“Tomorrow’s illiterate will not be the man who can’t read; he will be the man who has not learned how to learn.“ –Future Shock, 1970, by Alvin Toffler
These words, written by the late author and futurist Toffler, were eerily prescient—and they point to a type of intelligence in high demand today: LQ or “learning quotient.”
You’ve heard of IQ, maybe taken a test or two somewhere along the way. In 2005, EQ, or “emotional quotient,” became the “hot” type of intelligence to have. An idea popularized by Daniel Goleman in his bestselling book, Emotional Intelligence: Why It Can Matter More Than IQ, EQ is the ability to connect with others and “read” the room, among other things…
What is LQ? The ability to learn new skills, be open to new ways of doing things, and tackle tasks that were either outside your area of interest or simply didn’t exist in the past. Think: training teams to work with AI. A recent article in the career newsletter WorkLifedescribed learning quotient like this: “Essentially, it’s a measure of adaptability and one’s desire and ability to update our skills throughout life.”
Desire is key. As with EQ, LQ can be developed over time. We can improve our ability to learn, and continue to do so as we age. Lifelong learning is not a new idea, but it has taken on a new urgency as innovations like ChatGPT are poised to dramatically transform so many industries and careers. Indeed, lifelong learning is a key part of having a growth mindset, the belief that your talents and abilities can be further developed—and the will to actively seek new opportunities to learn.
Lengthening careers contribute to our need for LQ. As Laura Carstensen, the founding director of the Stanford Center on Longevity, has put it, “In this era of very, very long life, learning is going to have to be continuous.” As it turns out, we have to not only learn new skills, but also unlearn old ways of doing things.
… The research firm Gartner has a chart that describes this exact pattern that frequently happens when new innovations hit the market. It’s called The Hype Cycle:
…
This is where leadership needs to step in.
In both the Inflated Expectations and Disillusionment phases of the Hype Cycle, people make up stories based on limited information. For a new innovation to take hold sustainably, an industry needs information. Data points. Case studies. Education. Experience.
Often these things simply need time. But leaders of companies involved can accelerate the path to the Enlightenment phase by, well, enlightening people with this information as it comes about.
Shane Snow
The thing preventing the latest innovation from snapping perfectly into the market is often simply that it’s new. Users lack information on how to harness it. Smart processes, standardization, coordination, or business models that match the value the innovation can deliver are nascent or don’t exist yet.
I’m basically making a case for thought leadership to help you cross the chasm during the messy middle of the innovation cycle. Buzzwords (and great books) aside, the upshot is this:
If you want to show leadership during a crazy hype cycle, find the list of things that people are “not sure” about and provide them with answers.
Commentary by Dr. Whitesel: as I write for (and prepare to teach) a three-year #DMin cohort on Leadership Foresight, the developing aspects of artificial intelligence are important to consider. Here’s a good article that should be read as an introduction.
Leadership In A ChatGPT World: Empathy And The Human Focus
by Wayne Elsey, Forbes Magazine, 3/22/23.
Transparency is paramount.
…Leaders should be honest about the challenges and opportunities these technologies present and work to create a clear plan for how it’ll happen.
Demonstrate empathy for your team.
… Leaders genuinely interested in their team are more likely to make the time to understand their employees’ individual experiences, feelings and goals.
Here are three strategies to promote effective team collaboration in a ChatGPT World.
The fact is that ChatGPT systems can facilitate communication between teams and leaders—but they can’t replace the human connection that strengthens relationships. Now is the time to lean into human conversations and interactions (i.e., to step away from the screen).
Here are three ideas for creating a more robust team environment in this new environment.
• Find ways to optimize traditional communication methods. In other words, encourage people to move away from the tech and talk to each other.
• Develop solid offline relationships with your team members wherever possible to remind them that you see who they are as people.
• Be available for your team members when they need you, even if that means staying late or coming in early.
Responsible human and tech integration is the only way forward.
In sum, transparency by leaders is paramount in a ChatGPT world.
Artificial Intelligence? ChatGPT? Online Community? Violence? Meta-verse? Reconciliation? The Good News?
