On Leading Well

Author: Ken

  • It’s Not Our Job to Reach Everyone

    And he gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the shepherds and teachers, to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ, until we all attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to mature manhood, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ…. Ephesians 4:11-13 (ESV)

    “In recent years our complexity, size and scope have masked our essence. I sense God is calling us back to our roots – the simple calling that was clearly present when we were growing rapidly. When we have been winning, building and sending, God has blessed us.” – Steve Douglass, Future Direction

    Repeat after me:

    Movements Everywhere does not mean CCC staff everywhere.
    Movements Everywhere does not mean planting CCC flags everywhere.
    Movements Everywhere does not mean it’s CCC’s job to reach everyone…
    [ ] on this campus
    [ ] in this country
    [ ] in the world. (Check all that apply.)

    Now take a deep breath. Do you feel like you just committed heresy?

    Relax. You’re going to be ok. Enjoy a weekly Sabbath. Take a nap.

    One of the most common mistakes that I’ve frequently observed and personally committed during my 23 years on staff with this fantastic organization is that we tend to bite off more than our God-given share of the Great Commission. How many times have I sat with a team in front of a fresh white board during a strategic planning session to dream about reaching our scope of 30,000 students on a campus, or 30 million or 300 million in a country, or 6+ billion people in the world? There’s nothing wrong with dreaming about it, envisioning what it will be like when God brings it about, or praying toward these ends. In fact, I believe willingness to engage emotionally with that level of scope is embedded in the spiritual DNA of every true follower of Jesus. I have a huge world map in my study at home before which I regularly sit or kneel with Bible open, in the wee morning hours, praying country by country for God to raise up disciples among every tribe, tongue, people and nation. This nourishes my soul and brings my daily struggles into a much more realistic perspective.

    So, what’s the problem? The problem, viewed through an organizational leadership lens, is that when it comes to planning, we have allowed most teams to believe that it’s their job to “reach an entire campus (or city or country)” rather than holding them accountable to fulfill CCC’s unique calling and execute our mission well within their local setting.

    What has God has called CCC to do? He’s called us and historically used us to help fulfill the Great Commission by winning, building and sending in the power of the Holy Spirit and helping the body of Christ do evangelism and discipleship.     We fulfill that calling when we live out our values and execute our mission over and over and over again. And what is our mission? About a year ago, the Global Leadership Team clarified that our unique mission is launching spiritual movements by winning, building and sending Christ-centered multiplying disciples. Eleven very powerful words that bring clarity and focus to what we should be doing.

    If you want to see how this all fits together, you may want to review Steve Douglass’ Future Direction booklet or view it in a simple one-page Planning Pyramid that places all these concepts in perspective. The higher, broader levels of the pyramid represent overarching calling, values, mission and vision that should guide us as we seek the Lord and make decisions. These don’t change very often. The lower, narrower levels represent the specific, culturally relevant strategic action that needs to take place in any setting. These plans and actions change frequently as the situation requires and the Spirit freely leads. The desired result: movements somewhere, ultimately leading to movements everywhere.

    Note that nowhere will you find a requirement, expectation, assumption or call for any CCC team to “reach the entire whatever.” Think about it: when was the last time you heard of a team leader or national director losing their job because they didn’t reach their entire scope? Or, for that matter, how many times in the past 60 years has anyone heard of a team that consistently DID reach their entire scope? Hmmm…

    This brings us to the next two major shifts in CCC culture that we need to make – together – in order to move forward.

    2. Increasing Local Ownership

    “Movements Everywhere” implies that the greatest growth must happen at the grass roots level. The whole organization must adjust to ensure that the local level is growing and expanding. This means that…

    a. We have local teams who are focused on building movements, whether through direct ministry or catalytic ministry. They are fully empowered to innovate and be creative within our mission, vision, and values.

    b. Everyone is aligned to essentials and committed to multiplying.

    c. Local movements become self-sustaining, i.e., they are generating local leaders and resources.

    d. Organizational decisions are made in light of their impact on the field. Investment in local effectiveness is normal.

    3. Developing a Broader Kingdom Perspective

    Penetrating the world with true followers of Jesus will require efforts far beyond those of Campus Crusade for Christ. We must keep a Kingdom perspective. We must join forces and resources with the rest of the body of Christ to reach our goal. This means that

    a. We promote God’s heart among the nations, embracing both the Great commandment and the Great Commission.

    b. We focus on our role, while celebrating the roles of others with different callings. We realize that all of us are necessary and none of us is sufficient to accomplish movements everywhere.

    c. We actively and unselfishly work together with other organizations and leaders with an attitude of humility, so that the synergy of the Body of Christ is unleashed.

    d. While making disciples and launching movements locally, we continually entrust the ministry to others in the arenas where God has called us to work.

    e. We must have the Kingdom in our sights, rather than only looking out for our own interests.

