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.

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 addition to advocating on behalf of others, churches may need to deal with public policy or laws that directly affect the way they fulfill their mission as churches, such as happened during the COVID-19 pandemic. This post applies in this scenario as well.

Four Options for Advocacy 

The four options are:

1. Comply either because you agree with the law/policy or want to show goodwill if you don’t.
2. Consult with the appropriate authorities when they are agreeable to discussion.
3. Challenge the authorities when they are not agreeable to discussion with either a protest or a legal challenge.
4. Disobey the authorities when circumstances are so egregious and the authorities are so resistant that this is the only option.  

Indicators for Compliance

The starting point should always be to comply with government laws and regulations, as the New Testament is clear that Christians are to obey their governments, unless a particular government directive is deemed to be unjust. In that case, Christians can move directly to a more active step to change the law.

Christian ministries could choose to comply while at the same time either consulting with or challenging the authorities. The principle is to start with Comply, then move to Consult, Challenge, and Disobey in that order.

Indicators for Consultation

Consulting with people who have the power or the influence to bring about the change you want means that you are constructively working with them to problem-solve a solution that everyone can live with. This option is viable if:

• You have goodwill because you are complying.
• You have expertise and a fact-based proposal that will carry weight in the secular world.
• You can reach people who can make a difference. This may be a politician, a policy analyst, or other person of influence who in turn has the ear of the person who can make the decision you want.

Indicators for Challenge

A challenge is more adversarial than consulting is. A legal challenge or peaceful protest creates a confrontation and is a little riskier because the outcome could reinforce the way things are, the very thing you are trying to change. But this is a good option if:

• You have obtained legal advice that your challenge has reasonable grounds.
• You can make a strong case for how the public will benefit from a win. 

Indicators for Disobedience

Virtually all defenders of civil disobedience (who see it as a basic right, even a duty) stress that a citizen should take this step only after all conventional channels for redress have been exhausted, because civil disobedience has potentially serious consequences. The indicators favouring civil disobedience are:

• Just like the indicators favouring a challenge:
  • You have obtained legal advice that your defense has reasonable grounds.
  • You can make a strong case for how the public will benefit from a win (especially if the proposed change would benefit Christian churches or ministries).
• You can disobey without using violence.
• You are willing to accept the consequences.

There is a high likelihood of fines and possibly even jail time if you disobey the law, so know in advance what you are getting yourself and your team into.

If you choose to disobey, there is a “must read” guide published by The Evangelical Fellowship of Canada: an excellent primer on civil disobedience that includes a discussion on when civil disobedience is justified. Study this and make good use of it if civil disobedience is your choice.

Final Questions to Ask

Three questions to ask before selecting a response option may help confirm that it is the right choice for your ministry: 

1. What is the lasting legacy we want to leave with the secular public when this is all over? 
2. Will this response damage Jesus Christ’s reputation and that of the church? 
3. Will this decision help us fulfill the church’s mission?

Concluding Thought

Deciding between the response options can be a weighty and difficult choice, but the Lord has promised to give us wisdom when we ask it of him (James 1:5).

The post  Advocating for Legal/Public Policy Changes appeared first on CCCC Blogs.

Here’s my testimony about the linked post. I wrote it based on my own experience of digging deep into the CCCC mission statement. I find it very exciting to think about our statement: CCCC members will be exemplary, healthy, and effective Christian ministries. Just the idea of thousands of churches and agencies further living up to that description excites me because of the greater effect they will have on Canadians and our society.

But there’s much more to get excited about!

When I think about what we have to do to fulfill our mission statement, all I can say is I get so excited I can barely contain myself! Plumbing the depths of a mission statement makes it very clear what must be done to achieve it and I look forward to developing or tweaking the programs that will do the job.

This post from April 12, 2021 walks you through a process to discover how your mission statement can transform your church’s priorities and programs. You will be thrilled with the result. And best of all, as a pastor you get the fun of implementing the ideas.

I can’t overstate the impact your mission statement can have. It resulted in CCCC changing its name and its branding, while leading to new programs and a new corporate ethos. Check this post out and discover its power for yourself!

The post Explore Your Mission Afresh appeared first on CCCC Blogs.

It falls to the role of the pastor to bring the congregation back to the main thing: Jesus Christ and his mission for the church. In this post from January 6, 2021, I suggest some ways you can restore peace to your church.

The post The Main Thing appeared first on CCCC Blogs.