Join a group of Christian leaders who in January 2024 will begin studying “what’s next” and how the church can pivot and minister in the future. Ideal for denominational, network, multisite and local leaders.
Commentary by Dr. Whitesel: below are the notes from my presentation, “Leadership Foresight: Our Gateway to Innovation is Not Imitation … But Foresight.” If you are interested in information on the Doctor of Ministry cohort on this topic beginning at Fuller Theological Seminary, see the flier below the notes.
OUR GATEWAY TO INNOVATION IS NOT IMITATION … BUT FORESIGHT
by Bob Whitesel D.Min., Ph.D., 2/21/23
A paper/lecture delivered to The Great Commission Research Network Annual Conference, Orlando, Florida, March 6, 2023.
(words 4482)
Abstract
Foresightthinking (also known as futuring or future thinking) is of increasing importance due to today’s rapid pace in technology, artificial intelligence, ChatGPT, etc.[1] Leadership foresight is defined as “the ability to create and maintain a high-quality, coherent and functional forward view, and to use the insights arising in useful organizational ways.”[2] Regrettably, foresight is often overlooked in lieu of focusing on replicating what’s currently working. But what will work tomorrow, a year, five years and 10 years from now is of critical importance for denominational leaders, district superintendents, bishops, coaches as well as the average pastor. This paper will investigate how future thinking has contributed to the impact of effective evangelism, but how replication eventually slowed that impact. Suggestions will be given regarding how ecclesial leaders can recapture foresight.
Unexpected Detours on My Road with Effective Evangelism
1980s: Reflecting on four decades of journeys within what we call Great Commission Research and Donald McGavran called “mission/(effective)evangelism,”[3] I’ve noticed each decade has been distinguished by a theme and sometimes a course correction. My travels began when I earned a DMin in Church Growth and Evangelism at Fuller in the 1980s. In this decade the term church growth, through provocative, was the darling of ecclesial America. Even mainline churches were reading its principles. Through my church coaching I came to be mentored by thought leaders such as Peter Wagner, Elmer Towns and Eddie Gibbs.
1990s: The next decade saw a dizzying proliferation of programs, tools and tactics. There arose tools to proliferate small groups, plant churches, share your faith, indigenize worship, etc. It was during these years that I developed close friendships with my fellow coaches Charles “Chip” Arn, Kent Hunter, Gary McIntosh, Elmer Towns, Ed Stetzer and others. My greatest angst during this time arose when programs were adopted by churches without sufficient analysis of the community and its trajectory. Ill-advised and ill-suited programs often ended in failure, even though they had worked elsewhere. The result was that at the end of the decade there was an increasing suspicion about church growth tools.
2000s: In my third decade a renewed emphasis upon multiculturalism led to an increasing backlash against effective evangelism. This was largely from misperceptions that McGavran‘s principles where culturally divisive. Not recognizing that McGavran was a missiologist, steeped in intercultural principles; casual readers would misinterpret his emphasis upon sharing the Good News across bridges of God that were culturally suited to the receiver. In “The Legacy of Donald McGavran” Jeff Walters summarized, “one of the great aspects of McGavran’s legacy is that people ought to be able to hear the gospel and respond to the gospel in their own cultural context, where they are comfortable—not having to cross big cultural barriers in order to hear the gospel.”[4]
This “great aspect of McGavran’s legacy” was a profound respect for dissonant adapters,[5] and a desire to improve their encounter with the Good News both via communication and celebration. McGavran’s idea in his book The Bridges of God, was not to argue that churches should be made up of only one homogeneous bridge. Both he and Wagner worked in mission agencies that reached out to multiple tribes or castes at the same time. But McGavran suggested that the more receptive a culture appears to be, should dictate priority and resources over less receptive cultures. Less receptive cultures should be “held lightly” in strategy, not being ignored; but when resources become available, logic suggests putting resources where there is a forecast of growth. This key element of McGavran was foresight.