    How might these two cultural shifts change your team’s next strategic planning session?

    What might you need to stop doing? Start doing? Change?

  • Permission Granted: A Call for Culture Change

    Welcome to the 2nd Annual CCC Blog-ference. I’m glad you dropped by. My first post will be a little longer than usual in order to establish context. Stick with me and please add comments to move the conversation forward.

    For from the rising of the sun to its setting my name will be great among the nations, and in every place incense will be offered to my name, and a pure offering. For my name will be great among the nations, says the Lord of hosts. Malachi 1:11

    Our great God has been powerfully at work exalting Himself among the nations. Ever since the CM2007 student gathering in Busan, Korea, I have observed worldwide a noticeable surge in student ownership of CCC’s calling, vision and mission. In part, this ownership has come due to our renewed message: It’s Your Movement. What is God calling you to do next? At a deeper heart level, I believe God is raising a new generation of students who have replaced cynicism with healthy ambition and who truly believe they are able to change the broken world prior generations have bequeathed them.

    Recently I completed the first two years in my new role of giving leadership to the Global Campus Strategy. I have personally visited 10 of our 14 Areas of Affairs, spoken to more than 15,000 students, and had hundreds of informal conversations with CCC campus staff members. What a learning experience this has been! I constantly find myself humbled by the radical faith of my brothers and sisters as well as the daunting scope of our common mission. I’ve also observed some macro-trends affecting our movement.

    Reality Check 1: Globally, the number of college students has roughly doubled from 60 million to 130 million in the past 15 years. Governments of developing countries have realized that their future depends upon a well‐educated population who can compete in today’s borderless glocal economy. Traditional physical campuses can no longer absorb the growing student body and have limited new admissions. The fastest growing campuses are those such as the University of Phoenix, which boasts 345,000 students in 204 locations and has 75% of students taking courses online. Metro areas such as Moscow with 1.2 million students, Mexico City with 400,000 students, or Rome with 250,000 students can no longer be broken down into campuses, but must take into account Student Population Centers where students commute to class, live at home, and hang out with friends somewhere in the city.

    Nikolin, our National Campus Director in Albania, observes that for us who are constantly looking for future leaders it has made our job more difficult. It’s harder to identify, select and invest in truly influential student leaders who can and will change their world. In his words: “We have to work a lot and find little gold.”

    Reality Check 2: CCC will never have enough staff, interns or partners to grow movements in every key student population center. Although many countries have seen fruit in raising and releasing STINT or missional teams to launch new movements, our progress is not keeping up with the explosion of new campuses. However, we operate under the deep conviction that Jesus has not left himself without witness and has already prepared key students and faculty on every campus to live, love and truly follow Him. One of our great challenges is to find new ways – both in person and online – to sow broadly, filter well, identify God’s leaders, and invite them into our vision of Movements Everywhere.

    Reality Check 3: Campus Crusade must effectively navigate the transition toward our Movements Everywhere vision. Over the past 10-15 years we have seen our focus on building movements of spiritual multiplication slip significantly in many places around the world. Too often we have substituted evangelistic activities for personal proclamation of Jesus, settled for “having disciples” instead of “making disciples,” and perpetuated staff-controlled ministries rather than unleashing student-led movements that are served by CCC staff. We are not currently seeing enough fruit, effectiveness and growth to make significant progress toward Movements Everywhere among the college students of the world. Simply put: We can’t get there from here.

    Healthy student movements of spiritual multiplication form the very core of our unique calling from God in contributing to the fulfillment of the Great Commission. CCC leaders worldwide recognize the time is ripe for change. The next two years represent a significant window of opportunity. We must — both in ministry philosophy and concrete field application — bring effective campus movement launching and building to the forefront of all we do.

    Let’s Lead the Way
    CCC has a rich legacy and great core values. Yet like any 60-year old organization, we become prisoners of prior success. When God worked powerfully we wrote training manuals and materials to teach others how to do the same thing well. Systems and structures arose to support those processes. But each generation has new felt needs which require different approaches. What helped us in the past can prevent us from being effective in the present and cripple us in the future. We must keep changing in order to remain effective.