Here’s a helpful thought: it is all too easy to accept your first impression of a matter as the truth about the matter. If you think a situation is a problem, then that is what you will see and you will go to work to fix the problem. Your implied goal is to return to normal and then carry on as you did before. In many cases, this is the appropriate way to handle a problem. However, there are cases where the attempt to fix something will prevent you from seeing the need to change or the opportunities that the so-called problem has opened up for you.

Some things to think about when confronting a problem are:

• By fixing this, am I just delaying the inevitable change I will someday have to make?
• If this problem could not possibly be fixed, how would I recover from the setback?
• What good is hidden in this problem?

The best thing to do when a problem arises is to reframe the situation from a problem to an opportunity. It’s a common truism that necessity is the mother of invention. A problem needing a solution can serve as the stimulus that drives us to creative new opportunities.

The problem we all face as I write this is the COVID-19 pandemic and the associated issues of vaccines and public health rules. This post from January 21, 2021 explores the gifts that God has given us in the current disruption.

The post Reframe the Problem appeared first on CCCC Blogs.

There are times in the life of any ministry when the work is just plain hard. Sometimes much harder than anyone ever thought it would be. Ministry can be difficult and wearying. And yet, as the ministry leader it is up to you to rally the troops and lead them forward. What to do? How do you keep your own spirits up so you can inspire everyone else? A previous post has ideas for staying inspired when you have a long uphill road ahead of you to fulfill your mission. Those ideas are good in any scenario. This post, however, has ideas specifically for when the work is very hard and you are getting discouraged.

In Hard Times, Rely on Established Practices

This first strategy for dealing with hard times is to go back to basics. Hopefully, you have already established regular routines and practices that keep you grounded in your faith, vibrant in your relationship with the Lord, and well connected to other people. When you are thrown into a crisis or a prolonged time of tough slogging, these routines and practices are there to support you.

Too often, we try to be the hero and forge through difficult times relying on our own strength. But it is through working with other people that our combined skills, gifts, experiences, and education provide the breakthroughs. You are not designed to do ministry (or life) on your own. This is why God gives people different gifts and roles.

One of the striking things about how Dietrich Bonhoeffer coped with being thrown into a Nazi jail was how his regular observance of the Church year continued in his small cell, giving him a sense of connection with his family and friends on the outside who also observed the Church year. While he was indeed alone in his cell, he knew he was not suffering alone. Even when they could not physically be with him, it comforted and strengthened him to know they were engaged in the same Christian practices at the same time as he was. If just the idea of solidarity had such a powerful effect on Bonhoeffer, how much more of a powerful effect should we experience when people are physically with us and able to help us?

The Practices

Make four practices part of your regular routine so they are available when you especially need them in hard times. If these four aren’t yet part of your routine and you are already in the midst of a very hard time, it’s not too late to turn to them.

1. Pray and discern how God is leading you.
   1. Psalms 13 (when you feel forgotten by God), 69 (when you are in great distress), and 34 (encouragement for when you hope for rescue) are great examples of David’s prayers in hard times. You can pray emotional prayers just like David did. Be real when speaking with God. He’s big enough to hear the raw you and he wants you to be honest in your prayers.
   2. Read my post A Leader’s Intimacy with God for some ideas on building your relationship with God. The most important point of that post in the context of hard times is to remember that the ministry you lead is Christ’s ministry, not yours. Let Jesus carry the ultimate responsibility for your ministry.
   3. I have some posts to help you with discerning God’s voice, a skill that is absolutely essential to successful ministry leadership.
2. Ask for help. Often leaders mistakenly think it’s lonely at the top and they have to bear their troubles and trials on their own. That is absolutely not true! It is only lonely at the top only if you want it to be lonely at the top. There are people who want to help you, but they may not know you want help. They may be too intimidated to offer help. There is no shame in asking for help: it is the wise thing to do and wise people will respect you for asking. Asking for help acknowledges that you are only human. And it shows people you respect them and believe they have what you need. Asking for help lets other parts of the body of Christ contribute what they can to overcome the obstacle. Don’t let pride prevent you from asking for help.
   
   Years ago, I pushed my infant daughter in her stroller on a long and steep walk up out of a deep ravine. Near the end, I suddenly felt I was being pushed ahead and the load became easier. You can see why in the above picture. When my family got behind me to push me up the last part of the hill, what was hard became a lot easier.
3. Connect authentically with peers and others. When you meet, put aside the usual success-focused chatter and get real. People are generally afraid to be the first one to get real, so be the one to take the risk. It’s highly likely that the response will be encouragement and support. I take this risk when I meet ministry leaders and almost every time the conversation suddenly turns to something far deeper than where the conversation started as they open up in response.
4. Remember God’s support. God promises to give wisdom when we ask for it and we know he also equips us for our tasks. But God can also work in people and circumstances around us in ways that only he can do. Ask God to support you. Even though he supports you anyway (he did call you, after all), explicitly asking makes you more aware that God is with you.

