Here’s what our members have shared:

I Am Enough

Eph 2:10 For we are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.

I take comfort in and am inspired by the fact that God made me just as I am and that when he made me, God had in mind what he created me to do. Therefore, regardless of how I feel about myself and my capabilities, I am enough to do what God has called me to and my service to God is important to him.

Jesus Prays for Me

Rom 8:34b Christ Jesus who died—more than that, who was raised to life—is at the right hand of God and is also interceding for us.

It is always encouraging to know that someone is praying for you, but Paul says that Jesus Christ, who is standing right beside the Father, is interceding for you too. We can’t ask for better prayer support than that! Knowing Jesus prays for me boosts my confidence and ability to persevere.

God Trusts Me

1 Sam 10:6-7 The Spirit of the Lord will come powerfully upon you, and you will prophesy with them; and you will be changed into a different person. Once these signs are fulfilled, do whatever your hand finds to do, for God is with you.

I am so encouraged by the words “do whatever your hand finds to do, for God is with you.” All of us working in Christian ministry today have the Spirit within us and have discerned God’s call to ministry one way or another. While I am open to special direction from the Spirit, I am also released by God to use my common sense, my education, and my training and just do whatever I believe is required, knowing that God is with me and trusts me to make good decisions. I can be confident if I am being faithful to my call and to the Lord.

God Is with Me

Heb 13:5 “Never will I leave you; never will I forsake you.”

This is my “go to” verse whenever I begin feeling overwhelmed, hopeless, or defeated and it always strengthens my resolve to continue to fulfil my call to ministry. It is a promise given several times in Scripture. Knowing that God is always with me and will not abandon me is the rock of certainty that I stand on. This promise never fails to turn me to God in prayer as I seek his help.

God Is My Partner

Phil 1:6 [Be] confident of this, that he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus.

Like you, God called me to serve him through my work in Christian ministry. His call began the good work he is doing in me and through me, and this verse is a promise that he will not abandon me midway through my call. He will carry me through to the end. My heart is full of joy knowing that I am not on my own; I have God as my partner in fulfilling my call.

Don’t Give Up

Galatians 6:9 So let’s not get tired of doing what is good. At just the right time we will reap a harvest of blessing if we don’t give up.

This is the verse that keeps me going when the going gets tough with the ministries I am involved in. No matter what is thrown at us – keep doing good!

Be Strong and Courageous

1 Chron 28:20 Be strong and of good courage, and do it; do not fear nor be dismayed, for the Lord God—my God—will be with you. He will not leave you nor forsake you, until you have finished all the work for the service of the house of the Lord.

Encouragement from a 100-Year-Old Pastor

At age 95, Pastor John Richardson told CCCC conference attendees to “Never die until you are dead!” He spoke about perseverance.

For his 100^th birthday, he preached a sermon at Waterloo Pentecostal Assembly on Isaiah 40:30-31 about gaining new strength and not growing weary. Let his inspiring words encourage you to “keep on keeping on.”

At the same service, he also sang a song every one of us would love to be able to sing at the end of our lives, “I Don’t Regret a Mile.” He joined Jesus in heaven not too long after this service.

I knew Pastor John for thirty-one years, co-taught Sunday School with him, and was always inspired by him. Let John inspire you.

The post Encouragement for Leaders appeared first on CCCC Blogs.

While the following are great tips for writing, I was saddened as I read the book at the isolation of Tozer from his wife and family. His prodigious writing output came at the cost of his family having the husband and father God intended families to have. Be careful that your writing, or indeed ministry, comes at the cost of your family.

Tips for Writing Original Content

Tozer’s books and articles were so well received because they contained original thoughts based on his own thinking and reflection. The bullet points below are all quotes from the book The Life of A. W. Tozer: In Pursuit of God by James Snyder and will help you be more creative with your own writing. My comments are in the sub-bullets in italics:

• What set Tozer apart was his ability to quickly assimilate the knowledge he gained from reading. Tozer was more than a reader — he was a thinker. He often counseled, “You should think ten times more than you read.” This was his own practice throughout his life. By doing his own thinking, he arrived at this own independent conclusions.
  • I heartily agree with this. Leaders — make time for thinking!
• “Get the idea clear,” he used to say, “and the words will take care of themselves during [sermon] delivery.”
  • Amen! When I find myself spending hours trying to write a post, it’s almost always because either I haven’t thought clearly enough about what my point is or I haven’t got the logic right of how to present the point.
• “The only book that should ever be written is one that flows up from the heart, forced out by the inward pressure,” he often cautioned aspiring writers. “You should never write a book unless you just have to.”
  • Yes! I never write unless I have something I think will be a unique contribution to the literature or I am reporting something I think my audience will find helpful. No copycat writing from me!
• Tozer labored over everything he wrote. “Hard writing makes for easy reading,” he often said. He worked and struggled until each sentence was exactly the way he wanted it. He read aloud every line to check for repetition or imprecision. His style was lean, precise…”
  • I’ve been told many times that I’m a good writer. My response is always, “I’m actually a mediocre writer, but I’m an excellent editor!” Once you’ve thought the topic through, I find getting the idea down in words is relatively easy. Getting it so people will want to finish reading it is quite another!
• In his writing Tozer left the superficial, the obvious, and the trivial for others to pursue. He was disinterested in the passing parade of fads and trends, concentrating on those principles affecting a person’s relationship with God through Jesus Christ. Only by the discipline of study and prayer could he say something of lasting relevance on that level. The timelessness of Tozer’s writing is evidence of his success.
  • There are so many books to read! If you have something original to write that will add a valuable perspective or be a completely new take on something, go ahead and write. I wrote a post about how I weed out the copycat books that may help you read just the ones that will advance your thinking.
• Tozer often wrote the first draft of a project by hand. He believed he could control the words better that way. Later he would type out a second draft. Usually his secretary typed the final draft. She sometimes served as a sounding board for his output.
  • One secretary in particular tried Tozer’s patience, but he did not have the heart to replace her. He gave her a handwritten copy of an article he wanted typed. When she was finished, Tozer went to retrieve it. “What did you think of that article?” he asked inquisitively. “Oh Dr. Tozer,” the woman apologized, “I didn’t read it — I just typed it.” Tozer sadly shook his head and walked away.
  • I have to send kudos to Bonnie Pillsworth, my executive assistant, who since 2014 has been not only a great editor of my posts (beyond my own editing), but has also been an outstanding sounding board to help me improve the content.
• When urged by some to resign from Southside Alliance and give full-time attention to the editorship [of the denominational magazine], Tozer was adamant. “I can’t give up the pastorate,” he explained to a friend. “I need that discipline of preaching to the same congregation week after week. Without it, I would go stale. And if I don’t preach, I have no material. When I prepare for the pulpit, then I can write editorials and articles.”
  • I agree. My leadership role at CCCC keeps me current in the practice of leadership. It keeps me grounded in the practical, never leaving a topic as just a theoretical idea. Not only does my current leadership experience give me the motivation to research and write about certain topics, but what I write always feeds back into my leadership. There is a great benefit to leaders who write even if they don’t publish their writing.
• Tozer complained, “I must be going soft in the head. I haven’t had one original thought all week.”
  • A week without an original thought is when I know I need to book some reading and reflection time!

