The theory of change I guide you through in this post was developed based upon what I learned at Harvard Business School in their Strategic Perspectives in Nonprofit Management course (worth every penny! GO!!) and the one book I could find on developing a theory of change titled Purposeful Program Theory: Effective Use of Theories of Change and Logic Models.

Developing a Theory of Change is a process of examining what you need to do from the perspective of your beneficiary, pinpointing the activities that will get your vision fulfilled. The model’s outputs are the positive steps that will bring about the desired external change, which is your impact on the world around you.

For a really good theological discussion of how a theory of change applies to churches, please watch this video by a Cambridge University theology professor who has a good sense of humour. He may well change your approach to evangelism.

Process for Developing a Theory of Change

There is no single model for what a Theory of Change should look like. For example, a traditional logic model is a Theory of Change that shows how inputs are converted into impacts. Here is a guide for creating a Theory of Change based on a logic model.

The version described in this post is the one that CCCC has used with great success. Its focus is not inputs but rather the conditions for mission impact that we want our ministry to create or improve, coupled with identifying and overcoming the obstacles that have prevented us (so far) from achieving the full impact our ministry wants to make. The process described below does not have a specific name; it is just known as a Theory of Change.

Note: The Bridgespan Group has a guide to develop a more detailed theory of change than the one CCCC uses.

Overview

The process for developing a Theory of Change is as follows:

1. Identify your ministry’s desired impact. Clearly identify why your ministry exists by describing the impact you want to make. This is your Impact Statement (which you might be calling a vision, mission, or end statement). An end statement is basically a vision statement used in policy governance situations. I recommend everybody use it because it is so powerful. The traditional mission statement can be used if it is the only statement, but I recommend you do the work to create a vision or an end statement. These are true impact statements while mission statements are more process or activity related.
2. List the conditions needed to make the desired impact. Identify the key Conditions that must be in place for your beneficiaries so your ministry can make its impact. The scan of the external environments is most helpful at this stage of the strategy development process. It will identify the factors you must consider that affect how successful the desired change will be. The way CCCC did its theory of change, Conditions column has a positive focus – the conditions that must be in place for your ministry to achieve what it wants to achieve. The column could also be called Problems to be Overcome, which is a negative way to address the ministry’s mission goal. This is the way I learned it at Harvard Business School, and CCCC’s first version of a theory of change took this traditional perspective. However, I thought the result was a document that had a fairly negative view of our members. We were much happier using this column for a positive description of what we want our work to achieve. An example given in a book ¹ is that the negative problem addressed by an anti-graffiti program could be recast as a positive opportunity to support creative street artwork.
3. Identify the obstacles your beneficiaries face. Identify all Obstacles that could prevent your beneficiaries from having the Conditions in place. You can also include contributing factors and opportunities in this section.
4. Determine what solutions your ministry can offer to overcome the obstacles. Determine high-level strategies to overcome the Obstacles. This column could also be called “Corrections.”
5. Identify the assets your beneficiaries need. Identify the assets that those who wish to use your services will need to have to benefit from your services.
6. Identify any other general needs your beneficiaries have. While not necessary for making an impact, your ministry might be able to help your beneficiaries by filling their other needs as you are able to.
7. Determine the initiatives your ministry will undertake. Determine the actions your ministry will take in the way of programs based on this Theory of Change. This column is titled “Initiatives” to keep the at the list at the level of strategy. Specific programs will be designed as part of the initiatives. Think of this column as a number of baskets, each holding one or more programs within it.
8. Decide the outcomes you wish to see. The outputs of your programs should result in a change outside of your ministry. For example, you provide education (an output) and the graduate gets a job (an outcome). Outcomes can be short or long-term. The short term might be the example just given – the graduate gets a job. The long term outcome could be the graduate escapes poverty.
9. Check that the logic of your theory of change leads to fulfillment of your impact statement. You should be confident that by addressing all the items identified in the Theory of Change, your Desired Impact will be made

Using the CCCC Theory of Change Template

This section will walk you through the above process in detail and show you how to complete the Theory of Change template provided. Have both the CCCC’s Theory of Change Template and the CCCC’s Theory of Change open while you read the detailed instructions that follow. These two documents will make each step much clearer.

The template is colour-coded:

• The green columns identify the impact your ministry wants to make.
• The blue columns are items that your ministry has control over.
• The red columns are the obstacles your beneficiaries face that could prevent your ministry from making an impact.
• The yellow column contains items that are internal to your beneficiaries.
• The purple column relates to outcomes your beneficiaries will experience.

Here are the detailed steps:

