate closest to your ministry’s mission? What part might you or your ministry play in helping our society move a little closer to God’s ideal?

Key Thought: An authentic Christian faith leads to social improvement ideas.

The post The Church as a Change Agent appeared first on CCCC Blogs.

However, this irenic view of contemporary Canada is marred by a concerted campaign against religion by some that flies in the face of the espoused principles and values that a truly multicultural, pluralistic society holds.

The whole point [of pluralism] is to enable groups to “throw up a shield” against the pressure of consensus, and develop and promote alternatives that are rejected by the powerful, or by society as a whole…When people in liberal societies see themselves as out on the vanguard of history…they’re least likely to concede that they might, just might, be making a mistake, and most inclined to feel instead that the thing to do is shatter the shield wall around the remaining bastions of unenlightenment rather than permit them to persist. It’s when a consensus is at its most self-confident, in other words — and therefore most vulnerable to the errors of overconfidence — that the kind of pluralism that might serve as a corrective becomes hardest for that consensus’s exponents to accept.

Ross Douthat, New York Times opinion column “The Challenge of Pluralism”, March 19, 2014

Many champions of tolerance have themselves become intolerant of views contrary to their own. They have fallen victim to the old axiom that power corrupts.

This is ironic because those who in the past were unjustly marginalized  should know best the injustice associated with oppression. Yet they have gained power and now themselves are the oppressors of another minority.

The clash of values that has polarized our society is (in my opinion) really a dispute about whether or not anything should be normative in our society. The goal of those with power or influence seems to be to eliminate anything normative for the sake of maximizing personal autonomy. Since all religions have group norms, religion is the focus of their attention.

So, in theory, pluralism offers peace and opportunity for all, while in the contemporary Canadian experience it also offers conflict and challenge to religious people. Christians need to respond to both the challenge and the opportunity.

Challenges

There are two serious challenges Christians face: dilution and assimilation.

Dilution

Many times I’ve been told by someone who is not a Christian that we are both climbing mountains, and when we get to the top we’ll discover we were climbing the same mountain, just different sides.

That sounds really warm and fuzzy, but it isn’t true. Christianity makes truth claims that are irreconcilable with any other religion, and I’m sure other religions would say the same about themselves. Christianity claims that Jesus Christ is the way to God. If I agreed there are other ways to God, then Christ is but one option among many, and I’ve diluted my faith. More than that, religions have incompatible treatments of sin and redemption that can’t be reconciled. Because Christianity is unique, being agreeable by smudging, ignoring, downplaying, or minimizing our differences only diminishes our faith.

Assimilation

The second challenge is to surrender to social pressure and give up our differences completely. If I were to just agree that Jesus was only a great teacher, or that the Bible is a cultural relic, then I could assimilate and be just like everyone else. Problem solved! But at the cost of the distinctiveness and power of my faith.

In Canada, the pressure to assimilate comes not from other religions. We seem to happily coexist even when each believes theirs is the correct religion. The only pressure comes from the secular elites who have it in for religion.

Response to the Challenges

Safeguarding the Faith

We must resist dilution and assimilation. We need to hold on to our differences if we are to have anything unique to offer the world. Miraslav Volf makes the point that:

Christian communities will be able to survive and thrive in contemporary societies only if they attend to their “difference” from surrounding cultures and subcultures….Whoever wants Christian communities to exist must want their difference from surrounding culture, not their blending into it…Christian communities must “manage” their identity by actively engaging in “boundary maintenance.” Without boundaries, communities dissolve.

Volf, A Public Faith, p. 81

Boundaries are absolutely necessary when defining authentic Christianity. Note that the boundary is around our beliefs, not our churches. I’ll address boundaries relating to people in another post.

Paul praised the Corinthians for putting boundaries around their faith¹ and Jude told his audience that they had to contend for the faith against those trying to subvert it.² The ancient creeds were also boundaries to protect the faith.

The best thing that pastors can do to protect against dilution and assimilation is to teach their congregations what we believe and to point out where we diverge from our culture or society.

Use of Culture

Living in a culture that is foreign to us, we need to be wise about how much of it we participate in. Volf provides three options for Christians when assessing how much of the surrounding culture we can use:

1. Some elements of our culture can be adopted because there is no specific Christian replacement. His example is sharing meals with non-Christians.
2. Some elements can be acceptable to Christians when put to a different use. Designing our homes for hospitality is his example. This would be in distinction to homes that are designed as retreat centres for their owners. Another example is marriage, for which the dominant culture has a very different understanding of it than Christians do.
3. Some elements need to be rejected because there is no place for them in a Christian’s life.

We must be vigilant to be sure we do not compromise our faith. We can’t isolate ourselves from our society without losing the ability to be a witness, so we do need to participate in society, but do so without compromise.