Where to Get Ideas for Writing

You might be feeling like I did when it was suggested that I write a blog: “What do I know that is worth writing about and that people will want to read?” I thought I could write three or four pasts max, but here we are 15 years and more than 355 posts later! Once you start writing, the ideas will flow. I’ve had some lengthy breaks from writing as leadership matters filled my time, but I have lots of ideas for what comes next. I’m sure once you start, the ideas will flow for you as well.
For my situation, creating knowledge content about operating a Christian ministry is what my ministry does, so my blog about organizational leadership fits. For you, you’ll likely want to write about your ministry and its cause or mission, possibly as an advocate for public policy or to educate the public, or you might write for your supporters.
I mentioned above that one source for ideas of what to write about is my own leadership experience. I get my ideas for the blog topics from four main sources:

1. Hearing leaders talk about what’s on their minds.
2. Things I’m thinking about regarding my own leadership.
3. Connecting CCCC’s mission and values to leadership.
4. “Aha!” thoughts that come to me as I read.

Blessings!

The post How Leaders Can Write Original & Creative Content appeared first on CCCC Blogs.

To prepare for my 21st year, I am taking a three-month sabbatical starting in a few weeks. I first took a sabbatical in 2011, which involved two research projects that included visits to ministries in nine countries. You can read about my journey in a series of posts I wrote in real time. It was a busy and exciting adventure! This sabbatical will be very different, as I will simply be taking time away from work to rest and rejuvenate.

For those with questions about sabbaticals, I wrote a post in 2010 that gave the biblical basis for a sabbatical, the different purposes of a sabbatical, how long a sabbatical typically is, potential problems with a sabbatical, and the benefits the organization can expect from a sabbatical.

Lasting Effects of My Sabbatical

Having the gift of a second sabbatical made me think about my first sabbatical and its continuing benefits for CCCC. My reflections from that sabbatical formed the foundational elements of our current strategy and brand, as well as The Green and the Learning Table. As I envisioned a future for CCCC as a resource for building thriving ministry organizations, I realized we needed to add significant new capacity and new capabilities. Since my first sabbatical, CCCC has grown from 14 staff members to 22, and our workplace culture has been dramatically transformed. I didn’t get to this point by myself, of course—I have a wonderful team working with me to make all these dreams come to fruition. But the sabbatical was the catalyst that solidified my dreams and set in motion virtually everything that has happened since.

The Board’s Interest in Giving Sabbaticals

My first sabbatical is still producing fruit 12 years later. Granted, that’s just one person’s experience. Boards that are considering sabbaticals for their ministry leader might want to know if long-term benefits can generally be expected and might wonder if it matters what the leader does while on sabbatical to achieve those benefits. These questions are answered in a research study that examined the benefits of sabbaticals over a 20-year timeframe.

What the Research Says

As I reported back in 2010, a study by the Durfee Foundation found that the benefits of a sabbatical flow well beyond the individuals who take the sabbaticals. The Durfee Foundation has funded sabbaticals for nonprofits in Los Angeles since 1997 and, after 20 years of supporting sabbaticals, they did another study. Their conclusion is that sabbaticals of three or four months have very long-lasting effects on the leaders, their boards and staff, and the organization itself.

Sabbaticals are so much more than a break for worthy nonprofit leaders. They not only rejuvenate leaders—but retain them as well. More often than not, organizational dynamics and culture shift as a result of the absence of a leader—elevating the capacity of second tier leadership, shifting the leader’s perspective from daily management to distributed leadership, allowing for more generative thinking and activity, and creating increased work-life balance for all.

What is particularly special about offering and supporting a three-month sabbatical for nonprofit leaders is that it can be a lever for whole systems change. Like the proverbial pebble thrown in the pond, sabbaticals quickly and organically create lasting change at the personal (attitude/perspective), structural (job descriptions changed, teams restructured), and system (leadership, mission/impact) levels.

Very few capacity building interventions provide as much bang for the buck as the simple act of offering a sabbatical. Even more rare is that the lessons learned are organic and driven from within as each leader, staff and board member experiences the change first-hand, and changes as a result.

From Creative Disruption to Systems Change: A 20-Year Retrospective on the Durfee Foundation Sabbatical Program

Does It Matter How the Sabbatical Is Spent?

The Durfee Foundation funds sabbaticals and allows the leaders to travel, reflect, or otherwise renew in whatever manner they propose. Their research conclusions apply to sabbaticals regardless of what the individual people did during their sabbatical. So no, it doesn’t really matter what the leader does. Just being away from work is what results in the many benefits of a sabbatical.

Key Point: A sabbatical is not just about the leader. The organization, board, and staff all benefit from the leader’s break from work.

The post The Long-Term Benefits of a Sabbatical appeared first on CCCC Blogs.