1. Desired Impact (First green column of the template)
   • In the first green box, enter a crystal-clear statement of why your ministry exists. This is a statement of the impact you desire to make. Your Impact Statement could be called a Statement Zero, Vision statement, End Statement, or Social Value Proposition.
     • Your Mission Statement can be suitable, but only if it either does not include how you are going to accomplish the mission or you leave that part out while doing this exercise. For example, “Our mission is to evangelize our city” would be acceptable, but not “Our mission is to evangelize our city by…,” because whatever follows “by…” presupposes what the Theory of Change is intended to discover.
     • The goal is to clearly identify the actual impact you intend to make “out there” in the real world. It is not about how hard your ministry works or how much it produces. It is about how you affect the world beyond your own organization.
   • In the green box below your Impact Statement, you may add additional comments about your Impact Statement, as CCCC did in its Theory of Change. It can be helpful to have a description of what fulfillment of your Impact Statement will look like both to guide your thoughts as you develop your Theory of Change and to facilitate a shared understanding among your staff and board of the impact your ministry will make.
2. Conditions for Desired Impact (First blue column of the template)
   • In the blue boxes, enter the Conditions you identify that your beneficiaries must have in place for you to achieve your Desired Impact.
     • For example, the CCCC Impact Statement is that its members will be exemplary, healthy, and effective Christian ministries. We assume they will be all those things if they have the required knowledge, resources, attitudes, corporate culture, and ability to integrate faith into practice. They also need to be in an environment conducive for ministry.
     • Note that in the CCCC Theory of Change, each Condition has a few descriptive words to illustrate the scope of the Condition. Those words will help you brainstorm in Step 3 below.
     • The Conditions are only assumptions if they haven’t been tested. Testing will lead to more confident planning and could be done in various ways, such as through a literature review, focus groups with your beneficiaries, program evaluations, etc.
3. Obstacles Confronting Your Beneficiaries (Red section of the template)
   • Enter the Conditions that you identified in the blue column as column headings in the red section of the template. You might wish to follow the example in CCCC’s Theory of Change by bolding the keywords in your blue Conditions column that will become the heading names in your red Obstacles section.Brainstorm as many plausible reasons as you can think of as to why the Condition in each column heading might not be in place yet. These are the Obstacles your beneficiaries might be up against that will prevent you from having the impact you want.
     • For example, when CCCC did this process, we came up with a list of many reasons why a member might not yet have the necessary knowledge, resources, etc. The obstacles were identified based on the empathy maps we developed, consultations with stakeholders and others, our own knowledge from questions our members ask us, and some small surveys. We do not believe that all our members face all these barriers, but that if they are struggling to be exemplary, healthy, and effective Christian ministries, the reason for the struggle would likely be one of the barriers we identified. We then sorted the Obstacles under each Condition into like categories and named each category to make it easier to analyze the results. The names of these categories are the Requirements needed for the Conditions to exist. For example, to have the necessary knowledge to be an exemplary, healthy, and effective Christian ministry, the staff and volunteers need to have the resources, education, focus, learning posture, and strategy it takes to have the knowledge. The Obstacles were the reasons why they might not have the necessary resources, education, focus, learning posture, or strategy.
   • Now you can complete the red Obstacles section. In each red box, enter a Requirement for that column’s Condition. In bullet form for each Requirement, list the Obstacles that would prevent that Requirement from being in place.
   • The Obstacles might or might not be the actual ones your beneficiaries are facing, so it is a good idea to test your assumptions for accuracy.
4. Solutions (Second blue column of the template)
   • In these blue boxes, enter the high-level strategies you’ve determined will help correct or remove the Obstacles for your beneficiaries and bring about the Conditions needed to achieve your ministry’s Desired Impact.
     • For CCCC, the Solutions column is a high-level list of what we think would help ministries overcome their obstacles. This includes education, consulting, and facilitating peer-to-peer sharing.
5. Assets (Top half of the yellow column of the template)
   • In the yellow boxes under Assets (the top half of the column), enter the assets you assume your beneficiaries have so they can use your ministry’s services. These are likely to be unstated assumptions you’ve made; assets you take for granted that everyone has but that aren’t necessarily available to all potential beneficiaries. For instance, if you work in English only, you need to realize that part of the population will not be reached by your ministry.
     • You may go deeper in this column by adding thoughts about what your beneficiaries could do if they do not have the Assets needed. What could you do to help them? Are there alternative ways to design your programs so the Assets are not needed? Could your ministry somehow provide its beneficiaries with the Assets or find a way to accommodate them?
6. Other Needs (Bottom half of the yellow column of the template)
   • In the yellow boxes under Other Needs (the bottom half of the column), enter general needs your beneficiaries might have that don’t necessarily relate to your ministry’s services. This information could come from empathy maps, your knowledge from personal interactions with beneficiaries, or surveys.
     • For example, CCCC identified that people working in ministry need to be affirmed and appreciated for the sacrificial way they serve, something they do not always experience. That need aligns well with one of our brand pillars, to be a caring organization. They are also likely to have work-life balance issues, something to keep in mind as we design how we will engage with them.
7. Initiatives (Third blue column of the template)
   • In the language used in Theory of Change models, an Initiative is an action your ministry takes to implement the Solutions and make the Desired Impact. In Christian ministry, initiatives are programs and services. Be creative and, using the research you have already done to create a Theory of Change, list the programs that your Theory of Change indicates are needed and enter them into the blue boxes. In the CCCC Theory of Change, the Initiatives column is a very high level ‘basket’ that will hold all the specific programs we offer. For example, shared learning includes:
     • members learning from us,
     • us learning from our members,
     • members learning from each other.
     • The shared learning basket also holds most of our current programs:
       • the knowledge base
       • the Bulletin
       • the Member Service Team
       • the Green
       • This blog, and so on
8. Short-Term Outcomes and Long-Term Outcomes (Purple column of the template)
   • In the purple boxes under Short-Term Outcomes, enter the outcomes you expect your beneficiaries to experience in their immediate future.
     • This column is significant because it forms the basis for measuring your mission success on your journey towards mission fulfilment. It is also evidence you can give to your donors that assures them their gifts are being well used.
   • In the purple boxes under Long-Term Outcomes, enter the outcomes you expect your beneficiaries will experience over time as they use your services.
     • As with the Short-Term Outcomes, the Long-Term Outcomes will be used eventually to measure mission success and to give evidence of success to your donors.
9. Check that the logic of your Theory of Change leads to fulfillment of your Impact Statement (Second green column of the template)
   • In the green boxes of this final column, copy over from the first green column both your Impact Statement and any commentary regarding it Review the entire Theory of Change and ensure there is a logical flow to it that leads to your Desired Impact. Is it comprehensive? Has anything been left out?
     • The final column is a repeat of the first column because if everything in between is done, the mission from the first column will be fulfilled.

Conclusion

Developing a Theory of Change is invaluable, as it will provide a clear understanding of the obstacles and corrections your programs must address to accomplish your ministry’s mission and guide your program development work. Being able to reference your ministry’s Theory of Change will make a significant difference in efficient stewardship of your ministry and will provide the perfect tool on which to base future strategic reviews. CCCC has enjoyed great success by using its Theory of Change, and I pray that this will be your experience too.

Key Takeaway: Developing your Theory of Change is really about providing a clear, customized plan for how your ministry will move forward in accomplishing its mission, as well as a way to evaluate your ministry to ensure that it does.

The post Theory of Change: A Step-by-Step Guide to Developing a Customized Plan for Your Ministry appeared first on CCCC Blogs.

Mission Statements Are Packed with Benefits

As a senior leader, you’ve invested a lot of time and effort in crafting your ministry’s top-level mission statement, but are you getting the maximum value from it? A top-level mission statement can do so much more than simply define what you aim to achieve. It can enhance every aspect of your organization and transform it into a finely tuned ministry that is perfectly designed to be exactly what your mission needs it to be.

I’d like to share how you can unpack your ministry’s top-level mission statement and tap into its power for the benefit of your ministry. By unpacking, I mean plumbing the depths of the statement and exploring its implications, nuances, and the subcomponents that are necessary to make the end goal a reality. Understanding your mission at such a deep level is immensely helpful when doing a strategic review of your ministry

Since June 2012, our End Statement has been CCCC members will be exemplary, healthy, and effective Christian ministries. This statement has guided us well over the years. As the senior leader, I have reflected long and hard on what it means. It has been a roadmap as I’ve written my blog Christian Leadership Reflections and as I’ve laid out ideas for program development.

But when I began to formally document what our End Statement means, I realized its true potential went well beyond our programs and services. As I unpacked its meaning, it became more and more exciting, inspiring, and even beautiful to me.

It was like a two-dimensional black-and-white photograph had suddenly become a three-dimensional full-colour sculpture!

Our End Statement grabbed hold of me and the CCCC staff in a new way as we engaged with it. We experienced a burst of creativity that resulted in the renewed organization we are today. New staff positions were created. Our infrastructure is being overhauled. Our branding changed, and so did our name. The changes were all shaped by our reflections on our End Statement. You can download our presentation CCCC End Statement Unpacked (below) to see what we did. Please note: as of May 2023 we are still working on refining how we define the meaning of our End Statement, so this isn’t the final version.

The Power of Mission Statements

Your ministry’s top-level strategic statement is a rich resource, and unleashing its potential by unpacking it is really a matter of good stewardship. Here’s what your super-charged mission statement can do for your ministry.

Give Direction

The primary purpose of a strategic statement is to give overall direction to the work of your ministry. You have almost certainly used your strategic statement quite well for this purpose. It helps you make choices about what to do or not to do, and it defines what you are responsible for (that is, what you need to do to claim progress towards vision fulfillment).

For example, CCCC’s End Statement reminds us that we are not just a purveyor of information. Our responsibility does not end when we publish an article. Our responsibility extends to how members use what we publish. The onus is on us to produce content that is relevant, persuasive, and actionable. It’s our fault if members choose not to use our information. If that were the case, we would need to fix what we produce to make it more relevant, persuasive, and actionable so our members will decide to act on it.

Add Clarity

Perhaps your strategic statement says you will disciple Christians to become mature believers. But what exactly does discipling look like, and how can you tell when someone has a mature faith? A single statement cannot capture everything that is meant by it, so unpacking the statement will add clarity by defining its breadth and depth. The statement should be thought of as a shorthand way of expressing a much more complex description of the ministry’s purpose.

CCCC’s unpacked End Statement is a treasure trove of ideas for new content and new program development. Because it is so specific at a detailed level, it is easily actionable. It makes abstract words, such as exemplary, concrete. Having a full definition means we don’t start with a blank canvas on which to paint a picture of how we help Christian ministries. With the unpacked End Statement, the canvas already has a sketch on it. We can immediately grab a brush and some paint and get to work filling in the sketch.