Responding to Secular Coercion

Finally, since those with power and influence regularly resort to the law courts, legislation, and employers to coerce the behaviour and attitudes they want from others, Christians are becoming victims of oppression and even persecution. The response to this challenge has been covered in another post, Living in a Hostile Society.

Opportunities

There are several benefits to being just one of many in a pluralistic culture, and they provide the church with opportunities.

Missional Vitality

When Christians were the dominant group in society, there wasn’t a lot of motivation for individuals to engage in mission because it appeared the mission was largely accomplished. It’s interesting that the cure of souls, from which we get the word curate (a priest or pastor), can be traced to the fourth century when Christianity became Rome’s state religion. There was a shift then from mission aimed at outsiders towards taking care of parishioners’ souls. In modern times, missionary zeal was largely channeled toward other parts of the world, rather than to our own neighbourhoods.

But in fact, the Christian mission wasn’t nearly as fulfilled in Canada as we thought.

Pastors, remember that God gave you to the church to equip its members to do good works.³ It is your responsibility to see that every member of your flock is productively engaged in mission, remembering that the early church’s success was mostly due to the witness of individuals working on their own. People only have so much time available, so be sure that every volunteer hour you ask for within the church is essential to the church’s mission. Otherwise, keep your parishioners free to be Christ’s witnesses elsewhere.

Individually, we need to permeate society and be excellent in whatever God has given us: our work, our relationships, our community involvement, and so on. Every Christian should be the best thing that ever happened in whatever context they find themselves.

Corporately, we need the boldness, vision, and radical tolerance for risk that led John Wesley to :

• hire a surgeon and a pharmacist to provide medical care for the poor in London
• open the first free pharmacy in London
• teach people to read
• start a bank which lent money to the newly literate poor to help them start businesses

What might the church do today that is just as creative, leading edge, and impactful?

We Can Use Our Voice

In a pluralist society, Christians are as much entitled as anyone else to contribute their ideas, which should be attractive based on their non-religious merits. The theological basis or religious motivation doesn’t matter to non-Christians. All that matters is that non-Christians can see the idea’s benefits. We can share good ideas for the environment, social justice, the economy, commerce, and so on.

Those who oppose religion are already trying to shut us down and keep us out of public debate. But history and research show that a minority can cause the majority to change its mind, although their strategy must be different from the majority’s.

• The majority usually relies on coercion to force public compliance with their programs. What people privately believe doesn’t matter as long as there is public compliance.
• Minorities can’t coerce. All they can do is convert people through persuasion. They do this by presenting new information or new ideas which cause the majority to re-evaluate their position. The most dramatic example of this conversion happening in recent history is the gay rights movement. An example from fifty years ago would be the 40 year campaign against smoking in public, and from a century ago, the women’s suffragette movement in the UK.

We want to persuade people that for society to flourish there must be a concern for community welfare. We want people to support policies and behaviours that:

• build strong families
• help people to redeem themselves from the messes they get in
• promote justice and equity
• care for the marginalized and integrates them into society

Leverage Our Inclusivity

The church is the most multicultural society on the planet. It was an incredible experience for me when I worshipped in churches in Australia, Thailand, India, Kenya, Malawi, England, and Scotland while on my round the world sabbatical trip. I felt right at home in all of them! Whatever ethnic group I was with, I knew I shared a common faith with them. Whether I understood the language or not, the worship was meaningful and very moving. I know what it is like to be in a foreign country and find a welcoming place.

Being such a multicultural, global body as we are, and living in as cosmopolitan a country as we do, we have a special capability of welcoming immigrants to Canada. We should excel at helping newcomers acclimate to their new home. Non-ethnic churches should support ethnic churches as much as they can so that in turn they can welcome their own ethnicities to Canada.

Conclusion

We have to be very wise regarding the forces that oppose religious participation in society, but even with their opposition, there is much that the church can do to advance its mission.

Key Point: We don’t need to be at the centre of society in order to be Christ’s witness for a better way of living.

The post Pluralism’s Challenges and Opportunities appeared first on CCCC Blogs.

At a young age, I discovered one of my family’s values – order and tidiness! I obviously on that day was not displaying our family value, which up until that time Mom may have presumed I had simply absorbed through association with my family, osmosis-like. Well, in the midst of something that was out of place or generally unkempt, I was told point-blank that our family values proper order and tidiness. Everything has its place, so put it there! And then my mom told me a story to reinforce the point. Her father had a spacious three car garage, and in the basement beneath the garage was a huge workshop full of benches, tools, drawers, and storage bins. She remembers her father working on a car and asking her to get a particular nut and bolt from the workshop for him. He told her exactly which drawer of which bench she should look in, and then within the drawer, precisely which of the 16 little cubicles held the desired object. Everything, every nut and bolt, was in exactly the right spot!