McGavran’s strategic DNA emphasized future thinking, i.e., to see where and in which cultures people were coming to Christ and then to spend more resources there to follow the move the Holy Spirit. In The Bridges of God he stated, “The era has come when Christian Missions should hold lightly all mission station work[6], which cannot be proved to nurture growing churches, and should support the Christward movements within Peoples as long as they continue to grow at the rate of 50 percent per decade or more. This is today’s strategy.”[7]
But critics in North America focused upon what would happen if a local church focused entirely on a homogeneous people and ignored other cultures. To untangle this debate, it’s important to understand McGavran’s DNA of foresight. If you look at McGavran without foresight and simply focus on the present, you will create strategies and tactics that foster a homogeneous church. But if you look closer, you will see it is McGavran’s foresight that leads him to not ignore resistant cultures, but that we “hold lightly” in strategy until the Holy Spirit begins to move among them.
Here is a simple example how lack of foresight can impact effective evangelism.[8] A Lutheran Church which at one time reached Scandinavian immigrants on the north side of Chicago eventually died because it didn’t reach a new influx of Hispanic people. Hispanic congregations have since rented the church, but cross-cultural partnerships never developed. This is because the Scandinavian congregation saw themselves as discipling a homogeneous Scandinavian immigrant culture. They didn’t grasp McGavran’s foresight to look ahead for the next people movement (Spanish-speaking immigrants) and disciple it.
2010s: More scholars emerged to defend McGavran, such as Gary McIntosh and Mosiax leader Mark DeYmaz, who showed that McGavran wanted to see a “heterogeneous church,” but with homogeneous sub-congregations and worship expressions.[9] Still, the momentum waned significantly until leaders of the Great Commission Research Network (GCRN) such as Gary McIntosh, Elmer Towns, George “Chuck” Hunter, Ed Stetzer, and others began to re-emphasize McGavran‘s writing and thoughts. Stetzer often wrote about McGavran for both Christianity Today and Outreach Magazine. Toward the end of the decade McIntosh penned an authoritative biography of McGavran. The result was a course correction back to the principles behind the tactics, rather than a proliferation of tactics.
2020s: A fourth decade of observation has led me to believe the work of Stetzer, McIntosh, Gibbs, Towns, and Hunter must be completed. This means grasping the unique attributes of McGavran‘s thinking, and why it was so revolutionary. And, the role of foresight in McGavran’s DNA should be studied and reconsidered.
McGavran’s visionary foresight was to look for the harvest not after it ripens, but as it begins to emerge from spiritually fertile soil.
I spent the last twenty years in varying leadership roles in this organization, which drew me deeper into the thinking and foresight of Donald McGavran. I began to see that McGavran‘s DNA was based on two elements. First, an element of his DNA was his analytical mind. He loved observation and prediction, much like famed church growth writer, Lyle Schaller, who had been a former city planner.[10]But secondly, and perhaps most important for the movement today, is that within his DNA was a focus on foresight, future thinking.
McGavran’s foresight meant that that he wasn’t as concerned about methods, as he was about seeing where God is moving and envisioning where he would move next. Gary McIntosh offers a helpful history of how McGavran’s foresight developed:[11]
Through this study, McGavran discovered that of the 145 areas where mission activity was taking place, 134 had grown only eleven percent between 1921 and 1931. The churches in those areas were not even conserving their own children in the faith. Yet, in the other eleven areas the church was growing by one hundred percent, one hundred fifty percent, and even two hundred percent a decade. A curiosity arose within his breast that was to occupy his life and ministry until his death. He wondered why some churches were growing, while others, often just a few miles away, were not. He eventually identified four major questions that were to drive the Church Growth movement worldwide, and in the United States of America.
George Hunter summarized these “driving” questions of Great Commission research: [12]
Question 1 and 2 are research questions.
Question 4 is an application question. “What principles … are reproducible” encourages replicating current best practices. It was this principle of reproducibility that captivated and inadvertently depreciated much of this movement.