Foster Unity

The clearer, more detailed, your strategic statement is, the more unity your staff and volunteers can have because everyone is being drawn to a shared understanding of the ministry’s high-level purpose and its detailed workings. Before you unpack the statement, your staff may be aligned at the 50,000-foot level on the overall goal to be achieved and yet not be aligned on lower-level details. Unpacking your strategic statement should bring alignment right down to ground level.

Allow For Better Delegation

When all ministry personnel have a deep understanding of the strategic statement’s goal and its nuances, you can delegate responsibility with more confidence because they understand how their work fits in with everything else being done, and they can make better decisions than they could if they didn’t have that awareness.

Increase Motivation

All strategic statements should be motivational, especially in mission-driven organizations such as Christian ministries. But the statements will be far more motivational as people come to understand the details of the change your ministry wants to accomplish and how all the parts of your ministry work together to fulfill the ministry’s purpose. Sometimes people read the strategic statement but don’t recognize its implications and the magnitude or significance of what is to be accomplished. Unpacking the statement may impress people with benefits attached to fulfilling the strategic goal they had not thought of.

Protect from Mission Creep

When the words in your top-level strategic statement are not clearly defined, there is a good possibility that people may interpret them differently. Some interpretations may be quite narrow while others may be quite broad and expansive. Over time, the ministry’s understanding of its purpose may begin to move away from its original focus. Changing your purpose in response to changing times or circumstances is fine because it is an intentional change. But mission creep is unintentional. At some point, the ministry will end up with a hodgepodge of programs, a loss of focus, and a dilution of resources.

A clearly defined strategic statement will make it easy to determine how a new program idea does or does not fit the ministry’s purpose. However, when you change a strategic statement you must remember to stay within the parameters of your ministry’s charitable purpose and objects that the Charities Directorate has approved.

Set the Stage for Branding

Your strategic statement connects with your brand because both are closely connected with your ministry’s identity. As you understand more about the change you want to make in the world outside your organization, you will need to think about how you want outsiders to experience your ministry. What brand persona would be most helpful to your mission? Based on your mission, what is your brand story?

A deep dive into CCCC’s End Statement crystallized for us the relationship we want to have with our members. We had previously seen ourselves as supporters of our members, but now we see ourselves more specifically as a guide and ally in a caring relationship with them. “Caring” became one of our brand persona pillars, and our brand story features our supportive role as a guide. The detailed, written brand story was converted into a short video called How We Fit into Your Story, which you can view here.

Clarify Messaging

The deeper knowledge you gain about your purpose will be very useful in your marketing and fundraising messaging. It will help you tell a compelling story about the impactful work your ministry does.

CCCC took its deeper understanding of its End Statement and used it to make a short video to help our members and prospective members understand that our programs and services are not just a collection of independent resources but are connected to something much bigger, helping them develop a thriving organization that is a great platform for their ministry to operate from. We have a clear logic to everything we do that will help our members become an ever more successful ministry. We want our members to think big about their organizations. You can view the video Our Journey Together here.

I must add that developing the content and courses that will help our members become ever more exemplary, healthy, and effective Christian ministries is a process that we are just beginning to develop. Over time, members will find resources being released that will help them on their journey.

Identify Topics to Research

When you have defined the core attributes related to each of your mission statement elements (see below for how to do this), you will have a list of topics to research so your ministry can become expert in how best to pursue these aspects of its mission.

An example from CCCC’s End Statement is that a healthy Christian ministry needs great Christian leadership, which means that its leaders must model Christian spirituality in the workplace. CCCC, therefore, researched and reflected on Christian spirituality in the context of both leadership and organizational life so we could help ministry leaders develop their spirituality in the workplace.

Save Time

When you document what you’ve discovered about your purpose, you can more easily and quickly orient new staff and directors to the richness of your work. This documentation can help staff identify opportunities to fill gaps between what the mission needs and what the ministry is currently doing.

CCCC has worked our unpacked End Statement into both our board and staff orientation programs.

Redesign the Organization and Its Infrastructure

Every part of your organization can take the unpacked mission statement and determine what changes, if any, should be made to better support the mission.

Some of the changes made by CCCC related to our unpacked End Statement were mentioned above.

Do-It-Yourself

For detailed guidance with examples for how to unpack your mission statement, see the post How To Release Your Mission Statement’s Power.

CCCC members can discuss this post here.

The post The Untapped Power of Your “Mission” Statement appeared first on CCCC Blogs.

I just wrote about producing failure reports, like Engineers Without Borders does. And I said it’s a great idea for ministries to be real with their donors and admit not only what they’ve done well, but also what they’ve done that crashed and burned. The idea is to show what has been learned from failure.

Of course, as I wrote the post, I was thinking mostly in terms of what other ministries would write about, although I admit that we’ve learned a few things from experience at CCCC too. We should be accountable to our members just as they are accountable to their donors. What’s good for the goose is good for the gander and all that. Right?

So picture this. You are in front of a target with a bow and arrow. With the arrow between your fingers, you pull the string taut, your fingertips turn white, and you say, “Ready, aim, fire!”

And you let that string sing. Twang! The arrow’s away and you watch it arc through the air to the intended target. And then that moment of awful realization, when your stomach goes tight and your heart jumps out of the way. The arrow has landed, but far away from the bulls-eye you had in mind.

That’s what I felt yesterday.

So now I have a failure report from CCCC. There’s no getting ’round it. Time to ‘fess up.

Here is a story of ‘reckage, rebuke, restitution, and redemption.

• ‘Reckage
  • Each month we email a different selection of our members telling them that we will pray for their ministry this month at staff meetings. They can send me a prayer request if they want specific prayer.
  • The idea is that my email address goes in the “To” field and theirs go in the “Bcc” field. Can you see what’s coming?
  • Their emails go in the “To” field. Hit “send.” Takes your breath away, doesn’t it?
  • Many people reply to me, and to me alone. Can you feel the other shoe falling yet?
  • A fair number of people gamely send their prayer requests using “reply all.” If you are like me, at this point you are about to be sick! I know what I have to do to make things right and I lay out an action plan for when I get back to Canada the next day.
• Rebuke
  • About a dozen people send me emails essentially saying “What do you think you are doing? PLEASE don’t put my email address in the “To” field!!!!!” One particularly blunt and directive email stands out. Once back in Canada, a phone call comes in that repeats and augments this email’s message to be sure I really get it.
  • I’m now feeling really, really sick about the whole episode.
• Restitution
  • The mailing list is recreated and out it goes: an apology for the error, a request to use “reply” and not “reply all,” and a reminder to delete the email and not use the email addresses for anything.
• Redemption
  • Romans 8:28 – And we know that God causes everything to work together for the good of those who love God and are called according to his purpose for them.
  • The Holy Spirit is at work and one by one, the responses start trickling in through the afternoon. The best part of all was that God left one special message right to the end, so that I would have a good out-loud laugh just before heading home. God is good. And his sense of humour is alive and well.