That story has stayed with me all these many years. Wouldn’t I like to be so neat, tidy, and orderly that I could tell you with precision exactly where something is! In fact, my wife is amazed that I can go into the basement and, most but not all of the time, find exactly what I’m looking for and be back upstairs in less than two or three minutes.

Such is the power of a story to transmit a value so that it sticks!

Corporate Values

If you did a spot check of all your staff, how many could recite your ministry’s values? They should be able to tell you exactly what they are without much thought, because they should be consciously thinking about them, making choices based on them, and generally living them out day-by-day.

Ensuring the corporate values are a part of daily life in a Christian ministry is one of the crucial strategies to prevent mission drift. As a ministry leader, it is your job to transmit your ministry’s values to your staff, volunteers, and supporters.

But if you are going to have corporate values (which of course you should), make sure they are your real values, the ones you are willing to suffer and sacrifice for because you believe so strongly in them. Don’t settle for motherhood values, the ones you think you should have.

The values you want are the ones that really matter. Your corporate values will either come out of your fundamental corporate identity or strategy, or they will be a response to a time in your ministry’s history when their absence caused a significant problem. Unless honesty has been a problem or is so integral to your ministry’s identity that it has to be a real focus, it is not a corporate value, it’s just a good value. Choose just the few crucial values that deeply matter to your ministry.

Transmitting Corporate Values

The two best ways to transmit your values are to model them yourself, and to tell stories about them. The two go together. Modelling values alone assumes people will pick up on the values osmosis-like, which may or may not happen (as I know from personal experience!). Telling stories alone will not have power unless the leader personally exemplifies them. Otherwise, they are just stories about someone else, usually long ago in corporate history. Telling stories (whether from history or current events) that are visibly supported by the leadership team’s actions today is a very powerful way to transmit your values.

A great resource for developing values-based stories is a book I’ve already told you about by Stephen Denning: The Leader’s Guide to Storytelling: Mastering the Art and Discipline of Business Narrative.

Crafting a Values Story

Denning has some very helpful tips for creating a powerful values-transmitting story:

• You can start with the corporate values and think about when someone did something that embodied those values, or you can think about crucial turning points in your ministry’s history and see what values were embodied in that moment.
• You can do the above either for the ministry as an organization, or if you want to connect the values to yourself to show how vital they are to you, you can do the above analysis using your own life.
• You don’t need a full-blown story. Review the parables that Jesus told. He told them in minimalist fashion. You don’t want to clutter up the story with so many details that people have to wait for you to tell them which details are important to your point. Only say what must be said to make your point.
  • My opening story contained just the  points that highlight the value of order and tidiness
    • a large space
    • someone who doesn’t know where something is being told by someone else exactly where it is with certainty from memory
    • a preamble connecting the reader with the story through me
    • evidence that the value has survived three generations, showing that Mom’s story was a powerful part of transmitting that value, thus validating the point of this post.
• A story with a twist will be much more powerful than a story that plays out as one would expect. Most, if not all, of the parables Jesus told had very unexpected twists. A Samaritan helping a Jew? A father demeaning his position (in that culture) by physically going towards his profligate son to welcome him?
  • Stories where the tables are turned are very memorable! If you can, build the unexpected in to your story. I told a true story up above, and it didn’t have a twist. But if you are creating a fictional story, such as Nathan did when he confronted David with his sin, you would certainly want to put a twist into it.
• You don’t have to spell everything out. It may be better not to even mention what the value is, but tell the story so that the audience is left thinking about it and then reasons out what the value is. Let them have the fun, and the reinforcing memory, of their own “Aha!” moment. So you could say, “Here’s what I’d like to hear about the service we provide. A person in need…” and then make up a story.
• You could tell a story about some other organization or person that exemplifies the value if you can’t find such a story in your own ministry.
• Finally, you could make up a story, as Jesus did with the Parables. “There was a woman who…” or something like that will start a great parable of your own.

So take your top few values, and try crafting some stories! Guaranteed they will make your staff meetings more interesting!

The post Transmitting Corporate Values appeared first on CCCC Blogs.

Surprisingly, it is not just Christian agencies that lose their Christian identity; although rare, churches can too. As I write this, a United Church of Canada minister, Gretta Vosper of West Hill United Church, is a self-declared atheist fighting not to be defrocked as a Christian minister. Two-thirds of her congregation walked out in 2008 after she did away with the Lord’s Prayer, but still there are people (less than 50) who attend the church and support her as their ‘minister’.