Question 3 is a gateway to understanding McGavran’s mind, what I call his strategic DNA. It is a question about foresight. Notice it is about “factors that canmake the Christian faith a movement among some populations” (underline mine). Though this foresight question was foundational to McGavran’s DNA, its lack of immediacy made it less attractive to practitioners and publishers. Yet this third question is what makes his writings ground shaking. McGavran’s visionary foresight was to see the harvest not after it ripens, but as it begins to emerge from spiritually fertile soil.
Such DNA led McGavran, at Fuller President David Hubbard’s invitation, to establish the School of World Mission at Fuller Theological Seminary when McGavran was 67 years old. Charles Van Engen described the school as embracing “prophetic foresight and trend-setting mission leadership.”[13]
The foresight of Donald McGavran (and the shortcuts of his readers)
A problem which befell the Great Commission Research Movement was that McGavran‘s emphasis upon foresight was overshadowed by the popularity of replication. And who could blame his readers for this partiality? For the first time cross-denominational scientific measurement was applied to the church. Judicatory leaders as well as local pastors were either enthralled or alarmed. But they all were interested, especially in shortcuts. Such shortcuts were not peering into the future, but locating what is working today and replicating it. The focus on the future faded from view as the shortcuts of the present clouded it out.
McGavran had looked to see where the Holy Spirit was moving and then marshalled resources to support future ministry in those areas of fertile soil. McGavran sought to allocate future funding to ministries and cultures where the Holy Spirit was and probably will be moving. His most well-known mentee was the prolific author C. Peter Wagner, a colorful cheerleader for replicating what was working elsewhere to customarily help aging congregations thwart geriatrophy.[14]
While both replication and foresight are important tools, Wagner‘s enthusiasm moved the emphasis away from foresight and placed it on copyright. Thus, began decades of finding what’s working and following it, rather than finding where the Holy Spirit is preparing to move and following Him.
Pulling few punches, Alan McMahan, the former president of the Great Commission Research Network called this proliferation of tactics “faddish,” “shrink-wrapping” and a “paint-by-numbers” approach to McGavran’s missiology:
“I have concluded that McGavran‘s missiology was really quite a bit different than the church growth practice in the US and there is a bit of a disconnect there. As it became faddish in the US and proliferated to thousands of churches with all the church growth conferences and church growth products, and as places … shrink-wrapping it all into a tape, a workbook, or a textbook, it became a paint-by-numbers, kind of an approach that many people adopted.”[15]
While McMahan attributes this paint-by-numbers to a loss of cross-cultural experience, it could also be attributable to the lack of foresight that’s required of a missionary. It might be said that McMahan is suggesting, “We don’t analyze sufficiently how and where the Spirit is moving or will move in a community.”
Three Disadvantages of Paint-by-numbers Methodologies
And so, the Effective Evangelism Movement came to be criticized for promoting the latest trend or tactics.[16]And, when such tactics start to be used by many churches, the tactics lose their effectiveness for at least three reasons.
A faddish reputation creates a distain among innovators and skeptics. As a result, organizations led by innovators or change-agents will avoid and even ridicule tools or programs associated with prefabricated methodologies.
The more that people experience certain tactics, the more good (and bad) experiences will result. Because bad experiences are more likely to be shared than good ones,[17] even worthy tactics can lose their positive regard. For example, the cohesive power of a small group has been attested to from Jesus’ example, through the small group methods of Wesley,[18] to the sticky groups of Larry Osborne.[19] But one bad small group experience in one church can lead an attendee to conclude all small groups are irrelevant to them. Popularity breeds potential for innovation to be more widely criticized … and avoided.
Finally, this creates a copycat culture rather than a culture of creativity and innovation.
McGavran saw methodology as dependent upon the opportunity. Opportunity was observed through foresight. Foresight dictated the methodology, not reduplication.[20]
Where did leadership foresight come from (and how do we get it)?
What then is the antidote to prefab tactics? The solution is to focus on where and how the Holy Spirit is moving and to begin planning to meet future needs. Richard Slaughter, the scholar most associated with foresight thinking (also known as futuring or futurethinking), described foresight as “the ability to create and maintain a high-quality, coherent and functional forward view, and to use the insights arising in useful organizational ways.”[21] Here are his three principles of leadership foresight.