Here are the messages I received throughout the afternoon:

• No worries. It has been a non-issue for me and I have enjoyed that people have used reply all and that I have been able to share in the prayer requests.
• You’re a kind man to correct the group-hugging
• John, I noticed the over site but as the requests began coming in I was encouraged to join in agreement with any and all who saw them. Be at peace, my brother.
• Although it may have been an error – I have enjoyed hearing what others are doing and I have been praying for each request as it comes through.  For me, at least, it has been a great mistake.
• No problems; I have no time to read the other emails. Ha ha! Thanks for the reminders though.
• Most appreciate your efforts. no worries from my end. Praying for you, as well.
• No problem, John! Warm blessings to you!
• Just wanted you to know that I appreciate your dilemma! Just know that I’m sure everyone knows that we all make mistakes. And here’s one positive that came from this…I found that it was actually cool to hear of some of the prayer needs for the other ministries! Thanks for all that you and your team do – it is greatly appreciated.
• I just wanted you to know that I have deleted the original and all responses relative to your e-mail indicating that at CCCC you pray for the member ministries. I do appreciate the fact that you remember us before the Lord in this way.
• Thank you John. I really do appreciate your last two emails following up on privacy concerns. Take care. A breath of fresh air…none of us are exempt from “messing up.” it’s the nature of who we are and He will use this for His good purposes…your heart is in the right place. His peace to you and yours.
• I realized what happened, but it was nice to see some of the requests being shared with everyone.
• Nuts. I was just going to advertise my used car to that whole list.   God bless.

Thank you Lord. I get it. And, to all and sundry who receive emails from us, we at CCCC take to heart the difference between To: and Bcc:

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Ability to Change

“Harvard predates the country and has lots of arcane systems. If we can change, you can change.” Frances Frei.

On Excellence

Frances has done global research on what customers want to get and what employees want to give. Her summary is, “Every single customer wanted to receive excellence. Every single employee wanted to give excellence. However, well-intentioned, energetic people following their natural instincts are a large part of the mediocrity problem.”

In order for an organization to reliably produce excellence that is sustainable and scalable, the following problems must be overcome:

1. Not having the courage to be bad. In order to be excellent at some things, you have to be willing to let others things be done badly. Choose to be excellent in what the customer values. This is the Blue Ocean concept, which she builds on in her book Uncommon Service. Don’t be apologetic about what you are bad at. That would be the beginning of the end. For example, Ikea has no sales staff. You have to find what you want for yourself and figure out if it goes together. They have low prices and the trade-off is no sales help. If someone hates you for the bad thing, great! That means you have been clear about what you will and will not do excellently. When we design to eliminate complaints, everyone is ticked off at something and you have in fact designed mediocrity into your organization.
2. Excellence costs money. You must design reliable funding options into the offering or revenue model to pay for excellence. The alternative is mediocrity.
3. If employees fail, it is our fault. We design jobs for the employees we wish we had. We need to design the jobs so that the people we actually hire can be successful. Commerce Bank in the U.S. hired the happiest people they could. The risk was they would end up with pleasant incompetence in their branches. They prevented this by designing the jobs in a way that they could not fail. For example, they only had one product – chequing accounts. They didn’t have to know how to cross-sell, up-sell, advise customers or do anything else. All they had to know was how to open an account and transact deposits and withdrawals.
4. We must be able to observe when customers’ discretionary actions can influence cost or quality so that we can manage and train them in a way that makes them like us more for doing it. Not having sales help in a furniture/decorating store could be a negative. So Ikea trained customers to have it their way and explore their own sense of style. Customers believe Ikea is helping them express themselves by not having sales/design staff.

Customer Surveys

Frances says research shows that customers are not reliable at saying what they prefer, so customer surveys don’t work. Instead, she recommends conjoint analysis, which sounds fancy but basically means giving people two alternatives and asking, “Do you prefer this to that?”

What Should Board Governance Contribute to the Organization?

Kathleen McGinn says the board should have four visions that it contributes:

1. The overall vision. A focus on goals, what you are trying to accomplish
2. The strategy vision. How you should organize and execute to achieve the overall vision
3. The operational vision. Performance and outcomes definitions of success and their related measurements
4. The compliance vision. How you will ensure the organization stays within the rules set by the board

High Performance

Allen Grossman says that achieving high performance in business is like playing chess. In nonprofits it is like playing three-dimensional chess. His question is, “Do your board and your staff have a shared definition of what high performance looks like?” He doesn’t have a firm definition of high performance, but he thinks this one is pretty good: A high performing organization is measurably achieving its mission with effective use of resources over an optimum period of time.

Getting high-profile board members

Paul Salem owns fifty businesses, many are multi-billion dollar businesses. He is chair of one of the charities we studied today and he says that generally the rich and powerful will not join your board, but they will join your advisory board.

The Biggest Decision of a Board

According to Paul, there is no decision bigger than, “Do we have the right CEO?” You can mess up on a lot of other things as a board, but if you have this one right you’ll be okay.

Government Funding

Paul says nonprofits that rely on government funding will wake up one day really disappointed.

When People Don’t Want to Take a Position

Robert Kaplan, famous for co-developing the Balanced Scorecard and Strategy Maps, taught a case that ended up with the entire class acting out the board meeting. Issues were on the table and we had to vote. Some people wanted to waffle and they stated principles, or said “If this, then…but if that…” and he used a line several times that I thought was terrific. When people must take a position and they try to wiggle out of it, his response to what they say is, “That’s fantastic! I agree with everything you said. Now, what do you want to do? What is your vote?” Of course, the follow-up questions are “Why are you voting that way?” and “Why do you believe that?” People sometimes equivocate to avoid making a commitment. But when you are in a leadership position, you must commit to a decision. You can’t avoid it.

What Is the Board’s Mission?

Kaplan said that so much focus is placed on the organization’s mission, vision, and priorities that those of the board are often never considered. So the board should ask itself these questions:

• What is the Board’s mission?
  • Kaplan said this question should help the board define its role in the organization.
• What is the Board’s vision?
  • This question will help the board identify what it is trying to achieve.
• What are the Board’s top three priorities?
  • Succession planning and mission accomplishment are huge responsibilities and if they haven’t been addressed recently, they should be. Other priorities may be defining the governance structure, setting policies, fundraising and so on. Larry Nelson, former CCCC chair, always asked it this way, “What must the board accomplish through its work over the next year?”

Nomenclature

Howard Stephenson says we are not nonprofits. Every organization needs to end up with a surplus or profit or whatever you want to call it. We all must spend less money than we receive. What we really should be called is tax-exempt.

The Guaranteed Fundraising Formula

The formula you absolutely must know for success in fundraising, according to Howard, is:

# of donors x the average gift size = the amount raised

Don’t make something more fancy than it needs to be. Just do what you can to affect the variables!

Getting to a Significant Gift

Cold-calling and telethons just get the small gifts. For big gifts you must go and see the person face-to-face. Howard says he tries to perform a cashectomy without anaesthesia!

You have to frame the project in a way that is attractive to the prospective donor. If he’s raising money for scholarships, Howard will tell conservative people that we need to ensure the best talent is developed to help our great country. He tells liberal people that we need to ensure the disadvantaged have an opportunity. He says he is telling the truth to both groups of people, but framing it in a way that they want to hear it.

Don’t try to get someone’s largest gift of the year. If they haven’t already given you their largest gift, you are unlikely to get it. Instead, Howard asked someone whom he knew preferred other universities to Harvard, “I really hope that we can be #5 on your giving list this year.” The person replied, “Yes, #5 sounds about right.” He got a cheque for $35 million!

Talking about needs will get you small gifts. Talking about impact is the way to get large gifts.

Offering Incentives to Give

Offering gifts for donations might find some new donors for you, but Howard says it turns the gift into a transaction and not a shared mission. That means you will get only small gifts and you are aiming too low.

One more day to go!

The post More Pearls of Nonprofit Wisdom from Harvard appeared first on CCCC Blogs.

Unfortunately, there are people who think charities are ripping off the public. Executive compensation. Fundraising costs. Overhead. Lack of accountability and transparency. These are all issues that are alive and well online and in the press. Yes, there are some ‘bad apples’ in the charity sector, just as there are in every sector and among every demographic. But the vast majority of charities have passionate people doing very effective good work quite efficiently, and the world is a better place because of them.