In terms of Christian ministries, Christian identity has two components:

1. Christian values and culture
2. Christian mission

When either or both of these become lacking in a Christian ministry, we can say that mission drift has occurred.

Mission Drift

In Mission Drift: The Unspoken Crisis Facing Leaders, Charities, and Churches, authors Greer and Horst trace how originally Christian organizations (such as Harvard University and the YMCA) lost their Christian identities, and how others (including Compassion and InterVarsity) have retained theirs. They report that most formerly Christian organizations did not intend to lose their identity, but they just “drifted quietly, gradually, and slowly.” This accords with the research findings in the first post of this series.

To prevent mission drift, our Christian faith must really matter to the life and work of our ministries. Ministry leaders must integrate Christian faith into all aspects of their ministry’s existence so that a Christian identity is passed on from one ‘generation’ of staff to the next. Greer and Horst found that all too often the passion of one generation became the preference of the next, and then became irrelevant to the third, in the same way that the Israelites lost their faith in Judges 2:10.

So, directors and leaders,

• When was the last time that faith was a crucial factor in any major decision?
  • Beyond trusting God to provide, have you had a robust, theologically grounded discussion that reframed the issue?
• Do you really believe that faith is essential to your work?
  • Would your organization suffer if it became completely secular? If it wouldn’t suffer much, then perhaps you aren’t making as much use of your faith as you should be.
• Does faith saturate every aspect of pursuing your mission?
  • How does your Christian worldview intersect with HR practices, program design, etc.?
• Does it permeate your culture?
  • Are people comfortable expressing their faith outside of formal prayer or devotional time? Would a visitor to your ministry immediately get the sense that faith matters?
• Is it a pass/fail screen for new board and staff recruits?

If you didn’t have a recent example of faith factoring in a decision, or if you answered “No” to any of the questions, then you may have a problem with mission drift. There is a handy free assessment tool you can use to see how much in danger of mission drift your ministry is (starting on page 92 of the Mission True Workbook).

Responsibility for Preventing Mission Drift

Both the directors and the senior leader are responsible for guarding against mission drift. In fact, in Mission Drift, the authors found that in every case of lost Christian identity, poor board recruitment and governance were driving forces behind mission drift.

If you think that directors and staff would never be the source of pressure to change your identity, the authors report that the pressure to secularize isn’t so much exerted by forces from outside the organization as it is by forces from within: your supporters, employees, and directors.

So let’s look at how directors and executives can ensure there is no compromise on your Christian identity.

Board

The board bears ultimate responsibility for safeguarding the mission and corporate identity. The main risk factor in its ability to do this well are the directors themselves, for several reasons:

• Term limits guarantee that there will be turnover on the board, risking the loss of corporate memory. Term limits are very healthy because they bring new blood and fresh thinking to the board table, but over time you could end up with a board that is only familiar with the last four or five years of history, making gradual drift harder to see.
• Directors are involved in the ministry, but their lives are wrapped up with their vocations elsewhere. There is a heightened risk that they will bring values and culture from another organization (often a secular organization) to the board table with them.
• Board members may not have the theological resources to protect against mission drift. Few directors are likely to have a formal theological education, making it possible that in spite of being very devout and faithful Christians they might overlook the theological assumptions or inconsistencies implicit in the choices they face.

The board must therefore intentionally ensure it is equipped to safeguard this ministry’s mission. They might:

• Read a corporate history of the ministry featuring the development of its values, culture and mission. Corporate histories should include stories that are part of the corporate lore that exemplify its Christian identity.
• Include a discussion of the corporate history, values and mission at each board orientation.
• Study a theology of whatever the mission is about. For example, Christian Horizons has a theology of disability that guides its work.

Practical steps might include:

• Embedding Christian faith as deep as possible in your corporate documents so that they are hard to change. A statement of faith might be in your bylaws and a Christian purpose in your corporate objects.
• Intentionally asking “Which biblical-theological principles apply to this decision?” when making significant decisions such as setting priorities, approving capital projects, or relating with senior staff.
• Asking how well the board demonstrates faithfulness to God through its meetings and work.
• Vetting potential board recruits for
  • their passion for the specifically Christian nature of the organization. If the ministry lost its Christian identity, would they still be interested in serving?
  • how much their faith affects their daily lives. Are they serious about their faith?
• Setting longer board terms (although if the longer term causes people to serve only one term rather than two, then stay with what you have).
• Adopting a self-perpetuating governance model, so that the selection of directors is a carefully considered appointment by the board rather than an election by a possibly uninformed membership.
• Ensuring they do not pressure the staff so much that the staff feels they need to compromise the Christian identity to fulfill the board’s expectations.
• Keeping an eye on the senior executive to ensure corporate culture and mission strategy remain thoroughly Christian. Just as potential directors are asked about the application of their faith in their lives, the leader should also be asked (if they don’t talk about it themselves) about how their faith works itself out in daily life. In what ways does the senior leader give evidence of being led by God? What is the leader doing to ensure that the staff is committed to the Christian identity?