1. Predicting the future is not as difficult as deciding to study it.
Leadership foresight as a practicum has largely escaped the examination of theologians and practical ecclesiology. But we have been dancing around it for decades. As a secular academic practice, it first came to prominence with the research and writings of Richard Slaughter in the 1990s during a ramp-up to the new millennium. Slaughter came to be concerned about societal upheavals might bring in the next twenty years. Towards that end, Richard Slaughter began to study both how we think of the future and how we act upon that thinking. He studied historical examples of people who thought long and deep about the future and who were then able with a degree of accuracy to predict the future and take advantage of it.
But Slaughter saw reasons organizations don’t study the future and are therefore surprised and disadvantaged by it.[22] These include: “their roots are in an earlier age, change is slow in institutions, turbulent times create problems for leaders, and they avoid thinking about it, and ‘Faulty assumptions in western industrial worldview… e.g., me, mine, now’.” Slaughter warns leaders not to attempt, “to move into the future without foresight.”[23]
2. Predicting is not enough; we must academically critique our forecasts.
2023 is the 54th anniversary of the release of Stanley Kubrick’s magnus opus and Oscar award-winning film, “2001: A Space Odyssey.” In 1968, coauthors Kubrick and science fiction writer Arthur C. Clarke predicted what the world would look like at the turn of the millennium. Those of you who have seen this film know it is sometimes confusing. But the film predicted that, by 2001 there would be active archaeological digs on the moon and artificial gravity manufactured by slowly rotating space stations. While some of the predictions such as landing on the moon, space stations, etc. were in part correct, this was a predictive exercise by Kubrick and Clarke, not an effort to engage what’s next.
(Article continues on the next page with Slide 13)
Why prediction alone is insufficient was brought to my attention by one of the pastors in the MissionalCoaches.network. This drawing from a Salvation Army newsletter in 1929 depicts a salvationist doing their work in 2029 via multiple television screens.[24]Humorous then but strangely accurate now, it nonetheless did not lead The Salvation Army to be an early adopter of technology. Even to this day, one of my former students, a salvationist utilizing electronic outreach in Southern California told me, “We (the Salvation Army) are still wrestling with funding electronic outreach. In the last century, we were innovators in evangelism through musical outreach. But we are skeptical about technology today.”[25]
3. Use future thinking to inform current strategies & innovation will result.
There’s a difference between predicting the future and adopting future thinking into our current actions. Dreaming about the future is easy, but it is not enough. We must start planning now how we will engage it. This is the fundamental difference between fantasizing and futuring.
As I look back over the Effective Evangelism Movement, I see bursts of creativity taking place when leaders think about what they can start doing now to pivot and engage what’s next. It’s not about just predicting the future. And it’s not even to bemoan it and fear it. It’s about integrating future thinking into our current plans. As Richard Slaughter said, foresight leadership is “the ability to create and maintain a high-quality, coherent and functional forward view, and to use the insights arising in useful organizational ways”[26]
Three Ways to Embrace Leadership Foresight into Your Current Plans
Much has been made lately about the influence our assumptions and biases have on our ecclesial thinking. This is a good exercise. In fact, it should be increased if we are to also learn about biases we naturally have regarding future thinking. Talk to others who see your biases and cultural perspectives. Have others hold you accountable by questioning your assumptions and biases about the future. And when talking with others learn about their biases too.
2. Scan futuring from the outside in.
Don’t just read books and articles about church leadership but discover how leaders from varying fields are planning to meet future needs. Futuring has a robust canon of literature and not surprising more is being penned every day. So instead of reading about what is working elsewhere, try reading about what industries such as technology, communication, service and healthcare are doing now to prepare for tomorrow. Read their articles, books and follow their social media postings.