The problem is that we don’t do a good job telling the public what we do. I’m on an Imagine Canada committee that will be meeting soon to discuss how to develop a sector narrative that tells the public how charities contribute to the public good. This is PR for the entire sector that I fully support.

Now, what about PR for your ministry? Anyone is free to comment or critique your ministry, but you should get your story out in the open so there is always something official from your ministry that people can check if they hear something negative about you. Equip people to speak up on your behalf by giving the public a realistic self-assessment of both your results and your anticipated future.

Your Story Is Already Being Told by Someone Else

There are numerous charity monitoring groups around the world, and although most are not active in Canada they are harbingers of what we can expect over time. Right now though, information about your charity is available through the CRA. It reports only what you disclosed on your T3010 information return, so there are no editorial comments in its report.

However, when you prepare the T3010 each year, you are likely thinking only of regulatory compliance issues, not about donors or public relations. You may not realize how easily the factual information in the T3010 can be misinterpreted. I’ll give some examples related to CCCC below, but first, here’s where you can find what is being reported about your ministry:

Canada Revenue Agency:

• Click here and search on your charity’s name
• Click on your charity’s name and then click on T3010
• Click on Quick View for the most recent fiscal year

Example of How Factual Information Can Be Misinterpreted

Here’s how the T3010 can innocently mislead the public. Our T3010 for fiscal 2011 showed we raised almost $1.3 million with a fundraising ratio of 0% and administration ratio of 6%. That looks awfully good, so that’s in our favour. However, it also shows that we had a surplus of about $358,000, leaving the impression that we are raising more than we need and are hoarding cash rather than spending it on charitable programs. The amounts reported are accurate, but the interpretations are not. Here’s the rest of the story that the T3010 doesn’t tell:

• We had no fundraising costs because we didn’t solicit any donations. However, if members are not set up to receive gifts of securities, they send their donors to our Community Trust Fund. We receive and receipt the gift, convert it to cash and send the proceeds to the member. Although it looks like we did fundraising, we didn’t. And neither do we give grants.
• Administration costs are relatively low and they should be, because we are a centralized organization working only in Canada with no special complexities. But is 6% high enough? Maybe for a charity in maintenance mode, but maybe not for an organization that wants to grow, expand services, and be on the leading edge. Strategy creation, forging partnerships, and organizational development are all administration costs, so perhaps this ratio should be 8%. I wouldn’t want 6% to become the norm for us if it means we are short-changing our future for a low ratio.
• Our surplus of $358,000 is not what it seems. The operating surplus was only $107,000 and the remainder of the surplus came from the Community Trust Fund, which received donations that we have not yet been told how to disburse. That’s not our money. Furthermore, of the $107,000 surplus, $44,000 was unrealized gains on investments, so it’s only a paper surplus until the investments are sold. And then of course, the financial statements and the T3010 make no mention of what the remaining $63,000 is intended for. Are we saving for a rainy day or a specific project? The answer is that we are using accumulated surpluses for major projects (such as the development of a completely new website that is now underway).
• Finally, the T3010 makes it look like we had over $3.9 million in cash and investments. We look rich indeed!! But that isn’t true (sigh). $2.4 million belongs to the Community Trust Fund, not us, and we can’t use it. $745,000 is unearned revenue that we will live off of for the next nine months. $234,000 belongs to the Legal Defense Fund, which we can’t use for operations either. We have a reserve of several months of operating expenses that we must keep ($295,000) and a major project in fiscal 2013/14 that will use up most of the remainder. Our fiscal year end of March 31 always shows lots of cash because we’ve just received our membership dues, but if our year end were October 31, you’d see a vastly different financial position!

While the particulars of our financial statements may be different from yours, can you see how people could get wrong ideas from the financial statements and T3010? We need to make sure that doesn’t happen. We can do that by writing a management commentary on our results and prospects. In other words, we tell our story.

How to Tell Your Own Story

As part of your annual report you should prepare a management discussion and analysis (MD&A) of the past year’s results. At the CCCC conference coming up in a couple of weeks, I’ll be delivering a double workshop on how to write an MD&A. I’ll take participants through each of the following points with detailed suggestions and they’ll complete a workbook and walk out with a preliminary draft of their own MD&A.

The Canadian Institute of Chartered Accountants says the principles behind the MD&A are that it should:

• enable readers to view the organization through management’s eyes
• supplement and complement the information in the financial statements
• be complete, fair and balanced, and provide information that is material to the decision-making needs of users
• have a forward-looking orientation
• focus on management’s strategy for generating value over time (or in our case, our strategy for generating mission-related results over time)
• be understandable, relevant, and comparable

The general framework for the management discussion and analysis has five parts:

1. Core businesses and strategy — for charities that means what you do and how you are structured (major divisions and so forth). Assess significant factors and trends that shape your key strategies.
2. Key performance drivers — the few external and internal performance drivers that are critical to successfully implementing your strategies and achieving your goals, along with the key performance indicators
3. Capability to deliver results — address the resources needed to deliver the strategy and achieve results. This includes financial, human, tangible, and intangible resources such as systems, leadership, and work processes.
4. Results and outlook — an insightful explanation of the last year’s performance against your strategy and goals. Review trends in the key performance indicators and explain them. You would also talk about the likely future in this section.
5. Risk — what are the major risks for the organization as a whole and what is your strategy to deal with them.

Of course, not everything should be made public, so some wisdom is needed to determine what the public report should include. In general, you want to be as open as possible without disadvantaging yourself. Show how your strategy, results and financial statements fit together.

A Great Example

World Vision International produces a very complete accountability report. It is far more comprehensive than what I’m describing here, but I think it is worth reviewing to see how well such a report can be done and it will certainly give you some ideas for your own report.

 Key Takeaway

Once you have written the MD&A, you have an informative document to post on your website, and I’m sure a lot of the material will find its way into your fundraising literature. It will also help you set your plans for the next year. As I prepare for the workshop, I’m writing an MD&A for CCCC and will post it on our website and Charity Focus when it is ready.

If you have one that you think would be helpful as an example, why not use the comment form to link us to it?

The post Who’s Telling Your Story? appeared first on CCCC Blogs.

This post documents the theory of change and the logic model that are the rationale for the program we are reviewing, which is the CCCC Annual Conference. These models will make fundraising easier, particularly if your mission does not produce short-term observable results. If donors understand the theory and logic of what you are doing, they will more readily fund programs that make sense to them.

Theory of Change

The theory of change is all about ensuring that you are doing the right things. It is mostly about effectiveness.

It’s important that you know why you provide a certain program and understand all of the assumptions you have made about it. The theory of change is how you document why you believe this program will result in changes that will help you fulfill your mission. It also helps you find assumptions you may not even be aware that you have made. Here is the theory of change for the CCCC conference. If you click on the picture of the model it will open up large enough that you can read  it.

How to Develop a Theory of Change

You can find detailed instructions for how to develop a theory of change and a template you can use in the post Theory of Change: A Step-By-Step Guide to Developing a Customized Plan For Your Ministry.

Logic Model

The logic model is all about ensuring that you are doing things right. It is mostly about efficiency.

Once you have a theory of change, you can do a logic model. The interventions column from the theory of change comes over to the logic model. The columns are essentially the same between the two models, although I reworded one of the boxes for the logic model.

Inputs

First you document all of the inputs that make the program work. The general categories of inputs are physical assets (buildings), time and money. I’ve been a bit more detailed on this logic model because as I created the model I realized that not only were there benefits for our members, but there were benefits in the program for CCCC too. Since the goal is to ultimately compare inputs against outputs, I thought it only fair to allocate the time that benefits CCCC separately from the time that benefits our members. This simply recognizes that the content created by staff for their workshops can be used in multiple ways beyond the conference itself.