Overcome Feelings of Inadequacy

Wondering if you are the right person to lead when faced with a severe challenge is normal. Didn’t we all feel a sudden pang of inadequacy when the COVID-19 pandemic was first declared and we learned how disruptive it would be? I know I did. But thankfully, the Lord God likes to work through people who feel inadequate. God used Moses, Gideon, Esther, and others who felt they didn’t have what it would take to fulfill their missions. After the first pang of inadequacy, I felt God’s comfort and strength as I followed the advice I’m giving in this post.

What should we remember when we feel weak and inadequate? Well, when Paul had a weakness and asked God to take it away, the Lord said to him:

“My grace is sufficient for you, for power is perfected in weakness.”

2 Corinthians 12:9a

Awareness of a weakness or perceived inadequacy should simply drive you to turn to God for greater awareness of his grace. Remember that God equips everyone he calls with what they need to fulfill their call. Part of that equipping might be the people God placed around you. They share a call to the same mission, but they have different equipping than you have. This is what God did by providing Moses with Aaron. The group of you can then work together on your shared mission and by doing that, the group helps you fulfill your call.

Fight Imposter Syndrome

There is a thought pattern arising from feelings of inadequacy called Imposter Syndrome. You have it when you doubt your skills, talents, or accomplishments and have a persistent internalized fear of being exposed as a “fraud.”¹ It can really debilitate you. If you suffer from this, challenge it with this thought: you were called by God who knows you inside out; he knows your weaknesses and yet he still called you. You are not an imposter. You are exactly the person God wanted for what you are doing. Success with your call does not depend on perfection or on you alone. It depends on your obedience to God.

There are also things that only God can do through his Spirit. So don’t try to do his work. Do everything you can and pray for God to do the rest.

Deal with Weariness and Despair

Over time we can become weary and even despair when we look at the enormity of the problems we address through our ministries. I wrote a post that addresses this exact issue. I reread it as I wrote this paragraph and, at least for me, I find it tremendously encouraging.

Contemporary Circumstances

There are two issues that are really challenging right now related to the pandemic and social conditions.

COVID-19 Pandemic Issues

The pandemic has been especially hard on pastors. They have had to deal not only with all the changes to how their churches worship and conduct their programs, but they have done this while enduring the many opposing opinions held by members of their congregations. Their concern is: how will pastors be able to lead their congregations forward in unity once the pandemic is over?

Before going further, I and every other Christian must say a huge "Thank you!" to the pastors who have guided us and helped us stay steady in our faith and Christian life throughout the pandemic. To every one of you I say, "Thank you! Well done."

If this is an issue you are troubled by, please see my post Making Peace in Your Church. Now is the time to provide leadership like never before to help your congregation navigate through and out of the pandemic. Show them how it is done in God’s kingdom.

Something else to think about is just how far we’ve come since March 2020. Who would have thought churches everywhere would be streaming their services? That virtually everyone would get comfortable with video meetings? This past year, you have likely led with more strength than you ever have because you have guided your congregation through all the tumult and disruption. Congratulations! Celebrate what you and your team did. It’s beginning to look like the end of the pandemic is in sight, at least as I write this in the first days of July 2021.

Social Issues

Another issue is troubling, especially for older leaders who have seen the whole world they once knew turned upside down and the pace of upheaval accelerate rapidly in recent years. Like waters rushing through rapids, postmodern thinking has swept us up and carried us swirling down the river into a strange new world without objective truth, the antithesis to everything Christians believe based on God’s own revelation in Scripture. In these tumultuous times, some leaders wonder if they are the ones to take their ministries into a future that looks so contrary to God’s way for humanity.

If this is your concern, it may be helpful to remember that the Church has twice before had to adapt to a complete change in how the world works. The first time was due to the collapse of the Roman Empire, and the second was the decline of feudalism. Both times, the Church ultimately figured out how to adapt and through bursts of creativity recovered from the losses it had suffered in the transitions.

Remember, the Spirit Will Guide Us

We can be confident about our future because Jesus gave us the Holy Spirit precisely to guide us² so we can handle issues like we face today. Take heart that the Holy Spirit continues to breathe new life into the Church each and every day. The end of the Roman Empire resulted in the birth of religious orders that led to renewal in the Church. Today we have multiple movements within the Christian church creatively testing ways forward. It may take time to assess these new ways of being the Church, but the Spirit will help us discern what to do. Be confident. Be patient. Keep giving God your best.