Just as I did in the previous post in this series, I refer to mission statements throughout this post, but I’m not necessarily referring to the traditional mission statement that describes how your ministry will fulfill its purpose; in other words, its activities. That is ‘mission’ in its narrow sense. ‘Mission’ in its broad sense is about what a ministry exists to accomplish, and the vision (or end statement) is the better description of what your mission is. Think of the vision/end statement as a top-level mission statement. If a ministry has only a traditional mission statement, they would greatly benefit by creating either a vision statement or an end statement.

Unpacking the Mission Statement

The way CCCC unpacked its End Statement and released its power worked very well for us, and you are welcome to use the same process. If you download the presentation CCCC End Statement Unpacked, you will be able to follow along as I review the steps, which are:

1. Identify the Component Parts of the Mission

Break the mission, vision, or end statement into its component parts, isolating each word or phrase that contains a single idea. The meaning of some parts may seem self-evident and not worth exploring any further. We had some like that: “CCCC members” seems clear at face value, as does “will be.” But we unpacked those terms anyway and found, despite their apparent obviousness, that they still contained more nuances than we thought and led to some rich insights for our strategy.

We broke our End Statement into six component parts:

1. CCCC members
2. will be
3. exemplary
4. healthy
5. effective
6. Christian (ministries)

CCCC calls the last four of these components the Pillars of a well-run organization. We want these Pillars to be true of CCCC just as much as we want them to be true of members.

• Exemplary, Healthy, and Effective were derived from literature related to leadership, management, and organizational success and failure.
• The fourth Pillar, Christian, is a necessary Pillar given the Christian identity of our members.

2. Define the Components

Write out what the components mean to your ministry. If your ministry is a church and your mission statement says you will evangelize or be a community that, define those terms so there is no misunderstanding as to what they mean. For example, Who will evangelize – pastors, or everyone in the congregation? If everyone, what does everyone mean – every adult, or kids too? Does your community include members only or does it include regular attendees who are adherents but not members? What about repeat but irregular attendees who have no church home? The definitions you give to your mission statement are extremely helpful for guiding how your ministry will operate.

CCCC researched the literature on how our components relate to organizational life and work, whether of a secular or a religious organization. For example, What makes an organization healthy? There’s a lot of research into that question to help us understand more specifically what we want our members to have more of. Even a simple term like “CCCC members” brought to our attention in a fresh way that our influence extends well beyond our paid membership with implications for marketing and the need for some à la carte products and services.

As examples, here’s how we define three of our components:

• Will be: We expect members to steadily progress towards becoming ever more exemplary, healthy, and effective Christian ministries. This definition means we are not expecting a ministry to fulfill our End statement in an instant. Our End statement is not a standard to comply with but an aspiration to be achieved over time.
• Exemplary: An exemplary ministry provides a compelling example of an organization operating with excellence in its life and work. This definition says that a ministry should not just be exemplary in how it runs its programs but should also be exemplary in how it operates as an organization. In fact, it should be so exemplary that anyone observing the ministry would be persuaded that they should operate in the same way.
• Healthy: A healthy ministry is well-resourced with an ongoing flow of people, money, and strategy so it is indefinitely sustainable and primed for growth. There are many other factors that make an organization healthy, but these are what CCCC considers the top-level ones. Organizational culture, for example, is extremely important, but we placed it under the People category of organizational health.

3. State the Core Attributes of Each Component

Reflect on the work you’ve done on your strategic statement and identify the core attributes of each component. An attribute is a quality, feature, or characteristic that is an important part of a person or thing.¹ This step is about describing the effects that each component of your strategic statement will have outside of your organization.

If part of your purpose is to prepare young adults to serve the church and the world, then the attributes will describe what that preparation needs to build in young adults. The attributes of an adult who serves the church and the world could include volunteerism, other-centredness, and generosity.

Here are the core attributes CCCC defined for the Exemplary part of our End statement:

1. Impeccable. The ministry has an impeccable way of being. Every part of the ministry’s organization is precisely designed to fulfill the ministry’s mission with excellence.
2. Best Practices. A ministry’s organizational life and work are models for best practices.
3. Intellectual Creativity. The ministry researches, experiments, innovates, and advances its field of knowledge for the good of the Christian cause.
4. Trailblazing. The ministry is visionary, bold, and innovative, confidently finding its own way to be relevant and practical in pursuing its mission.

4. Establish and Define Key Indicators for Each Attribute

List and define the indicators that demonstrate each core attribute is present. These indicators will likely be what you measure to prove how well your mission is progressing.

Here are the indicators CCCC developed for two of the core attributes of an exemplary ministry:

Impeccable

• Core Logic. A defined core logic model governs all activities of the ministry. Every activity clearly advances the mission and is designed based on the best mission-related research and wisdom.
• Integrity. Integrity aligns every aspect of the organization with its identity and purpose. It is above reproach. Every facet of the organization is precisely tuned to achieve mission results
• Excellence. Excellence permeates the organization. The ministry consistently achieves superior performance in all aspects of organizational life and work. It is highly regarded for pursuing its mission with the best knowledge and practices available.
• Accountability. There is public accountability for impact. The ministry welcomes scrutiny and makes scrutiny easy.

Intellectual Creativity

• Research-Based. The ministry uses theoretical and evidence-based research. It is up to date in its field and is continuously learning.
• Exploratory & Experimental. The ministry is exploratory and experimental in its mindset. It is willing to accept risks, is creative and curious, and finds inspiration in multidisciplinary areas across industries and sectors.
• Thought Leader. The ministry is a thought leader advancing its fields of knowledge and practice. It shares what it knows with other ministries to allow testing and perfecting of its ideas for the good of all.

5. Set Measurements

Finding a way to measure your progress on each of the success indicators is essential to knowing how well you are accomplishing your mission; however, measurement is beyond the scope of this already lengthy post. I have addressed aspects of the topic in The Measure of Our Success and What to Do with Hard-to-Measure Mission Statements.