Senior Leader

The senior staff leader bears responsibility for the ministry living out its Christian identity on a daily basis. The main risk factors leaders face are: 1) loss of personal Christian vitality, and 2) reliance on worldly thinking. These are very real risks because:

• Ministry leaders are usually quite absorbed in their ministry, and might sacrifice their personal spiritual life for the sake of more time for the ministry. Alternatively, they might end up conflating their personal spirituality with that of the ministry’s, thinking they are one and the same. Neither of these must be allowed to happen.
• Agency leaders, unlike most pastors, might not have any formal theological education, creating a lack of awareness of how a Christian identity could affect the organization beyond just having a staff devotional time.
• There is much that worldly wisdom has to offer in terms of scholarship and research, but it must always be considered in light of our faith. Leaders may be prone to do what works rather than what is theologically sound.

Leaders can safeguard the mission by:

• Studying the ministry’s history. Senior leaders should be better versed in the ministry’s history than anyone else except perhaps the archivist. I outlined how I did this at CCCC (follow the links in this post for specific examples).
• Either taking courses in biblical-theology or reading up on it, so that they can think theologically about the mission and operations of the ministry.
• Developing their own rich spiritual life and learning to discern God’s leadership.
• Ensuring that they see themselves first as followers and only secondly as leaders. They must feel personally led by the Holy Spirit in their leadership. If they don’t feel this is so, they should reflect on their own spirituality.

Practical things a leader can do to prevent mission drift include:

• Be the model for living out what the ministry stands for.
• Watch corporate culture very, very closely. Ensure that faith matters within the general culture, not just at leadership meetings.
• In Mission Drift, Phil Smith notes that “People join your organization who are very excited about portions of your vision, but are either opposed to or don’t care about the rest of it.” Unless you have intentionally decided to hire non-Christians for some roles (which can be fine), you should hire only those who are passionate about everything the ministry is and represents.
• Build the senior leadership team’s capacity for theological reflection and spiritual vitality through their professional development plans. Have staff think theologically about their own work.
• Ensure theological discussion is a true discussion and not a sermon. The leader shouldn’t be the only one raising matters of faith.
• Document God’s call to your founders and previous leaders. Why did God cause your ministry to be founded? Are you still true to this call today? If the call has changed or developed over time, document how and why it evolved. This prevents unintentional drifting. Do the same for your corporate values. Have they changed, and if so, has there been any compromise or is there an even greater dedication to being a godly organization?
• Watch for concrete examples of how faith intersects with your ministry and write them up as stories to add to the history and lore of the ministry.
• Define key terms in your strategic statements. It’s amazing how different people can interpret the same word in so many different ways. The CCCC End statement consists of only ten words, but a short paragraph explains what the End statement means to us.
• Ensure that all marketing and branding statements reflect the corporate objects and by-laws. (CRA Charities Directorate also checks this when doing a general charity audit.) Sometimes the language of strategy doesn’t play as well to your audience as language developed from a marketing perspective, so different words might  be used. This is okay as long as the public version retains the intent of the internal statements. So compare the statements and be sure you have not compromised your Christian identity.
• Finally, watch the board very carefully. The board and the senior leader are mutual checks on one another. Bring to the board’s attention anything they are doing or not doing that could result in mission drift.

Conclusion

A Christian ministry is successful to the degree that it is faithful in how it pursues its mission and experiences corporate life. Both the board and the senior leader must be on guard, watching over the ministry as if from a watchtower, to survey everything about its organizational life to ensure that its Christian faith permeates every aspect of its existence. If you want God’s blessing, you must be faithful.

The post Mission Drift: Who’s on Guard? appeared first on CCCC Blogs.

The third threat to our corporate witness is self-centredness. This is closely related individualism, but whereas individualism is about maximizing one’s personal rights, self-centredness is about attitude, specifically that “It’s all about me!” No one would ever admit to holding this attitude of course, but when people think:

• “I am irreplaceable and this place would fall apart without me,” or
• “The credit for that should have come to me,” or
• “I need to be in control of this,”

they are making it perfectly clear that, yes, it is all about them.

The main problem with self-centredness, from an organizational perspective, is that self-centred employees feel ownership of some aspect of the ministry. The employee who refuses to share knowledge, refuses to cross-train someone in their job, or who improperly acts like they have a veto, becomes a stumbling block to organizational faithfulness to Christ. How can an organization be faithful to Christ when an employee claims a trump card of ownership over some part of the organization?