3. Be provocative: ‘any useful idea about the future should appear to be ridiculous.’
Richard Slaughter says, “The natural next step of scanning is to use your imagination. Challenge yourself to think of provocative implications of ideas, innovations and events. Connect the dots between seemingly disparate pieces of information. Think provocatively — as said by legendary futurist Jim Dator, ‘any useful idea about the future should appear to be ridiculous.’[28] In 20, 30, 50 years, what might happen because of a trend we see today? If you are afraid to let your mind wander, you’ll never find yourself at the leading edge.”[29]
The missio Dei at the Leading Edge
Like the salvationist who uncomfortably chuckled at a cartoon depicting the Good News traveling over televisions, today we worry and fantasize about the future, without making plans to engage it. And copying only what is working now leads only to a proliferation of cloned ideas and instills in the church a lack of innovative ministry. Rather for innovation to resurface, I call upon this research community and others within the ecclesial world to begin to study the future as much as we study the past and the present. Innovative participation in the missio Dei tomorrow and beyond, depends upon it.
NOTES AVAILABLE HERE >
[1] For example, ChatGPT and artificial intelligence are currently of particular interest to the church leaders. Also, future thinking is being applied to planning in the communications, service and healthcare industries.
[2] Richard Slaughter, The Foresight Principle. (Westport: Praeger, 1995).
[3] Donald McGavran, “What is the Church Growth School of Thought?” manuscript, as quoted in Wilbert R. Shenk, The Challenges of Church Growth: A Symposium, (Scottdale: Herald Press, 1973), p. 17. McGavran defines effective evangelism as a movement that, “enlists in Christ’s school all segments of human society, and incorporates in his body, the church, all the ethnic and linguistic units of the world.” Donald McGavran, “My Pilgrimage in Mission” IBMR, April 1986: 58.
[4] Jeff Walters, “The Legacy of Donald McGavran: A Forum” edited by IJFM Editorial Staff, International Journal of Frontier Missiology, 31:2 Summer 2014, 61.
[5] To understand the difference between dissonant adapters, selective adapters and consonant adapters see Bob Whitesel, The Healthy Church: Practical Ways to Strengthen a Church’s Heart (Indianapolis: The Wesleyan Publishing House, 2013), 69-70
[7] Donald McGavran, The Bridges of God (Cambridge, UK: World Dominion Press, 1955), 109.
[8] Outside of coastal cities existed an American heartland with little diversity in the 1980s. The result was that practical theologians such as McGavran and Wagner, though they had grown up in cross-cultural mission fields, did not see today’s multiculturalism as a requisite factor in Great Commission strategy. Formative years in non-English-speaking cultures had bred in them a respect and appreciation for different cultures. In fact, not wanting to see those cultures assimilate, they understood from firsthand experience how such cultures took pride (as dissonant adapters) amid a worldwide proliferation of Northern European cultures. They didn’t want to see the One-third World push its cultural language, music and artistic expressions upon the Two-thirds World. This gave them a high respect for dissonant adapters, and a desire to see their dissonance preserved. As a product of their time, they did not see diversification as a pressing need within the North American church. Subsequently, this became an oversight toward which church growth under Wagner internalized. McGavran and Wagner were the furthest you can be from cultural supremists. Rather they saw the need to let indigenous peoples experience the Good News and celebrate that news in culturally relevant ways.
[9] Mark DeYmaz, Should Pastors Accept or Reject the Homogeneous Unit Principle? (Little Rock, AR: Mosiax Publishers, 2011).
[10] Lyle Schaller, The Interventionist (Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press, 1997).
[14]Geriatrophy is a term coined by Kent Hunter to describe churches “wasting away because of old age” in Bob Whitesel and Kent R. Hunter, A House Divided: Bridging the Generation Gaps in Your Church (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 2000), 33.
[15] Alan McMahan, “Stewarding Legacies in Mission, The Legacy of Donald McGavran: A Forum,” edited by IJFM Editorial Staff, International Journal of Frontier Missiology, 31:2 Summer 2014.61.
[16] For an interesting historical perspective, reread this evaluation of The Church Growth Movement through the eyes of McGavran’s foresight and Wagner’s practicality: Gary L. McIntosh and Paul Engle (eds.), Evaluating the Church Growth Movement: Five Views (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2004).