When You’re Done Unpacking

Once you are done unpacking your strategic statement, compare the new and more-detailed definition of your purpose with your current programs and services. Identify opportunities to close programs that don’t fit the mission, add new ones that do, and tweak existing programs that need to more closely align with your purpose.

Finally, have every part of your organization, from human resources to administration to IT, develop proposals for how they could better support the mission.

Unpacking your mission statement is one of the best investments of time a leader can make. It will be a gift to the organization and to your staff and volunteers and create the conditions in which you can move forward on mission fulfillment faster than you might think.

The post How to Release Your Mission Statement’s Power appeared first on CCCC Blogs.

Here are four theological truths that can form the basis of a theology of strategy development. Feel free to add additional truths you find meaningful and relevant to strategy formation.

1. Christ Continues to Work in the World Today

Luke says his gospel concerns only what Jesus “began to do and teach,”¹ and yet his gospel and its sequel, Acts, show that Jesus’s time on earth came to an end shortly after the close of the gospel when he ascended into heaven. So how does Jesus continue to do his work?

Luke shows that Jesus continues his work through the Holy Spirit. The Hebrew and Greek words for the Spirit mean “invisibility, movement, power, and life” and convey the idea of “God in action.” The dynamic Spirit actively guides the church and our ministries, meaning that our strategy development process needs to take the Spirit’s leadership seriously, just as Paul did when he changed his plans and went to Macedonia.

Because Christ continues to work in the world today, developing a strategy for a ministry is a cooperative spiritual endeavour between God and the ministry’s leadership team.

2. Leadership Has a Prophetic Role

People act in a prophetic capacity when they speak God’s truth into a situation. They might be speaking truth to power regarding an issue of justice, or they might be making sense of things such as Peter did in his Pentecost sermon when he effectively said “This is that”² and explained what the people were seeing and hearing that day in Jerusalem. Ministry leaders need to act as Peter did: discern God’s leadership of the ministry and then make sense of the ministry’s circumstances based on what God is doing.³ This is the leader’s prophetic role, and it is one very important way they lead the ministry.

Leighton Ford offers a specific process to incorporate God’s leadership into strategy development:

“We must observe carefully and prayerfully where people are hurting and suffering and longing, and what God is doing in the world, until in our hearts we are drawn to an area which may be God’s vision for us. We need to reflect on what we have observed, praying and reading, thinking and talking, and perhaps writing in a journal, until our sense of call begins to emerge and we “see” what it is that God would have us do. Then we must begin to act on that vision.”

Leighton Ford⁴

Ministry leaders can then bring their prophetic understanding of what they’ve discerned to the ministry team for testing, just as Paul did with the dramatic call to Macedonia, by leading the team in a group exercise of discernment and reflection.

For example, at CCCC, we feel strongly led by the Spirit to serve all Christ’s ministries in Canada. In observing that Christ left the 99 sheep to look for the one lost sheep, we understand that every ministry, regardless of size, is important in God’s eyes. For some small ministries, our membership fee, as low as it is, may be a barrier to them receiving our help, so we created the Web Membership to care for these small ministries.

Leaders, make sure your prayer time includes listening prayer and time for meditation on God’s word as it relates to your ministry.

3. God Honours Human Intellect

The Bible shows that God respects humanity, delegates to humanity, and equips humanity with intellect and skills so that we can participate creatively and meaningfully in his mission. God has given us the what to do and usually leaves us to decide how to do it. There is room in Christian strategy development for both divine wisdom and human wisdom. It may surprise some people that divine and human wisdom do not have to be in conflict. The tension between them is resolved in another post, From Human Wisdom to Godly Wisdom.

Two proverbs show that we should use our intellect when making plans:

The naive believes everything, but the sensible man considers his steps.

Prov 14:15

Without consultation, plans are frustrated, but with many counsellors they succeed.

Prov 15:22

Jesus affirmed the value of human wisdom when he told a parable in which a master commended his steward for using human wisdom to act shrewdly when he was called to account for his wasteful ways. The steward protected his future by forgiving people of most of their debt to the master, thus ingratiating himself to them for future benefit. Jesus commended the steward, saying, “For the people of this world are more shrewd in dealing with their own kind than are the people of the light.” ⁵ He similarly approved of kings who consider whether they can win before deciding to go to war.⁶

God expects us to use all our human abilities in his service to discern the specific plans the ministry will act upon.

4. Self-Reliance Impedes God’s Work in Our Ministry

If we believe that our ministry can only accomplish what we ourselves can do, we will only try those strategies that we know we can do and we will not see what God wants to do through us by adding his capabilities to ours.

For example, our weakness is not a limiting factor in God’s eyes:

And He has said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for power is perfected in weakness .”

2 Cor 12:9

And my God will supply all your needs according to His riches in glory in Christ Jesus.

Phil 4:19

We do need to work hard at making ourselves the best possible servants of the Lord (“Be diligent to present yourself approved to God as a workman who does not need to be ashamed.” 2 Tim 2:15), but we should not be driven or consumed by our weaknesses. We should improve what we can, but our best mission progress will occur when we build on our strengths and actively trust God for our areas of weakness. Consultant Jim Galvin says that sometimes we need to start doing something, anything, just to change where we are and help us to find a way to go.

Honour God by actively seeking his guidance and help when developing and implementing strategy.

Because the Sovereign Lord helps me,
    I will not be disgraced.
Therefore have I set my face like flint,
    and I know I will not be put to shame.

Isaiah 50:7

Conclusion

As we engage in strategy development, we must stay open to the Spirit and the contributions God wants to make to our ministry’s work, making sure the entire process is in alignment with God’s ways.

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.

Robert Banks and Bernice Ledbetter, Reviewing Leadership

The post A Theology of Strategy Development appeared first on CCCC Blogs.

When the angels announced the birth of Jesus and declared peace on earth, that peace was not just about life on earth. Paul explained that “Since we have been justified through faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.” For those who believe, peace on earth includes peace with God! What the angels declared, Jesus established as he journeyed from the manger to the cross…and beyond to his heavenly throne.

