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

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

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

Corporate Values

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

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

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

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

Transmitting Corporate Values

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

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

Crafting a Values Story

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

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

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

The post Transmitting Corporate Values appeared first on CCCC Blogs.

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

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

1. Christian values and culture
2. Christian mission

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

Mission Drift

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

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

So, directors and leaders,

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

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

Responsibility for Preventing Mission Drift

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

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

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

Board

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

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

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

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

Practical steps might include:

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

Senior Leader

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

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

Leaders can safeguard the mission by:

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

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

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

Conclusion

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

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

The Real Risk of Losing Christian Identity

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

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

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

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

Stories Protect Identity

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

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

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

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

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

Leader as Storyteller

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

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

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

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

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

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