Interventions

As already mentioned, this is the list of program activities and is the same as the list in the theory of change.

Outputs

Outputs represent the completion of the program. When the outputs are done, you can say “We did our part, now the beneficiaries have to do their part.” Outputs could be the number of presentations of the Gospel, or it might be the number of people given glasses. They could be the number of Bibles handed out or the number of Sunday School classes and attendees. Whatever the outputs are, they are what you used the inputs for and did the activities for.

The outputs tell you how busy you’ve been.

Outcomes and Impact

These are the same as in the theory of change model. The outcomes and impact will tell you how effective you’ve been.

Where to from Here?

Now that you have your theory of change and logic model, go over them very carefully and think hard about any assumptions you are making. You will want to check all the assumptions. Of course, at least some of your assumptions have turned up in the models themselves. For example, I made assumptions in coming up with the causes of the problem and with the attendees needs which I included in the models, but there are many, many more that I have listed and which form the basis for the research questions, which I’ll be blogging about later.

You now have two models that, put together, will help you check that you are doing the right things right. The next time I post on this program review, I’ll discuss reviewing the literature as a key part the review process.

The post Program Evaluation 2 – Program Rationale appeared first on CCCC Blogs.

The truth about the “New College Oak Beams” story

Okay, now that you’ve read it, you should know that the New College Archives investigated this story because it has received so much attention, and they debunked the more spectacular points (the ones that make it fun to tell!). Their current website does not refer to the story, but the old site has been archived and you can still read it, although it takes a moment to load. The roof was indeed replaced in 1862 but it had already been replaced in 1786, with a plaster roof that had just enough molding to make it look like “an inverted tea tray” and no beams. And the wood for the molding was pine, not oak. Why didn’t the foresters tell them about the oak trees back then, the Archives asks. When oak was used in 1862 to restore the original roof design (with beams), the wood did come from college lands related to the original construction of New College, but from lands were purchased in 1441, sixty years after the roof was originally built. The original builders did not plan the forest. You can read the 1906 history book of New College that includes the story about the rebuilding of this roof on pages 58-59.

The truth is, the story is actually quite ordinary. As an internet search will show, good forest management has always left some trees to grow really large, for needs such as roof beams, ship masts for the navy and so forth. The point of planning ahead can still be made, but just not that the college builders themselves planned for it or that the trees were specifically saved for New College’s roof. But it is true that Oxford University held on to the forests, so they were still holding assets for future use rather than selling them to raise cash.

So when you hear a good story…

Check out the stories you want to tell. If a story isn’t true, you can still use it, but in a different way. Rather than portraying it as real, which I admit is the most powerful way to tell the story, you can say “While the story is apocryphal, its message is a powerful one…” Otherwise when people find out it’s not true, your credibility suffers. It makes you look gullible and that you are sloppy with your facts, and it makes your audience feel manipulated.

An even better story!

But in this case, a little bit of research shows there is a true story that is quite similar to the New College story and it is just as powerful. It is from the May 18, 2004 edition of the Times.

IN AUGUST 1802 Admiral Lord Nelson toured the Royal Forest of Dean, in Gloucestershire, in search of timber for the naval dockyards and was appalled by what he found. Not only had a large section of the forest been plundered by the charcoal-burning industry but the trees that survived were unavailable after a dispute between the timber merchants and the Admiralty.

Nelson’s flagship HMS Victory had had a refit two years before, which could not be completed because of a shortage of wood. Nelson made a secret deal with the timber merchants and recommended to Parliament the replanting of large areas of the forest to guarantee the supply of raw materials for the Royal Navy of future centuries. By 1808, three years after Nelson’s death, Parliament ordered the replanting of the Forest of Dean and today it has the largest area of old oak trees in Britain. The trees are still known locally as “Nelson’s Oaks”.

But even Nelson’s foresight could not have predicted that the saplings he had planted would be used to repair his own vessel 200 years on. Two great oaks have been felled in the forest to provide raw material for the restoration of HMS Victory in time for the 200th anniversary next year of the Battle of Trafalgar on October 21, 1805.

The wood was used not for the masts (they are metal and always have been, a sailor on board told me) but for planking for the decks and hull.

Good forestry management includes planning for the future. Plan to set up your successor to be successful because that is a way you can steward the future of the ministry you care so much about. Let’s manage our ministries as well as the foresters manage their forests!

The post Truth in Storytelling appeared first on CCCC Blogs.

“As a member of the leadership team, each person is responsible for fulfilling the following roles… Supporter of the CEO, supporting and advancing the CEO’s agenda both publicly and privately.”
Nadler & Nadler, “Performance on the Executive Team: When to pull the trigger” in Executive Teams.

Throw a stone into calm water and some waves will ripple out radiating in all directions. The CCCC’s logo shows exactly that, the ripples of our work extending outwards and helping Christian ministries be stronger ministries.

Extending the leader’s influence

When it comes to leadership, though, I have another image that I think is inspiring.  Ripples of water gradually smooth out as they move further away from their origin. Senior leaders, though, do not want their leadership diluted by distance. A frontline worker should be just as close to the senior leader’s leadership as a VP or manager is. The senior leader needs to influence all staff members, not just those on the leadership team.

The other leaders within the organization are the crucial element in keeping the ripples flowing. By giving their wholehearted support for the senior leader and the leader’s agenda, they extend the CEO’s leadership right out to the frontlines. The CEO’s leadership is re-energized at every level and so continues to ripple out just as strongly at the edges of the organization as it did at the centre.

My favourite image of this is often seen in fireworks when one rocket goes up and explodes with great effect, and then others explode nearby with the same effect, extending the effect of the original. It’s a beautiful sight to behold!!

A united leadership team

And that is what all the leaders in the organization should be doing. You couldn’t have a whole bunch of leaders all doing their own thing. The quote at the top says leadership team members support the CEO and the CEO’s agenda in public and in private. Just imagine if someone on the senior team were to say:

• “I do not support the CEO”,
• “In this department we have our own agenda,” or
• “I tell people when speaking one-on-one that I do not support the CEO’s agenda.”

That would never do! The board has appointed one person to provide direction and lead the organization and given that person its confidence. Undermining the effectiveness of the board’s chosen leader is also undermining the board’s leadership. Organizational leadership originates with the board, flows through the senior leader, empowers the leadership team and then ripples throughout the organization.

Cascading influence

As the agenda is passed from COO to VPs to managers and supervisors, each leader takes the agenda and “adds more meat to the bones” so that at each level it becomes increasingly more specific, detailed and operational. Every leader has the creative freedom to determine how the agenda will be applied in their own work areas, but always in harmony with the agenda they received.

In “The World of the CEO” (also in Executive Teams), Nadler & Heilpern say that “To be successful…the executive team must effectively become an extension of the CEO’s personal leadership, a force that projects the CEO’s vision, values, objectives, and requirements out into the organization.”

In one sense, the CEO’s agenda is personal because there is a reason why one particular person holds that role and not another. There is something about that particular person the board wants to have impact the organization. So there very well could be a truly personal component to the leader’s agenda because, especially in a change situation, the leader is bringing his or her own expertise to the table. But in another sense, the CEO’s personal agenda is not so personal, since whenever possible it is developed with the participation of the leadership team. CEO’s draw on many sources for inspiration: observation, friends and peers, past experiences, and most importantly their own leadership teams. A CEO normally adopts a position only after consultation with the leadership team, and when adopted, the team’s position then becomes part of the CEO’s personal agenda.