I encourage you to embrace what it means to be at peace with God because it includes having the confidence of knowing that the God who created the universe is the God who is for you, who called you to ministry, and who equips you to serve. Given these truths, like Paul, we conclude, “What, then, shall we say in response to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us?” We do not labour in ministry solely on our own strength. Christ’s peace means that God is with us and is our ultimate source of strength.

There are many moments—and sometimes even seasons—of both achievement and challenge. In every moment and through every season, I encourage you with Paul’s words, “Let us not become weary in doing good, for at the proper time we will reap a harvest if we do not give up.”

Tapping into the strength that comes with the peace of Christ gives us what we need to persevere in our good deeds. Whether it’s a great day or a tough day, we can confidently press on. This is exactly what Jesus meant when he said, “I have told you these things, so that in me you may have peace. In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world.”

So, how do we “take heart?” I’ve found that one of the most personally encouraging things I can do to take heart is to encourage someone else in some way. When I build someone else up, I am built up too. The biblical proverb is true in my experience, and I’m sure it is in yours too. “Whoever brings blessing will be enriched, and one who waters will himself be watered.” And when we encourage others in ministry, we’re following the instruction in Hebrews which tells us to, “Consider how we may spur one another on toward love and good deeds.”   

One way we can spur one another on is by using the CCCC online community called The Green. This is a digital version of a village green where people gather together. I’ve just started a topic in The Green called “Peace Through Encouragement” and have posted some uplifting comments. You can join this conversation to encourage others and to be encouraged by them. We can do what Paul told the Thessalonians to do, to “encourage one another and build each other up, just as in fact you are doing.” Let’s create a collection of encouraging words to build each other up and make The Green a place where any of us can go to be encouraged and strengthened any time we want.

As we experience the peace that is ours through Jesus Christ and as we feel the support of each other through the encouraging words we share on The Green, may we all be strengthened and emboldened in ministry this Christmas season…and beyond.

From all of us at CCCC, Merry Christmas to you. God Bless!

The post God’s Christmas Gift to Us: Peace Through Christ appeared first on CCCC Blogs.

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.

CCCC will celebrate its 50th anniversary on October 12, 2022. Milestones like this provide moments to step out of the day-to-day to look back and reflect on the past.

In the first post of this series, we looked at how to do a historical review and decide what you would like to preserve or revive from your ministry’s past.

In this post, I’ll present another use of the historical review: to crystallize what you don’t want to carry forward from your past.

Through our own historical review, CCCC has left behind or radically changed some longstanding programs that are part of our origin story (which I’ll share below).

Leaving Legacies Behind

Your ministry may have been founded with a particular program, culture, or way of operating that was perfectly appropriate for its time but that isn’t the best option for today. The leaders who followed the founders also left you with the results of their time in leadership. Your ministry today has accumulated lots of legacies from its earlier years and bringing those legacies to an end can seem like a rejection of your predecessors. It is even more difficult to do away with their legacies if staff and supporters are attached to them. Such attachments prevent us from moving forward today as we should.

It’s easier for everyone to break from the past when we acknowledge that our predecessors did what was right given what they knew and their circumstances at the time. If they were present with us today, they might make different decisions given current knowledge and circumstances, decisions that might look a lot like the ones we’re wanting to make. We can still respect and honour them even while letting go of parts of their legacy.

If you serve long enough in leadership at the same ministry, some day you will find yourself overturning one of your own decisions. Having done this makes it easier to lead your organization in breaking from the past because you yourself have broken from your own past, which shows you are not treating your predecessors any differently than you treat yourself.

For example, in 2006 CCCC introduced a new brand with the tagline “Advancing Ministry Together.” This was the perfect positioning statement at the time and I was thrilled to approve it. However, in 2020 we replaced that tagline, and I was thrilled to approve the new one: “Supporting Ministries in a Complex World.”

It wasn’t that the previous tagline was bad. Not at all. It did its job positioning CCCC as advancing the mission of the Church alongside our members, striving for the same overall goal within a peer relationship. But by 2020, that point had been made. Now, we want to highlight how, by helping members address the complexities of operating a charity, we free them up to devote more of their time and attention to fulfilling their missions. This supports our End Statement which says we want our members to be exemplary, healthy, and effective Christian ministries. There is no shame in overturning earlier decisions because you need to make the best decision for your ministry at its current place in time.

Focus On the Ends, Not the Means

If your ministry’s core identity is based on anything other than your vision and values, you leave your ministry vulnerable to the vicissitudes of time. Supporters and others who identify your ministry with anything that is secondary to your true purpose will have a hard time staying connected with your ministry as it adapts and changes its programs or its way of being over time because they are preoccupied with mourning the loss of what once was.

Put first things first, front and centre. Achieving the vision is the reason your ministry exists. Your mission is to make the vision a reality or as close to reality as we can get before Christ returns. Corporate values also need to be front and centre because they are the screen you use to guide corporate behaviour and evaluate the choices the ministry must make,

Origin stories are very powerful, so their focus should be on the vision and values that led to the ministry’s creation. In your origin story, present the ministry’s initial programs, culture, and way of being as representative of how the vision and values were applied at that time, leaving it open for you to show how changes today are the result of the same vision and values being applied in current circumstances.

If you’d like additional help for dealing with the legacies of the past, read my post, Corporate History: Resource or Constraint? 

What to Leave Behind

Deciding what to leave behind starts with evaluating the programs and support functions that you have questions about. Sometimes you just know in your heart that a legacy needs to go, but you should still do an evaluation to verify that what you believe is true. The point is to have a factual understanding of the results they produce and to test your assumptions about what is working and what isn’t. Once the evaluations are done, you are ready to consider what needs to be left behind to make room for something better.

Here are some ways to help you make that decision. They can be used together or separately. The more difficult the decision, the more helpful it is to come at the decision from different angles.