Negative Consequences

When an employee thinks it’s all about them, they have a pretty tight grip on their part of the ministry that can cause problems:

• They suffer anxiety as they live in fear of losing control, which means losing their security. They fight desperately to hold on to what they have and become very controlling and manipulative, both harmful to team dynamics and a poor witness to Christ.
• They become prideful as they think of the ministry and its accomplishments as theirs. They puff themselves up and take credit all to themselves that should properly go to the team and to God, and, yes, some even to them too.
• They bear too much of a burden for the ministry and can easily burn themselves out. When they think everything depends on them, they have no one else to turn to because, after all, its their job to have all the answers!
• They engage in political behaviour, office politics, that encourages gossip and innuendo. They plant seeds of doubt about other staff, in order to protect themselves. They jockey for position, creating a competitive spirit on the team. They suck the joy out of the workplace. I remember one office I worked in that was intimidated by the behaviour of one particularly strong and opinionated individual, and the first day after the person left was the first day I ever heard laughter in that office! Sometimes you don’t realize what a chilling effect one person can have until they are gone!
• Perhaps worst of all, they stifle everyone else and shut down creativity, because they forcefully champion their own ideas.  Not much group discernment happens on a team of self-centred people! 

The Truth

The truth that overcomes self-centredness is that we belong to Christ, and so do our ministries. They are not ours! That means we are stewards working for an owner.

Jesus Christ is the greatest owner possible and, with his unlimited resources, he takes responsibility for his possessions.

Being a steward, you do not bear final responsibility for the ministry you lead. It is not all up to you! This liberating thought frees you to offer Christ

• your very best work,
• your highest commitment,
• every ounce of your strength,

and then allows you to stop struggling and rest, knowing that even with all that you have to offer, Jesus still has even more to offer back to you to help the ministry out. You have the most stupendous partner in ministry you could ever hope for!

Back in the 90s I was a deacon at my church. About ten years before, a pastoral moral failure devastated the leadership. I was just a young man in the congregation when that happened, but now that I was on the board with some of the deacons from that time, I saw the deep suspicion of all things pastoral that they still had. Each year, the board elections left the board divided 5-4 one way or the other between those who were suspicious of pastors and those who weren’t. The church was stymied into an impasse at the board level. It was an awful time for me as I anguished over this state of affairs.

One night at a prayer service I felt particularly burdened by the problem,

and then suddenly…

“And then suddenly…” I love that phrase when it relates to God showing up in our lives!!!!

…I spoke out words that I believe Jesus gave me to speak to myself on his behalf:

“This is NOT your church, this is MY church. I will look after MY church.”

What a release that was. Of course! This is Christ’s church, not mine. He is responsible for it and, as his possession, he will take care of it. I shouldn’t usurp Christ’s responsibilities! Let him look after his possession. Trust him to look after his possession. I just had to do my part as a deacon.

That is the beauty of this truth that we belong to Christ. If you and I care for the treasures we display on our mantels, how much more Jesus cares for your ministry, which after all is not your ministry but his!

Benefits of Being a Steward

Being a steward and not an owner has several benefits:

• As a steward, I can go to the Owner with a problem and get some help. There are resources beyond me that can be brought to bear on the ministry.
• I can focus on mission accomplishment instead of satisfying my own needs.
• I can let go of my grip on the ministry because someone else is already holding on to it.
• I can relax a bit and enjoy my work a whole lot more!

When a whole team thinks like stewards, you have the making of a great work environment because everyone has the primary role of serving.

 Building a Sense of Stewardship

As a leader, you should do everything you can to promote the idea that all employees are stewards.

•  Try to eliminate ‘my’ from your vocabulary with respect to the ministry you lead. I have a terrible time with this, but it is not my ministry, my board, or my staff. When I say it, I don’t mean it from an ownership perspective, just that I’m referring to the particular ministry, board, and staff that I’m associated with. However, now that I’m thinking about it I’ll do my best to refer to CCCC, the CCCC board, and the CCCC staff.
• Even if you founded the ministry you work for, recognize that you are not its owner. And if, like me, you were hired to lead an existing ministry, it was not given to you. In both cases we only have custody of ‘our’ ministries for a period of time to steward on behalf of their real Owner, and then we give them over to someone else who will do the same. So think about creating a succession plan to replace yourself. This shouldn’t be threatening to you. After all, if you are not the senior leader, you can’t be promoted if you don’t have a plan to replace yourself. If you are the senior leader, you don’t normally choose your successor (the board will do that) but you should always have at least have one credible candidate for interim leader. Thinking about replacing yourself helps you lessen your sense of ownership of the ministry. My post, Emergency Succession Planning, may help you think this through.
• Demonstrate that you, as the senior leader, are under higher authority.
  • Ask the board to give you a formal annual performance review. (It is surprising how many senior leaders do not get a performance review.)
  • Ask them to challenge you and ask probing questions. Put yourself under their scrutiny.
• If your board is stacked with your hand-picked favourite people, stop doing that. You really need an independent board, so let the board recruit directors. They should consult with the senior leader to ensure they are not recruiting people who would be damaging to the ministry (on the premise that the senior leader knows church members, donors, people in the community, better than the directors do).
• Finally, get serious about group discernment. How do you know what the Owner wants you to do unless you consult with him. When team members take part in discerning God’s will together, there will be a very strong sense of stewardship.