[18] Note the critical role small groups play in the Methodist movement’s effectiveness in George G. Hunter III’s classic To Spread the Power: Church Growth in the Wesleyan Movement (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1987) as well as his The Recovery of a Contagious Methodist Movement (Adaptive Leadership) (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 2012).
[19] Larry Osborne, Sticky Church, (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2008).
[20] Other examples of McGavran’s foresight, beyond the length of this article but suitable for further research, are the role of foresight in funding, the role of foresight in theology (e.g. harvest theology vs. theology) and the role foresight in ministry training. Regarding the latter, McGavran’s foresight appears to have spurred him on to found schools to train future leaders while he was in an advanced age. He was 64 years of age when he founded the Institute of Church Growth at Northwest Christian College and 68 years old when he founded the School of World Mission at Fuller Theological Seminary.
[21] Richard Slaughter, The Foresight Principle. (Westport: Praeger, 1995).
Commentary by Dr. Whitesel: my doctoral students know that I emphasize the importance of persistence and how “Grit” author Angela Duckworth has proven this in her research and illustrated it in her TED talks. Angela Duckworth gives us an important metaphor about not turning back when she asks (article below): “Have you crossed the Rubicon?”
Jesus emphasized this about 2,000 years earlier when he stated, “No one who puts a hand to the plow and looks back is fit for service in the kingdom of God.” Luke 9:62 NIV.
The difference between grit and giving up, she writes, comes down to whether or not someone has “crossed the Rubicon.” If you’re a little hazy on your history, the expression comes from the time of Julius Caesar. When the Roman general decided to lead his army across the Rubicon river even though the Roman Senate had expressly forbidden him from doing so, he committed a clear act of treason. There was no going back. His options became victory or death.
Obviously, few of us today literally put our lives on the line in pursuit of our dreams. No one will execute you if your business venture fails. You will live to tell the tale if your acting career doesn’t work out. But Duckworth insists that, for maximum grit, you metaphorically need to “cross the Rubicon” and go all-in in pursuit of your goals.
“Being all in means you’re fully committed to your goal. You’re no longer weighing the pros and cons of your dreams. Instead, you’re figuring out how to make them a reality,” she writes. Those who cross the Rubicon are no longer asking whether they should chase their goals, they’re solely focused on how to chase them. Changing just that single wordmakes all the difference when it comes to your level of grit.
“Is that a dream or a plan?”
Duckworth’s instance that mental toughness boils down to focusing on the process you’re using to pursue your goals rather than whether they are the right goals at all reminded me of similar advice from author and entrepreneur Tim Ferriss. He too says the difference between dreamers and achievers boils down to a small change in language, though he makes his argument slightly differently.
Commentary by Dr. Whitesel: my doctoral students know that I emphasize the importance of persistence and how “Grit” author Angela Duckworth has proven this in her research and illustrated it in her TED talks. Angela Duckworth gives us an important metaphor about not turning back when she asks (article below): “Have you crossed the Rubicon?”
Jesus emphasized this about 2,000 years earlier when he stated, “No one who puts a hand to the plow and looks back is fit for service in the kingdom of God.” Luke 9:62 NIV.
The difference between grit and giving up, she writes, comes down to whether or not someone has “crossed the Rubicon.” If you’re a little hazy on your history, the expression comes from the time of Julius Caesar. When the Roman general decided to lead his army across the Rubicon river even though the Roman Senate had expressly forbidden him from doing so, he committed a clear act of treason. There was no going back. His options became victory or death.
Obviously, few of us today literally put our lives on the line in pursuit of our dreams. No one will execute you if your business venture fails. You will live to tell the tale if your acting career doesn’t work out. But Duckworth insists that, for maximum grit, you metaphorically need to “cross the Rubicon” and go all-in in pursuit of your goals.
“Being all in means you’re fully committed to your goal. You’re no longer weighing the pros and cons of your dreams. Instead, you’re figuring out how to make them a reality,” she writes. Those who cross the Rubicon are no longer asking whether they should chase their goals, they’re solely focused on how to chase them. Changing just that single wordmakes all the difference when it comes to your level of grit.
