Unleashing The Power Of Rubber Bands (10 page)

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AT ITS HEART, VISION
is about a journey we are taking together. The destination is motivating; we can hardly believe we might actually arrive someday. But in addition to that, we find that along the way we are changed. Vision is always about the “we” and the “I.”

A powerful combination.

By myself, I cannot implement a systemic solution to extreme poverty, but with a group of like-minded and committed people, I can. By myself, I cannot change my character or spiritually form myself, but in community, I can.

A vision compels us to look at a brighter future, and it insists that we be changed in the process. A vision isn’t big enough if it leaves someone unscathed. Vision is challenging, both to the work we do and the people we are.

The job of a leader is to devise creative, compelling, and repetitive ways to communicate the vision to the people. Vision is simply the motivation, and motivation implies doing something. What we are going to do and how—now
that
gets everyone in the game.

Recently we did some follow-up work with a church that had just shut down for the weekend to engage everyone in serving opportunities throughout the community. They had been planning this weekend for months. They had researched and interviewed potential partner organizations they could join with for those two days in reaching out to the needy in their area.

They had communicated both the vision and the plan with the congregation for a few months prior to the actual weekend. People got excited to serve with their families or their home groups in the areas of elderly people, education, food banks, and shelters.

Various opportunities were available and people signed up for shifts to read to patients in nursing homes or to do manual labor at some of the area schools that were in desperate need of refurbishing. Slots were available for people to bring, stock, and distribute food items in three local food banks, and meal preparation and cleaning were needed at two nearby homeless shelters.

It was a bold step for the leaders to shut down the church on a Sunday. In fact, there was a bit of initial resistance to that. But when the vision was communicated, and pictures were shown and stories told about the need, eventually those complaints were replaced with sign-ups.

As the weekend got closer, the decision was made to have one Sunday evening service for anyone who wanted to share and reflect on the experience. I showed up to participate in that service and to do work with the staff team the next day, and I was overwhelmed by what I saw. On Sunday night, hundreds of church people, most of them still wearing work clothes, poured into the sanctuary. They should have been exhausted. They were dirty, and they didn’t smell so great. They should have gone home, but I got the distinct impression that wild horses couldn’t have kept them away.

The event had clearly tapped into something, something you rarely see even in a worship service.

As a leader, when you are able to drive down deep and get to the “I want” motivation, the organization becomes a perpetual-motion machine. It no longer requires as much of your own energy, because those around you have a zeal for the job. And that energy is enough to carry all of you collectively well into the future.

Vision needs to be nurtured, and the conversations that your team is having about the issue of vision are critical. I have a friend who is currently researching and writing a book on parenting. One of the most fascinating findings he has uncovered is this: As parents, if you and yourspouse spend ten minutes a week talking about your children—what their current issues are, what you want to work with them on—you are in the top 0.2 percent of the population.

When you are able to drive
down deep and

get to the
“I.want” motivation,

the
organization becomes a

perpetual-motion machine

I don’t think it is much of a stretch to extrapolate that idea to leadership. If you are talking with the people on your team even once a month about the vision and their role in it, I think you are way ahead of most teams I encounter.

If you set aside one hour a month for a robust conversation with your leadership team about the vision and its current implications for each of you personally and for the organization as a whole, you’re probably far beyond most others.

You want to grow your leadership team into a leadership community that stimulates growth in each member. If they are done well, the conversations you initiate, the debates you participate in, and the decisions you make all foster and fuel the vision. The vision continues to be a shared vision when everyone is invited to participate in talking about it and shaping it into the future.

In Axis, our vision was made up of three strategic com-ponents: creating vibrant, authentic community; helping our friends to discover Jesus; and serving those in need. As a team, we regularly got together to talk about these components.

Creating vibrant, authentic community sounds great, but it is really hard work, and we didn’t want to lose sight of that or let it become an obstacle to our purpose. During these meetings, we invited each other into open and honest dialogue about the ways in which we were experiencing or not experiencing community. Sometimes our conversations were about ways in which we were failing to create biblical community, or ways in which it was breaking down within our organization. Other times, we talked about the rich and meaningful ways in which we saw our community growing.

Always, we asked ourselves this question: Are we as a team creating and experiencing the kind of community that we are hoping others in Axis will?

During one conversation where we were talking about helping our friends to discover Jesus, one of our staff members realized that working in ministry had isolated him from people who didn’t know God. He knew that our vision included him, so he decided to do something about it.

In addition to his job with us, he took on a small part-time job at a local Starbucks. There he worked alongside people his age from different walks of life. He built friendships with them and found ways to serve them and know them.

If the vision doesn’t cost us something, we aren’t participating. Because of this guy’s decision, the rest of us began to take our non-Christian friendships more seriously; rarely did a meeting go by when we weren’t asking him how things were going at Starbucks.

Our leadership team didn’t simply have the task of helping Axis serve the marginalized, however. We knew that
we
were called to be active participants in that lifestyle as well, so from time to time we talked about the ways in which we were actively serving the underresourced.

Much of the work of vision is planting seeds, ideas for doing things differently. Like seeds, much of the transformation happens slowly at first, beneath the surface. There is a dormancy period, where from every view it appears as though nothing is happening.

But nothing could be further from the truth. Here is where the persistence and patience of a leader is needed more than ever.
Patience
and
persistence
are not words that leaders normally gravitate toward. But they are critical, as are constant soil prepping, planting, watering, and feeding.