Please feel free to contribute any ideas you have for building within a ministry team the sense of belonging to Christ.

The post Ministries as Christ’s Possessions appeared first on CCCC Blogs.

Learn How to Tell Stories

So how do you tell a story well? There are lots of books that promise to let you in on the secret. If you check Amazon for storytelling books, you’ll find just under 20,000 of them! I haven’t read them all; in fact I think I’ve just read one. The good news is that after reading just this one, I felt no need to read anything else. Often the first book whets your appetite and then you read others to go deeper, or to get a fuller understanding. The book I read left me feeling I knew enough and what more could be said?

Many of the storytelling books I considered reading are quite generic. They might tell you how to tell stories that you could use around a campfire, or with your kids or friends, but will these books help you at work? I picked one that was written specifically for organizational leaders, and the table of contents includes the kind of stories that I, as a leader, want to tell.

The Leader’s Guide to Storytelling

In The Leader’s Guide to Storytelling: Mastering the Art and Discipline of Business Narrative, Stephen Denning walks you through the different kinds of stories that organizational leaders use, tells you when you should use each type, and shows how you craft a story to suit its particular purpose. Here’s just a brief summary of the story types:

• Sparking action stories help bring about change;
• Communicating who you are stories build trust in a leader;
• Communicating who the organization is stories establish your brand, building trust in the organization;
• Transmitting values stories help ingrain the corporate values so that people understand “how things are done around here;”
• Fostering collaboration stories develop a shared perspective among group members;
• Taming the grapevine stories work with the flow of office gossip to present an accurate understanding of what the gossip is about;
• Sharing knowledge stories spread knowledge about what works and does not work among staff; and
• Leading people into the future stories prepare people for change.

As an example of when you might tell stories, when I came to CCCC I was a complete outsider. People naturally want to know who the new ‘boss’ is, and they want to know the person well enough that they can predict what the person wants from staff. This book wasn’t published then, but I know now there is a name for the type of stories I told. I shared a number of “Communicating who you are” stories about key points of transition in my life, about critical incidents that formed my approach to leadership and so on. These stories were one way of conveying to the team my values, my beliefs about leadership, the culture I’d like us to have, and how I make decisions. I’ve told lots of stories since then, particularly “transmitting your values stories” to staff (for emphasizing our team values), and “communicating who the organization is” stories to external audiences.

You’ll discover that stories are usually quite short and to the point. Some people may think of them more as anecdotes than stories. I really found it helpful that Denning gives examples of everything he talks about, so you can always get an idea of how to apply his ideas. And for every type of story, he provides a template so you quickly know how to create it.

I think Denning’s book is great, and if you want to learn how to tell stories, this is the book for you.

The post The Leader’s Guide to Storytelling appeared first on CCCC Blogs.

The Real Risk of Losing Christian Identity

A number of years ago, Christian Horizons was fighting to retain its Christian identity by appealing a ruling of the Ontario Human Rights Tribunal that forced them to get rid of it if they wanted to continue to serve the public. As I sat in a courtroom listening to the arguments, I was deeply impressed by the pervasiveness of Christian faith at every level of this organization. The Tribunal argued that Christian faith, while it might motivate Christian Horizons’ employees, was not needed to simply feed people and care for their personal needs. Christian Horizons countered that their Christian faith informed every decision they made and the manner in which they provided care. They were not doing good deeds that anyone might do; they were doing Christian deeds for which they needed to retain their Christian identity.

An external threat endangered the faith-based identity of Christian Horizons, but history shows the greater danger usually comes from within the ministry. If you think it couldn’t happen to you, think again.

Churches, denominations and evangelism ministries have a clearly religious mission and are less likely to lose their Christian identity, but even they face the possibility they could lose their particular heritage from dangers within. If you think that would never happen, read a phenomenal PhD dissertation that analyzed the transformation of the United Church of Canada from its evangelical roots into the most liberal church in the country. Kevin Flatt, the author, had full access to the official records (including personal papers) of the UCC archives and to the surviving leaders who led the UCC through the last stages of this transformation. Fascinating reading! And one of the key findings relates to the importance of words and their meanings. The changes at the United Church originated at the top and involved very carefully crafted messages with intended double-meanings. Don’t ever think that words have no power! They do.