The principle at issue here really is just common sense, that there not be any division in leadership within an organization. Debate and lively discussion are encouraged, but only within the team when the team is assembled, or one-on-one with the leader, but never outside of those conditions. The principle of ‘cabinet solidarity’ applies, for the good of the organization.

The ‘ripple effect’ of leadership applies not just to the senior leader, but to every leader in the ministry. All should enjoy the same ripple effect and see their own leadership extended further through their work areas. The whole organization then benefits from a cohesive leadership team.

The post The ‘Ripple Effect’ of Leadership appeared first on CCCC Blogs.

The ideal believer lives a Christ-like life manifesting the fruit of the Spirit. Unfortunately, everyone is on a journey toward that ideal.

We all fall short and we always will until God finishes perfecting us. Until then, we have to deal with imperfect people. That’s the really hard part of life for those of us who are already perfect! (Just kidding!!!)

But should we expect more from ministry leaders than from the average person? Yes, but they still won’t be perfect.

Why Leaders Deserve a Higher Standard

Most people have a very localized sphere of influence and we never hear of their shortfalls unless we know them personally. But leaders represent a community, and the ripple effect of their shortfalls is much wider.  In Satan And The Problem Of Evil: Constructing A Trinitarian Warfare Theodicy, Greg Boyd writes that:

Moral responsibility is proportionate to the potential to influence others…the greater the potential a [person] has for love, the greater the potential this [person] must have for the opposite of love [because of free will]… When people who have the capacity and moral responsibility to bless many fail to do so, their extraordinary potential to bless becomes an extraordinary capacity to harm. Hence those people require greater accountability and deserve more severe judgment if they fall…every increase in the capacity for good means a similar increase in the capacity for evil… If God wants a world where a Mother Teresa is possible, he must also be willing to contend with a world in which an Adolf Hitler is possible… We have no idea of how glorious Satan might have appeared had he chosen to actualize his potential for loving service to God rather than his potential for rebellion. Neither can we acquire any clear idea of what Mother Teresa or Adolf Hitler might have looked like had they chosen each other’s paths rather than the ones they in fact chose.

Hitler’s powerful oratory skills could have been used for good, but he chose to use them for evil. Just as he did great evil with his skill, he could have done great good with the same skill.

Ministry leaders have great gifts, skills and talents that got them into their leadership roles, but being a leader they now have the potential to do greater good or greater harm for the cause of Christ than they could before. Somebody with no communication skills, no organizational skills, and no charisma could have the exact same failing as a leader, and never cause a ripple. The leader, however, with the identical failing could devastate a whole community and bring great disrepute to Christ’s name. This means that those who have the ability to influence many should be held to a higher standard and they are accountable to the whole community. The concept applies to everyone who works in vocational ministry, but my focus is the leader.

Furthermore, when ministry leaders fall short, most people (especially the secular public) see it as not just an imperfection or development need, but as outright hypocrisy. That puts a different spin on the perceived problem. It is not a personality quirk, lapse or error of judgment, but an intentional choice. The shortcoming does nothing to help the proclamation of the Good News of the kingdom when it is interpreted this way. Thus ministry leaders get judged harshly when they fail to live up to the Christian ideal.

In my post, “Early warning signs for loss of integrity,” I referred to an excellent book, Integrity: Doing the Right Thing for the Right Reason, that softened my view of people who fall short of the ideal. While we often like things neat and simple, black and white, this is rarely the case. A person could indeed be truly evil in intent, but in many cases the person has succumbed to the very traits that made them a leader in the first place. For example, the same confidence that enables a young person to start a new ministry can later develop into cockiness, arrogance and progressively worse. Then they start to justify their attitudes and behaviours and they are on their way to a fall.

Leaders Are Like Kings

If we believe that the people placed in ministry leadership are God’s choice, then they are similar in function to the kings of Israel who ruled over Israel as under-lords to the Lord, who was himself the  true king of Israel. Ministry leaders are under-shepherds to the true Shepherd, Jesus Christ. The church and its ministries belong to Christ and any human leader is just like a steward who runs a portion of his master’s household.

In Abraham Heschel’s masterful study of the Old Testament prophets (The Prophets) he discusses the role of the king and how the prophets were a check to ensure the king did not begin to rule in his own name, rather than God’s:

The king…is the ruler appointed by God who must reign according to the will and the mishpat of God…What were the safeguards that kept alive that attitude and prevented the king from ever assuming the mysterious nimbus that goes with the power of sovereignty? …  Of paramount importance in the history of Israel was the freedom and independence enjoyed by the prophets, their ability to upbraid the kings and princes for their sins. From the beginning of the monarchy, the king was at any moment in peril of rebuke, even of rejection, by the prophets, who reminded him that the king’s sovereignty was not unlimited, that over the king’s mishpat stood the mishpat of the Lord – an idea that frequently clashed with the exigencies of government.

The role of the prophet is to speak correction to God’s leader so that God’s justice (mishpat) rules over the king’s justice. Heschel said that our conscience develops scales: excuses, pretense and self-pity. The purpose of prophecy therefore includes the intent to “conquer callousness, to change the inner man.” The prophet’s duty is “to speak to the people, whether or not they hear or refuse to hear.” Every ministry leader who wants to stay on as a ministry leader should pray that God would send them a Nathan, a prophet, who would stand up to the king and say, “You are the man!”

Critics as Prophets

The Bible has lots to say about people who cause division and stir up contention, and it condemns them. However, there are people who I believe are acting in a prophet-like role who are pure in heart and inspired by God to speak correction to those in leadership.

As a leader, don’t be too quick to label your critics as troublemakers. Their calling a sin a sin may be the greatest service they can do for you. Their message is a wake-up call to assess who you have become and what you are doing. Has being in leadership had a negative affect on you? Has holding power corrupted you? Do you believe your own press? Have you forgotten whom you serve?

The best case outcome when a prophet speaks is that their ‘targets’ see the problem in their current way of being or see that they have some explaining to do (if they have been misunderstood). It would be much better if leaders catch their developing problems while they are relatively insignificant, so that much worse could be avoided.

My Take on Shortfalls

When I read or hear about yet another leader with a problem, I first sigh and then say, “There but for the grace of God go I.” Their shortcoming is a call to examine myself, my foibles and my attitudes, and check for self-justification, rationalization and so on. Have I submitted to proper authority and allowed myself to be scrutinized? Of course, all Christians should do exactly the same because they too have the same potential to fall short.

If I were in a position to work with the leader, I would approach it with compassion and with the goal of rehabilitation rather than punishment. The goal is always advancement of the Christian mission and in God’s kingdom there is always forgiveness and restoration. The same Jesus who said to Peter, “Get behind me, Satan! You are a stumbling block to me; you do not have in mind the concerns of God, but merely human concerns” later said to Peter, “Feed my sheep.” This is also the approach of the standards program at CCCC. Its goal is not to punish those who fail to comply with a standard, but to correct the problem and bring them into compliance.

The real issue for me in terms of expectations and failure is, what did they learn from their error (and therefore what will they do differently) and did they submit to correction? Sometimes the unChristian behaviour is so sinful that it is not possible to continue on in the ministry role. But even then I have hope that beyond exposure and censure there can be correction and redemption so the person can continue in some useful service of the Master.

In this regard, Jim Bakker really impressed me. I never watched him, but I was in the service at a church in Phoenix when we were all surprised as he came out and was interviewed. He had been through a rehabilitation process, clearly admitted he was wrong (he wrote a book by that title although I haven’t read it), and at the time of the interview had been working for some time in Los Angeles at the Dream Center as an ordinary, anonymous volunteer. I still don’t follow him at all, but the day of his interview I was impressed by his humbleness. It seemed authentic. What was even more impressive, perhaps, was that the pastor of this church along with a very few others went to visit him in prison and walked with him through contrition and repentance with the goal of redeeming him for something useful.