A Strategic Process

Imagine you are creating a new ministry with the same purpose as your current ministry. With no legacies from the past and no constraints imposed by people or resources, what programs would the new ministry have? How would it be structured? How would it be funded? What would you do in-house and what would you outsource? What assets would you need? What values would guide your decisions? What corporate culture would support the way you want the ministry to work?

Now, what do you want to incorporate from the hypothetical new ministry into your current ministry?

And finally, the key point, What from your current ministry has to go to make room for the new?

An “Accounting” Process

This process makes use of an accounting concept, zero-based budgeting. It is most obviously applicable to decisions about which programs to offer, but it can also be used for values and culture. Applying values such as excellence has a cost (quality management, equipment, etc.) as does building and maintaining a corporate culture (training, branding, etc.). And it can be used to assess fundraising and other support functions.

When budgets are created, the typical starting point is the previous year’s budget or the projected year-end actual results. Zero-based budgeting starts with no budget at all, and every expense must be justified as a new expense. Nothing is taken for granted. The old will compete against the new and the best use of resources gets included in the budget. This approach is similar to the strategic approach above in that it forces you to start fresh.

A Stewardship Process

A basic responsibility of ministry leaders is to provide good stewardship of the ministry’s resources. A simple question to ask about how well time and money are being used is, Given the evaluation of results, is this a good use of our time and money? If not, is there a way to improve what we are doing to get better results? If not, then let it go and put the resources to better use.

“But, but, but…”

You might be concerned that time and money already invested in something that is then cancelled will be wasted. The way to look at sunk costs is to accept that nothing can be done about them because they have already been spent. You might be able to recoup some of them, but the real question is, Given that yesterday’s investments can’t be undone, what is the best use of the resources you have to invest today? If you continue to fund an inferior option, then good money is going after bad. The best thing to do is to invest now in the superior option.

Some Examples from CCCC

All of the following programs were considered flagship programs for CCCC and all of them have either been terminated or radically transformed. The Bulletin and the Conference were the two programs we started in our first year, and the Charities Handbook and Regional Seminars were two very long-running programs.

The Bulletin

When CCCC started, it did not have members. Instead, it had subscribers because the very first program was the CCCC Educator newsletter, the precursor to the CCCC Bulletin. Based on an interview our first executive director gave to the KW Record, they were still called subscribers as late as November 1984.

CCCC started with 45 subscribers who received a print edition of the Educator by mail. Over time, the newsletter developed into a glossy magazine format and then into a digital publication. Content creation was determined by the publishing schedule and the printed newsletters/magazines formed our knowledge base.

When the Internet became available, CCCC created a website and, in time, Bulletin articles were reproduced on the site. Later, a full digital copy of the Bulletin was included.

The problem was that the only way to get information into the website’s knowledge base was to write an article for the Bulletin, so the production of new knowledge was limited to what could be published in five print edition Bulletins per year. This was an economic decision because the number of issues and their page counts had budget implications. The bigger consideration was that knowledge on the same topic could be spread over many articles written over many years, making it difficult for members to know when they had fully covered a topic.

Today, CCCC has a completely different way of informing our members. Content is created directly for the CCCC Knowledge Base in real-time and the Bulletin is no longer a newsletter or magazine but an e-blast that is sent 11 times per year to advise members of the Knowledge Base’s new content. In addition, we are in the process of consolidating all the different articles into booklets. Members will be able to start reading an overview of a topic and then go deeper if they like.

By choosing to no longer produce the print edition of the Bulletin, we were able to reallocate the related costs of about $60,000 per year to developing and maintaining a far superior knowledge base.

The Charities Handbook

The Charities Handbook evolved from a seminar handout for church treasurers. The 2006 edition marked a significant step in its development when CCCC began justifying every statement with legal and regulatory citations and those that could not be supported were removed. This process took a few editions to complete, but it transformed the Charities Handbook into an authoritative publication that was valued not only by our members but also by lawyers and accountants who served charities. It also was used by the Charities Directorate as a reference book.

By the 2010s, however, the cost of printing and mailing the Charities Handbook was over $100,000 per edition, which made it a very expensive member benefit. That cost could no longer be justified given that publishing a digital book was now an option. Today, it is still available as a digital publication but it has also been divided into smaller topical units housed in our Knowledge Base.

The printing and mailing budget was reallocated to salaries, which we used to hire additional staff with capabilities that were new to CCCC and we used those capabilities to develop new programs.

The Conference and Regional Seminars

The first conference was held within a year of CCCC’s founding and it continued until 2016. A highlight was the awards ceremony in 2004 for the Best Christian Workplaces in Canada.

We became aware of the Best Christian Workplace Institute from attending a Christian Management Association conference in the spring of that year and wanted to bring the employee engagement survey to Canada and have the first celebration of Canadian Best Christian Workplaces only four months later! It was a very tight deadline, but we made it. We even adapted it for Canada. In the US, charities were ranked by their results and the top ten got recognition for being #5 or #1 as the case may be. In Canada, CCCC wants every Christian workplace to be a winner, so we said every charity that scored 4.0 or higher (out of 5) would be recognized as a Best Christian Workplace without regard to the ranking of their individual scores.

The conferences took an extremely large amount of staff time throughout the year as plenary and workshop topics were defined, speakers recruited, handout material produced, and logistics of the venues worked out. We always covered our out-of-pocket expenses but never covered our salary expense of $100,000. The same held true for the regional seminars, which cost us about $45,000 per year in staff time.

The purpose of these programs was to inform our members and give them access to experts who augmented the internal expertise that CCCC had. However, the impact was limited in terms of the number of participants at each one-time event and we felt it simply was not good stewardship to put such a large part of our resources into programs that benefited only a small percentage of our membership.

The most significant benefit of cancelling these two legacy programs was the amount of staff time that was freed up to pursue more impactful programs: the Knowledge Base, The Learning Table (online courses), The Green (online community), and Webinars (often with external experts). These programs convey the content of the former programs but in a format that reaches many more people and that can be accessed when users want as opposed to waiting for live events delivered on our schedule. Members can still interact with and learn from each other through The Green and they still have access to experts through recorded webinars.