Ask any schoolteacher how often students have returned with the words “What you taught me really made such a difference in my life.” Many teachers are taken by surprise when this first happens, because when the student was in the classroom, the teacher saw no indication that he or she was even listening.

The interesting thing about seeds is that they contain much of the energy and direction necessary for growth within themselves. Then they are buried underground, where much of the rest of what they need exists. And they lie there.

Sometimes there is absolutely no sign of growth for months. In fact, the ground looks exactly as it did the day you buried those little suckers.

And then one day, you see it. At first you have to blink, not sure if it is what you think it is, it is so small. But sure enough, there it is: a tiny little green shoot. And once it gets its head above ground, it makes up for lost time, growing so quickly you could swear you can see it getting taller almost daily.

It is there that we see that convergence of the seed, the soil, the depth of planting, the water, the sun, and time. Perfect conditions for growth.

Creating a leadership culture does much the same thing. The vision, the values, the shared goals, the meetings, the conversations, the relationships . . . all these things work together to create a climate that supports and encourages growth.

And that climate also creates vibrancy and allows people to flourish in such a way that those things become characteristic of both the individuals and the organization.

The vision, the values, the
shared goals,

the meetings,
the conversations,

the
relationships . . . all these
things

work together
to create a climate

that supports and
encourages growth.

Scot McKnight writes about the conditions underwhich people change. His conclusions are applicable here, in the context of vision and creating a leadership climate and culture.

Scot says that people are most open to new information and to change when they are either on a quest or in a crisis. This is importantinformation for leaders to use in shaping their teams.

I want people on my leadership team who are on a quest, people who are naturally curious and are drawn to the journey of transformation. People who aren’t satisfied with the status quo or life as usual.

People who are on a quest ask questions. (I am sure there is an etymological connection here.) They humbly consider their sins and weaknesses as possible contributing factors to disagreements or relational breakdowns. They read and learn and apply. They are drawn to growth.

People who are on a quest are courageous. It is much easier to live “questless,” taking the path of least resistance, but people who are on a quest are willing to live with discomfort and ambiguity, knowing that eventually those things will cause the seed to grow. People who are on a quest are transformed.

One of the most significant questions leaders can ask themselves is this: How do I create a culture that attracts people on a quest? In our meetings, in our one-on-ones, what am I doing to facilitate those qualities?

Good leaders ask a lot of questions. It’s easy to think good leaders
answer
a lot of questions, but I don’t think that’s true. I remember one day sitting at my desk at work and being terribly frustrated about something. So I called Max DePree. I’ve found that to be one of my best strategies when I am frustrated.

After I explained the situation to him, Max said, “Nancy, you do know, don’t you, that leaders are only right about 50 percent of the time?”

No, Max, I did not know that. Thanks for telling me
now
—where were you with that interesting little tidbit twenty years ago?

Fifty percent, is he kidding me? I had been operating for years under the assumption that leaders need to be right at a 90 percent average or better. Ever felt relieved and confused at the same time?

Good leaders teach their teams to think. One of the strongest responses a leader can use is this: “I don’t know; what do you think?” That question is an invitation to contribute, participate, choose, and direct. Giving people a choice honors their dignity as human beings. (That’s another thing Max taught me; you honor the dignity in another person, you do not bestow it. I think that is very profound. We should all spend at least a full day thinking about that idea, as well as its implications.)

Giving people a choice encourages the quest. People on a quest have a much better chance of moving toward a vision than people who are not on a quest.

People on a quest often change other people. In Axis, we were challenged and changed by a person in our ministry (not on the leadership team) who was on a quest. His name was Quinn.

Quinn was about twenty-four when he started attending Axis. He was a bit different than the average Axis attendee in that he had already experienced a great deal of success in business at an early age. He drove a Mercedes-Benz, and I am pretty sure he was the only one in Axis who did. Yeah, take that to the bank.

Anyway, Quinn started attending Axis because some of his friends did, and they had told him about the pretty girls there. Sometimes you can’t be too proud about whatdraws people to your ministry. So Quinn started coming to the services, hanging out with people afterward, even joining a home group.

People who are on a quest
are transformed.

Interestingly Quinn was driven to find the answer to one question. He wasn’t asking about redemption, the Cross, or even life after death. He simply wanted to know if these people who said they were Christ-followers actually tithed. He was really stuck on the 10 percent thing. And everywhere he went, Quinn asked that question.

After the Axis service, when everyone went out to Chili’s or over to someone’s home, Quinn grilled people: Do you really give 10 percent of your income to church? He didn’t care about net or gross, he just couldn’t believe anyone would believe so deeply in something that he or she would engage in this kind of giving.

At many of our Axis leadership meetings, someone would tell a Quinn story, about him attending an evangelism class (now that’s hilarious, this seeker guy going to a Contagious Christian class, mostly to ask his question), or going to a party, drilling people with his question. Quinn was definitely on a quest.

Quinn’s quest affected most of us on the leadership team. Stories of Quinn prompted discussions of our practice of giving and whether or not we did. Some who weren’t regularly tithing began to do so as a result of our conversations.

Quinn encountered many people his own age, most of them making much less than he was, who could authentically and enthusiastically answer yes to his question, and follow it up with reasons why they gave. Somewhere in the middle of Quinn’s quest, he met Jesus. Quests transform people.