In the End

Just because God called you to ministry does not mean your ministry will be easy. Ministry can be very hard and there is no denying that. But even in the midst of hard times, God provides the people and the equipping you need. And whatever is not provided is what God has left for himself to do.

Let’s not become discouraged in doing good, for in due time we will reap, if we do not become weary. Galatians 6:9

CCCC’s members can discuss this post in The Green.

Key Thought: Knowing God’s perspective changes everything.

The post When Ministry Becomes Hard: Help Is at Hand appeared first on CCCC Blogs.

Though not typically engaged in advocacy, a church recently wrote an open letter to the BC Minister of Health and Chief Medical Officer about church gathering restrictions, and I was inspired by how well it was crafted. This letter is interesting to study because a) we all can identify with the issue it addresses, and b) there isn’t the wealth of research and background support material to draw upon as there is for the traditional advocacy causes. That means the authors had to put a lot of thought into constructing an argument based upon reason. Given that, the open letter did a great job of laying out a challenge to the governing authorities and supporting it with reason. We can learn from the letter about how to address other issues we may face.

In my post Advocating for Legal/Public Policy Changes, I outlined four possible responses to actions taken by those in authority:

1. Comply with the law either because you agree with it or want to show goodwill if you don’t.
2. Consult with the appropriate authorities when they are agreeable to discussion.
3. Challenge the authorities when they are not agreeable to discussion with either a protest or a legal challenge.
4. Disobey the authorities when circumstances are so egregious and the authorities are so resistant that this is the only option. 

This post is about making an initial challenge—one that is the least confrontational in that it is based on reason rather than pressure. If it is not successful, the challenge can be escalated by adding pressure through public protest (ranging from petitions to demonstrations) and legal challenges.

Scripture gives a great example of advocacy that is respectful and based on reason, yet makes a forceful case. Paul, spoke up for a runaway slave and challenged his owner to receive him back as a brother. In making his appeal, Paul walked a fine line in which he mostly asked for what he wanted, but there is a hint of “you owe it to me to give me what I ask” in his request that comes from the added pressure of his intention to visit the slave owner and see firsthand how he responded to Paul’s request.

The Example

Westlynn Baptist Church in North Vancouver, BC challenged the provincial restrictions on church gatherings.

• If you prefer to read, here is their six-page open letter.
• If you prefer to watch, here is a video of Pastor Sam Chua reading the letter. The video is 17 minutes long, but it is worth watching to catch the spirit in which the challenge is made.

Why This Letter Is a Great Example

Here’s a list of what makes this appeal by Westlynn Baptist Church such a good example:

• To minimize the confrontation, thus improving the likelihood that those in authority will be more open to their message, the church:
  • Respected those in authority
  • Demonstrated goodwill by caring for those in authority with regular prayer and even shared what they were praying for
  • Agreed with what they could: the policy goals
  • Gratefully acknowledged what the government has done well and that government policy has benefited the province
  • Assumed the best intentions of those in authority
  • Followed the very rules they want to change and did even more than is required in order to show goodwill and support the government’s goals
  • Refrained from using inflammatory language
  • Remained factual
  • Asked questions rather than making strident demands
• The appeal should help the government understand the church’s case because it provided new information that highlighted the unintended consequences of the province’s rules. Specific examples of glaring unequal treatment of religion based on truly comparable scenarios made a compelling case for the desired change in policy.
• The church displayed a strong moral conviction about a public good that the government was overlooking. Their argument wasn’t centred on themselves and their rights but on the good being withheld from others who need their help.
• The entire presentation was very well researched and backed up by proper citations.
• The “ask” acknowledges there still needs to be suitable COVID-19 safety protocols, which they committed themselves to observe. The church is making a reasonable request giving due care to the broader community.
• The challenge does reference Charter rights as a gentle reminder that there is the possibility of a legal challenge, but it is very much a secondary argument given minimal attention at this time.
• The church has framed the argument in a way that will do minimal damage to the reputations of the church and Christianity because it is focused on the welfare of the community, not of the church. The church needs to do everything it can to ensure the community hears this other-centred message.

Whether Westlynn Baptist Church will be successful in getting the government to change its policy is not yet known, but they have done an excellent job in challenging the government in a well-reasoned way that is the most promising approach for achieving the desired outcome.

Discussion

CCCC members can discuss their ideas for effectively challenging governing authorities in The Green. Let’s study and learn from each other’s advocacy work.

Key Idea: Using reason to persuade when challenging governing authorities is an initial challenge with a good likelihood of success.

The post Challenging Authorities: Using Reason to Persuade appeared first on CCCC Blogs.