The Savings

By leaving these programs behind, CCCC freed up over $300,000 of its budget to invest heavily in new programs to benefit our members. We put an end to bootstrapping our way forward by hiring new staff with the new capabilities we needed to shape our future in just the way that we want it to be.

Key Point: Leave legacies behind when there are better options today.

The post Looking Back: Leaving a Legacy Behind appeared first on CCCC Blogs.

On October 12, 2022, the Canadian Centre for Christian Charities (CCCC) turns 50 years old! It’s time to celebrate! As we celebrate CCCC, we’re celebrating you, our members, because you are the reason we reached our 50th anniversary.

CCCC would like to show its gratitude by giving our members (and those considering membership) an anniversary gift in the form of this series of posts to help you reflect on your ministry’s past, assess its present state, and plan its desired future. Our goal for this series is to provide a curated package of supportive information in the following areas:

• Generating ideas for strategic thinking
• Freeing up resources to focus on new initiatives
• Keeping corporate values meaningful day-to-day
• Telling your story with impact
• Attuning your ministry to the Spirit’s leadership
• Keeping your ministry in its prime of life
• Readily making corrections
• Discerning your strategic trajectory
• Developing a change-ready team

As the staff of CCCC mark the passage of time with our anniversary, we are thinking of how the value of a 360º reflection (past, present, and future) can be applied at any time to create a significant moment in a ministry’s history. You don’t have to wait for a milestone anniversary to get the benefit of stepping out of the day-to-day of ministry life to look back, look around, and look ahead. We invite you to walk with us through this series to explore the possibilities for your ministry.

Let’s start by looking back through your ministry’s history. This post will highlight two aspects of your ministry’s past that could provide source material for strategic planning today. There will be four more posts in the series that will also draw from this historical review, so the review is well worth doing.

Organizational Benefits of Reviewing Corporate History

There are several significant benefits that arise from a historical review:

• The review gives you a unique and authentic story to tell because it is your story. It will provide lots of source material for telling your story and draw attention to the “why” of your organization’s existence, which in turn will motivate your staff and supporters.
  • As a company that documents corporate histories says, “Your company’s history is a humanizing force for your brand, as it tells the stories of the people and communities that have worked together to build its successful legacy.“
• A sense of history provides context for the work being done today by placing it within a journey from one place to another. Knowledge of corporate history gives staff a springboard for thinking about the present with a bigger mindset as they build on the work of those who came before while being aware that they are laying the foundation for others who will come after them. The current staff will enjoy knowing they have their place in the ministry’s history in the same way their predecessors have.
• The review will broaden your team discussions by adding the voices of previous leaders into the mix. They might make different decisions in today’s circumstances than they did back then, but they would apply the same values. Add their voices by incorporating their values into your corporate statements.
  • For example, CCCC’s first corporate value is “Evangelical in Identity; Ecumenical in Service.” The idea behind that value was expressed by the directors in the very first board meeting. The first executive director, Frank Luellau, also stressed that value in a 1984 interview with the KW Record. When we developed corporate values in the late 2000s, we looked back to that meeting and accepted their decision as one we wanted to keep front and centre as one of our values.
• If the ministry has changed its mission, values, or identity, the review provides an opportunity to pause and discuss whether the changes have been good ones or if the ministry would be better off reconsidering the changes.
• If your current corporate culture has any problematic aspects, the corporate history might provide some clues as to how it originated and give you insight into how to correct it.

Personal Benefits of Reviewing Corporate History

Aside from the organizational benefits of reviewing your ministry’s history, there are also benefits for the person who does the review. The review takes work, but it isn’t hard work. I found it quite pleasant, and, through it, I gained in several ways:

• It added depth to my understanding of who CCCC is and what it is about.
• Lots of fascinating details emerged that add colour to our story and sparked new creative thoughts about CCCC.
• Similar to the point above about being on a journey, the historical review made me feel that my time in leadership is but a link in a chain of leaders that is anchored in a specific creative act on October 12th, 1972 at the one end and which extends to some undetermined point long after my time at CCCC at the other end. This idea fosters a sense of humility.
• The review reinforced my sense of being a steward rather than a leader.
• I enjoyed meeting people whom I had previously only known as names on a list.
• I developed a stronger sense of gratitude and appreciation for what former staff had accomplished.
• It turned my mind to my own legacy. When my successors celebrate our 75th or 100th anniversaries, what will they remember as my contribution to CCCC?

What to Review

Here’s a list that comes to mind for what you could include in your review:

• Corporate histories that have already been written or drafted
• Annual reports (CCCC didn’t have any public annual reports, but we did have annual reports to the board from the executive director.)
• AGM reports (These usually include a review of strategy and plans for the future, as well as a recap of significant events throughout the year.)
• Board minutes (Rather than reading every set of minutes, just scan the agendas first to see if there was anything of historical interest discussed at the meeting. That will save a lot of time! I was glad that CCCC has only three board meetings per year!)
• Management meeting minutes (This part of the review could easily be overwhelming because of the number of meetings. It would be best to start this review by zeroing in on some key times when significant decisions were made. As an alternative, interviewing managers from the time may be quicker.)
• Interview key people:
  • The founder(s) (I interviewed our founder, Ian Stanley, about the origin of CCCC.)

• Other significant people included:
  • The only other surviving member of the group of six friends whom Ian brought together to launch CCCC, Lindsay Neilson. You can read about how CCCC came to be and its early history.)
  • Previous board chairs (I interviewed the two board chairs of the working board, one of whom was our founder.)
  • Previous directors (I did this by a survey.)
  • Former staff and long-serving current staff (I did this by survey.)
  • Previous senior pastors/executive directors (In my case, I had only one person to interview because, in 50 years, I am just the second executive director.)