Kings and queens, listen to your prophets!

The post Of Kings and Prophets: Ministry Leaders and Their Critics appeared first on CCCC Blogs.

I remember 28 years ago now driving home from our cottage and the highway was stopped dead. No problem. I had a map  showing a side road that went all the way down past the slow area. It went through a few tiny towns and over a river, but it sure looked good as an alternate route. So off my wife and I went. Maybe I should have been concerned that no one else had the same brilliant idea.

We drove along a two lane paved road that became a two lane gravel road. Hmm. We went through a tiny town that reminded me uncomfortably of the scene where Dueling Banjos was made famous in Deliverance. Hmm again. But on we went, and the gravel road became a single lane. Eternally optimistic, I knew we were close to getting back on the highway and whizzing home. But, fixated on my goal, we drove obliviously through miles of forest with no sideroads and no driveways until it became a cow path, two ruts with high grass in the middle. It didn’t help that my wife said repeatedly that she was enjoying the drive and seeing places she’d never otherwise see! However, by this time even I was thinking, “Something’s not right here.”

According to the map we were almost at the river and all we had to do was cross over it and we’d be back in civilization, but it was looking doubtful. And then a hill arose in front of us, and we climbed up it slowly driving on smooth boulders poking through the earth, finally stopping when we came to outright rocks. Climbing up the rocks I had a glorious view of the river below, a paved road on the other side, and absolutely no bridge at all! The map showed a bridge, but there obviously had never been a bridge here. I had to back up for miles before I could turn around!

I wish when I first turned on to the gravel road I had realized that the roads were  deteriorating in quality and unlikely to be through roads. At that point I could easily have turned around and got back on course with no significant loss of time. In the same way, when people make those first choices that set them on a questionable course, before they lose their integrity, surely at that early point if a person recognized the significance of  the present choice in terms of how it can lead to lost integrity, they would gratefully make a different choice and preserve their integrity. I thought someone should research that, and I discovered accidentally while perusing a bookstore this week that someone has. (I did my usual checking out of the book before deciding to buy it.)

The Earliest Warning Signs

Every person in Christian ministry should read this (secular) book called Integrity: Doing the Right Thing for the Right Reason. I’ll warn you though, it is a frightening read because the author, a clinical psychologist in Toronto, found that the earliest warning signals are things that I think every person already has to a degree in their psychological make-up: the desire to perform well. In fact, society honours and rewards those who exhibit the related behaviours of producing good quality work and having a good work ethic, even as we say we want to avoid their logical extremes, perfectionism and workaholism. The author, Barbara Killinger, says the problem is that these two behaviours are really just socially acceptable diseases.

For example, workaholics are overly responsible idealists who have compulsively competitive natures and they seek fulfillment in work. Being responsible is good.  Having ideals is good. Being competitive is good (it leads to better value for your ‘clients’). Finding fulfillment in your work is good too. But there can be too much of these good things. You can feel so much responsibility on your shoulders that you feel only you are carrying the weight of the ministry and you become resentful and curmudgeonly, as though the ministry owed you something. You can be so idealistic you will continually be frustrated with the reality of the world around you, so you become angry and bitter. You can become ruthless in your competitive race to win. If you find fulfillment only in your work, you have an unbalanced life and incredible stress as pressures mount in other areas. Workaholism leads sequentially to chronic fatigue and no longer being able to relax or play, guilt over the parts of your life that are falling apart, loss of feeling which means loss of compassion and purpose, and finally character change as you become self-absorbed while leading a dead life of declining physical health. The workaholic is now primed and ready for loss of integrity. Yet employers unconsciously (at least I sure hope it is not conscious) are complicit in their employees’ slides down the slippery slope because they give them laptops and smart phones so they can work 24 hours a day. These are good tools, but need to be used responsibly.

Perfectionists have their own issues. They believe they are highly intelligent, superior people. Their feeling of specialness, Killinger says, can foster arrogance or a feeling of entitlement, that they are the exception to the rule and are exempt from community standards. The perfectionist who reaches this point has the attitudes that will support loss of integrity.

Perfectionism and workaholism are particularly insidious because they are related to the key threat to integrity: obsession. Killinger says that “If I had to make an educated guess about who might eventually lose his or her integrity, it would likely be an individual who has become obsessively fixated on a thought, idea, or action.” So what are the pre-conditions that lead to obsessive thinking? It turns out that all the pre-conditions are related to the choices we make about how we think about things.

The Slippery Slope!

If the choice was between stealing or not stealing, that would be an easy decision. Will you cheat on your spouse? “No, of course not!” you say. But that is now.  How does someone get to the place where they can say “Yes”? They get to that point when they have no empathy or compassion left for their spouse, when their intuition has become negative so that it is slow to speak up and the person becomes bored, impatient and impulsive. You get to this stage through more innocent choices you make, such as the choice a perfectionist makes as to how to handle self-doubt. The choice a person with chronic fatigue makes about whether to press on with work or give in to sleep. The choice a creative person makes about whether or not to be concerned when it takes 12 hours to do what it usually took 8 hours to do.

These are among the many conditions that Killinger says are pre-cursors to loss of integrity. And that is what makes this book so scary. We associate loss of integrity with the obviously bad choices people make, and we say “So I won’t do that!” But the road to lost integrity starts with nothing so obvious. It starts with apparently benign and unrelated symptoms that we choose to ignore because we don’t appreciate their true significance. The choices we should be concerned about are not what we choose to do at the end of the road, but what we choose to think at the beginning of the road. It is at this point that we can most easily avert what Killinger calls “the predictable breakdown syndrome.” But even if you have started to slide, it is still possible to grab on to a branch and keep from sliding all the way down.

Integrity Means Doing What You Say

Here’s an important point about integrity. Integrity means being consistent and predictable, acting in ways that are consistent with what you say you believe. Moral failure such as cheating on your spouse is one form of lost integrity, assuming you say you believe in faithfulness to your spouse. That is an obvious sin. But we must remember that any behaviour that is not consistent with our Christian view of life would also be a loss of integrity. Skipping church. Treating staff as objective resources rather than as humans made in God’s image. Staying silent and insensitive to injustice. You might not fail in obvious sin such as adultery, but you could still lose your integrity as a follower of Christ.

A Solution

The solution is relatively straight-forward. Killinger says we need compassion and a deliberate surfacing of the positive aspects of the personality traits that we have least of. For example, thinkers need the emotional side to come out while emotional types need the rational thinking side to come out. The point is to have a holistic view of the situation and make a decision that takes into account the needs of other people who would be affected. She says, “Discerning integrity, I believe, requires a compassionate eye. Informed decisions based on hard facts and figures, or stringent rules and regulations, rarely represent the whole story. Our moral choices must also show a genuine concern for the welfare of others. This is not to downplay the role of thinking in formulating opinions, but wise moral choices are made when intelligence, compassion, and maturity come together to guide our judgments.”

This post is closely related to another post, The private life of a Christian leader, in which I wrote about how compartmentalizing life creates a condition in which moral failure is rationalized away. It turns out that Killinger says the same thing.

I think the upshot of this is that everyone should have an accountability partner to whom they disclose what they are thinking and feeling. This is a lot more important than disclosing what they are doing, because they won’t be doing anything questionable until long after they have been thinking and feeling that they are alienated, hard-done-by, or any of the other pre-cursor attitudes that Killinger identifies. Accountability relationships should be focused on our attitudes and feelings.

Finally, brethren, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is of good repute, if there is any excellence and if anything worthy of praise, dwell on these things.
Philippians 4:8

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