Ministries that focus on extending God’s love to the world through compassion and development work that can also be done from a secular perspective face a much higher risk of losing their Christian identity, because superficially at least, it appears faith is nothing more than a motivator for the good works the ministry does. These ministries must be vigilant to ensure their Christian identity and mission are retained and continue to shape their programs and services. This is a lesson we have learned from the experiences of several Christian ministries that are no longer Christian.

Stories Protect Identity

Two college/seminary presidents recently recommended a book to me, Quality with Soul: How Six Premier Colleges and Universities Keep Faith with Their Religious Traditions. It is an analysis of how many Christian higher education institutions lost their Christian identity, and how Calvin College, Wheaton College, University of Notre Dame, St. Olaf College, Valparaiso University and Baylor University kept it. There are a lot of factors related particularly to education, but the main factor that applies to us all is that the Christian colleges and universities that keep their Christian identity alive and vibrant do so by imprinting their stories on students and faculty, so that they know they are part of an ongoing narrative. They have a communal memory of their Christian vision and ethos (the ‘way of life’) that is kept alive by leaders who frequently tell detailed accounts of their story, and who interpret its meaning for the circumstances they face in the present day.

Many of the Christian universities and colleges that became secular did not intend to do so, it just happened gradually because their leaders did not recognize the long term consequences of the many decisions they made about education philosophy, the role of religion in education, and the content of their communal life. Surprisingly, leaders of Christian higher education institutions were not able to adequately articulate the theology of their identity and mission.

I have to say something here. My dissertation research included a survey of 100 agency leaders that is relevant to this finding. It showed that about one-half of the senior leaders of Christian non-church ministries have had no formal theological training. So if you haven’t had a course in theology, I suggest that you do some continuing education to strengthen your ability to provide theological leadership to your ministry.

Now back to the book’s research. The presidents lacked the necessary theological resources and therefore slowly but increasingly accommodated the surrounding culture and lost their distinctiveness. The faith of the founders became nothing more than their motivation for founding the school. Pietism was another important factor in the secularization of Christian schools because it led to the separation of personal faith and religious practices from the intellectual and professional work of the institution. Without well-developed theological resources to draw upon, the leaders accepted the secular idea that faith is personal and that it should not intrude into public life.

To keep the Christian identity strong, it must be made concrete in the vision, ethos and employee selection criteria.  All of the research in this book is encapsulated in the author’s statement that the Christian tradition must be the organizing principle for the identity and mission of the institution and that the Christian story as a “comprehensive, unsurpassable, and central account of reality must be held strongly and confidently enough to shape the life of the [institution] decisively in all its facets.”

Leader as Storyteller

The senior staff person is crucial in setting the overall direction of the organization and is therefore crucial to the protection of the ministry’s Christian identity and its transmission to a new generation. He or she must believe that the Christian account of life and reality is publicly relevant to all facets of the organization’s life. Leaders are responsible for articulating a compelling vision of their ministry’s identity and mission to the board, staff and other stakeholders. The leader is not just the senior pastor, superintendent or executive director, the leader is also the ministry’s Chief Keeper of the Story, who needs to be a storyteller par excellence.

Strategic statements such as vision and mission statements are like the theological formulations found in Romans and the so-called ‘teaching’ books of the Bible. They are explicit statements of doctrine. But all scripture is for edification and teaching, and that includes the narrative parts of scripture as well. The creation account, the history of Israel and the ministry of Jesus are recorded in scripture because they have just as much theology crafted into them as Paul wrote in Romans, but it is implicit rather than explicit in most cases. Narrative and declaration go together to teach us about God. And your ministry narrative and strategic statements go together to teach us about your ministry. The narrative puts life to the declarations.

So document the stories that illustrate your ministry’s mission, vision, culture and values. Through stories, show how the Christian faith has shaped every aspect of the ministry.

I see it as my responsibility to keep the stories of CCCC alive and meaningful to a new generation of ministry leaders and staff. My hope is that the Christian identity and ethos of CCCC will live on as others keep the stories in circulation and become part of the CCCC story themselves. I rarely (if ever) tell a story just for the sake of telling a story. There is always a point I want to get across. Sometimes I might explain the point explicitly, but that usually takes the fun out of it for the listener. Most often I tell the story and trust that the listener will figure out its point on their own.

So now you know how important your ministry’s stories are. How do you craft and tell your strategic stories? I’ll give you a resource for that in another post when I review a great book on creating stories for the work world.

The post Storytelling: The Key to Retaining Your Ministry’s Christian Identity appeared first on CCCC Blogs.