• Strategic plans and source documents used in the process
• Survey results (such as marketing or donor surveys)
• Press coverage of the ministry
• Program evaluations
• Reports from consultants
• Documentation of changes to the mission and vision statements as well as corporate values

Ways to Interpret the Source Material

My approach to analyzing the source material included the following questions:

• Are there any signs of God’s activity and leading throughout the ministry’s history?
  • How did this ministry experience God’s blessing, and can you hypothesize why God blessed the ministry?
  • Were there any times when the ministry did not flourish or it appeared to be under God’s judgment? What were the circumstances?
• Did individuals have a personal sense of call that led them to this ministry? If so, what were their calls? How did they intersect with the ministry’s mission?
• What were the motivations behind what the history reveals? What were people trying to achieve?
• What were their values? Their priorities? Their vision? Are they still valid today?
• What options did they reject?
• What were their triumphs and successes?
• What challenges did they face and how did they overcome them? Or did they? What did they learn from failure?
• How did they make the decisions they did? Was spiritual discernment involved? Was it based on human wisdom (this can be a good thing)?
• Were the changes they made radical changes or incremental developments? Focus on the reasons for the radical changes. In our case, the board once made a radical change to the mission statement, only to reverse their decision soon afterwards. All the other mission statements made sense as natural developments. Retracting the outlier mission statement gave me insight into what was considered (on second thought) to be off-mission.
• What personal traits did the individuals tend to have? Are they different from the staff and volunteers today?
• What testimonials were given about the ministry?

What to Do With the Past

Once the history has been reviewed, there is a lot you can do with it (as will be addressed in four other posts of this series). But for now, let’s analyze your ministry’s history in terms of two questions:

1. Which aspects of your history are still with you that you want to preserve?
2. Which aspects of your history are no longer present that you would like to revive?

Preserve the Past

There might be programs, practices, values, culture, or other distinguishing attributes from your past that are still part of your ministry and that you want to be sure to preserve into the future. If so, document your decision and its rationale and include it as part of your ongoing historical narrative so people in future years will find it. You could also work the decisions and their rationales into the appropriate program rationales, corporate culture document, or team values as the case may be. Point out to staff that these elements of your ministry have a history and are a continuing, valuable part of your developing history. Of course, check if they have become stale in today’s environment and update them as appropriate.

CCCC did its historical review over a period of years from about 2006 to 2011. Two of the answers about what we wanted to keep were:

• Providing information was the first purpose of CCCC, and this is still our core service. We started in pre-Internet days when information was much harder to come by. Today, information is free on many websites, so we have found numerous ways to add value to our information and maintain the value proposition of membership.
• The human dimension became an important part of CCCC in its early years, starting in 1980 when members were able to write letters to ask questions and board members would write back with the answers. When staff was hired, members could phone and ask questions. Today, members contact us by phone, email, or via The Green. Our commitment to the human dimension of our ministry extends to having a real person answering our phones. We will preserve live interactions with our members while giving people the option to get their answers for themselves from our Knowledge Base.

Revive the Past

In the same way, some programs, practices, values, culture, or other distinguishing attributes from your past that are not part of your ministry today might be worth reviving.

Under current leadership, CCCC has made many changes to how it works and how it relates to its members. These changes came from several sources, including biblical-theological reflection, suggestions made by people, and strategic thinking. But if we had not had any of those sources, it is good to know that the historical review would have brought us to the same place as we are today.

Here are some examples of elements of the early CCCC that have been revived:

Playfulness

• Reading through old editions of CCCC’s original newsletter, one can find poetry including “The Story of Frederick R. Birch” with the subtitle “Do Your Givin’ While You’re Livin’ Then You’re Knowin’ Where It’s Goin’.” Another was a humorous poem for church treasurers.
• There were occasional standalone jokes, such as “It’s getting more and more difficult to support the government in the style to which it has become accustomed.”
• We even had the occasional recurring comic strip called “Pontius’ Puddle.”

Today, the CCCC Brand Voice (“Persona”) includes “being humorous, playful when appropriate:”

• We see playfulness in this blog, which has a tag for poetry. One post even has a poem I wrote for leaders called “Opportunity’s Genesis.” Christian Leadership Reflections is a serious topic for a blog but I have included some humour and self-deprecating stories in the posts.
• The last couple of annual conferences we held had some playfulness to them too. At one, we had a giant black-and-white puzzle showing the work of all kinds of Christian ministries. Attendees sat at a table to colour the individual pieces. It made quite a colourful picture when it was assembled. We also had a microphone inside something like a Nerf ball that people threw across the audience to the next person in line to speak.

• Our communications through social media have seen an uptick in playfulness over the past few years.
• Internally, we have introduced a Social Committee to regularly infuse fun into our workplace.

Spiritual

• Also in the historical documents were devotionals. One was titled “Powerful Prayer Principles,” another “Where God Lives,” and a third “Peace Is A Priceless Treasure.”
• There were Bible studies. Preston Manning wrote a four-page Bible study on “Christians and Politics” in 1982. You can read his concluding thoughts. Others wrote Bible studies about the Bible and psychology.
• There were prayers, such as “A Supervisor’s Prayer” that appeared in the May 1973 newsletter (the very first issue of what became the CCCC Bulletin, which was first called “CCCC Educator”).

Today, Christian spirituality is a core part of CCCC’s organization:

• We pray at all staff meetings for prayer requests submitted by our members.
• Where appropriate, we include theological reflection in our materials.
• We provide staff devotionals for our members in the God’s Workplace section of our website.

• We have prayers that can be said for all ministry staff positions in a free download called God’s Handiwork.

• In 2004, we produced paraphrased Scripture readings for some staff positions, such as this one based on 1 Corinthians 13 for ministry leaders and managers called “A Song of the Steward.”
• In the early 2010s, various staff members wrote a set of devotionals on stewardship for our Accredited Members to use in donor communications.

Key Point: Your corporate history can be a treasure trove of good ideas for your ministry today.

The post Looking Back: History’s Strategic Value appeared first on CCCC Blogs.

In honouring her today as she passed away, I am posting this video of a stirring rendition of God Save The Queen that I recorded and posted in honour of her 91st birthday. She served us so well!

The post A Musical Tribute to Queen Elizabeth II appeared first on CCCC Blogs.