    The first of five key shifts we must make is returning to a mission-defined, value-driven culture. Organizational culture refers to the underlying values, beliefs and principles that serve as a foundation for an organization’s management system, as well as the practices and behaviors that both exemplify and reinforce those basic principles. We lead from these values rather than being driven by materials, events, donors, or numbers.

    Realizing that our work is ultimately spiritual, we must lead from our values of faith, growth and fruitfulness, so that…

    a. Everyone is living out a passionate walk with God, utterly dependent on Him in and for all things. That dependence is expressed personally and corporately through pervasive prayer, holy lives, and love for one another. It results in leading from the foundation of our walk with God, unity, speaking the truth in love, and taking faith risks.

    b. Everyone is growing and developing in Christ-like character, ministry skills, personal capacity, and exercising initiative in leading rather than relying on permission.

    c. Everyone is bearing lasting fruit in their lives and ministries, continually examining the results of their efforts. We do whatever it takes to help people connect with Jesus, and become true followers of Him. Like the lessons of pruning the vine, this may require more focus on life-on-life discipleship and movements, rather than having a few people leading many strategies.

    No one needs permission to radically live out our values. No matter where you are, no matter what position you hold, you can lead with humble boldness from this rich spiritual base.

    When it comes to value-driven servant leadership, change starts with me.

    Thoughts?

  • How Do We Lead Gen F?

    Gen F – the Facebook Generation.

    Facebook hit 200 million users this week, in 40 languages.  That’s doubled from 100 million just 8 short months ago. [Update: Facebook hit 500 million registered users in the summer of 2010.] The NY Times graphed the progress, including the generational element. If Facebook were a country, it would be the world’s 5th most populous nation, following China, India, the USA and snuggled between Indonesia (220 million) and Brazil (190 million).

    The under-25’s are the people that have never known a time when they couldn’t know more about a subject than their professors could teach in a 45-minute lecture simply by exploring the top 10 Google hits. No wonder this group is a bit skeptical of leadership authority culture based on traditional currencies such as age, position or tenure.

    If you are currently hiring, leading, serving or parenting Gen F’ers, you’ve already begun to experience the quantum shifts unique to this group and how they rub against our 20th century norms. We need to adjust our expectations to lead, love, learn from and serve well this flexible, well-connected, highly-social group that longs to change the world.

    Gary Hamel of the Wall Street Journal says: If your company hopes to attract the most creative and energetic members of Gen F, it will need to understand these Internet-derived expectations, and then reinvent its management practices accordingly. Sure, it’s a buyer’s market for talent right now, but that won’t always be the case—and in the future, any company that lacks a vital core of Gen F employees will soon find itself stuck in the mud.

    Gary includes an excellent list of 12 principles to help guide and shape our leadership culture. Here are the first six (the whole article is here):

    1. All ideas compete on an equal footing.
    On the Web, every idea has the chance to gain a following—or not, and no one has the power to kill off a subversive idea or squelch an embarrassing debate. Ideas gain traction based on their perceived merits, rather than on the political power of their sponsors.

    2. Contribution counts for more than credentials.
    When you post a video to YouTube, no one asks you if you went to film school. When you write a blog, no one cares whether you have a journalism degree. Position, title, and academic degrees—none of the usual status differentiators carry much weight online. On the Web, what counts is not your resume, but what you can contribute.

    3. Hierarchies are natural, not prescribed.
    In any Web forum there are some individuals who command more respect and attention than others—and have more influence as a consequence. Critically, though, these individuals haven’t been appointed by some superior authority. Instead, their clout reflects the freely given approbation of their peers. On the Web, authority trickles up, not down.

    4. Leaders serve rather than preside.
    On the Web, every leader is a servant leader; no one has the power to command or sanction. Credible arguments, demonstrated expertise and selfless behavior are the only levers for getting things done through other people. Forget this online, and your followers will soon abandon you.

    5. Tasks are chosen, not assigned.
    The Web is an opt-in economy. Whether contributing to a blog, working on an open source project, or sharing advice in a forum, people choose to work on the things that interest them. Everyone is an independent contractor, and everyone scratches their own itch.

    6. Groups are self-defining and -organizing.
    On the Web, you get to choose your compatriots. In any online community, you have the freedom to link up with some individuals and ignore the rest, to share deeply with some folks and not at all with others. Just as no one can assign you a boring task, no can force you to work with dim-witted colleagues.