“Is that a dream or a plan?”
Duckworth’s instance that mental toughness boils down to focusing on the process you’re using to pursue your goals rather than whether they are the right goals at all reminded me of similar advice from author and entrepreneur Tim Ferriss. He too says the difference between dreamers and achievers boils down to a small change in language, though he makes his argument slightly differently.
It’s been six years since psychologist and University of Pennsylvania Professor Angela Duckworth published her bestseller Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance. After more than two years of behavioral and societal shifts that have drastically altered cultural values around work and achievement (see: the Great Resignation), Duckworth discusses Grit in hindsight in the first episode of The Next Chapter, a new podcast created for the American Express Business Class platform, out today.
For Duckworth, the tenets of Grit still hold true—that high-achievers are people who not only possess passion, but who also persevere. But, especially in these post-pandemic years, finding passion, or a directional focus, an be difficult and confusing. “For many of us, work ethic, getting feedback, practicing things we can’t yet do, being resilient—all that is easier than knowing what to be persevering about,” she says.
…“When someone is super-gritty, it’s because they’re pursuing something they really love and they actually feel there’s hope to make progress on [it],” Duckworth says. “One reason people might be burning out right now is that, for whatever reasons, there is some erosion of that hope that the future is bright for what they’re doing.”
…“The lesson in the pandemic is that if we want to be grittier or if we want to understand how to make other people grittier, there has to be some valid sense of hope for that person—that what they’re doing is going to be enough and that the future has some reason to believe that it’s brighter,” Duckworth says.
I took my doctor of ministry students to England to learn from English church leaders who embody a modern spirit of John Wesley. They balance a concern for people’s eternal salvation with people’s need for physical salvation from poverty, crime and lack of opportunity.
One such colleague is Rev. Canon David Male, the Church of England (C of E) director of evangelism and discipleship. Below is a quote he recently gave to the English Guardian newspaper about how innovative “fresh expressions” of the church are coexisting along traditional congregations.
“C of E traditionalists launch fight against worship in ‘takeaway, cinema or barn’” by Harriet Sherwood, The Guardian Newspaper, London, UK, 8/6/21.
“The Rev Canon David Male, the C of E’s director of evangelism and discipleship, said: ‘It is really heartening to see people coming together with a passion and concern for the parish, which is a precious inheritance at the heart of every community in England and the core of the C of E.’
A key part of the church’s strategy was to ‘revitalise the parishes and churches up and down the country,’ he said. ‘Throughout our history there have always been other forms of churches alongside and within [parishes] – from cathedrals and chapels to fresh expressions and church plants, all of these come from and are part of the parishes. We need them all.’
Commentary by Dr. Whitesel: I’m writing a Doctor of Ministry course for a nationally known seminary on pastoral transitions. The average pastor will go through 4 to 5 translations in his or her ministerial career.
Yet leadership developmemt departments of denominations typically don’t prepare us for these transitions. However, my very first consultation over 30 years ago was to coach a ministry transition. And to my surprise it went very well. And, it cemented in my heart the confirmation that I was to go into consulting.
Therefore, I’ve put together a course on best practices. To give you a preview, here’s one of the research based articles I’ll be utilizing from Harvard Business Review.
“Setting the Record Straight on Switching Jobs” by Amy Gallo, Harvard Business Review, 10/15.
… experts have described the current labor market as “candidate-driven.” Job seekers hold more power than employers, a trend that seems to be deepening.
So does this mean when switching jobs, you’re in the driver’s seat? Not necessarily. But it does mean that you can’t rely on “age-old” guidance.
2. “Stay at a job for at least a year or two — moving around too much looks bad on a resume.”
“This is a popular piece of conventional wisdom,” says Sullivan, and it’s simply not true anymore. First of all, it’s not always realistic. “There are many times when you really need to leave your job without anything else,” says Fernández-Aráoz. You may need to relocate because of your spouse’s job or quit to take care of a family member.
Second, short stints no longer hurt a resume…
3. “Don’t quit your job before allowing your current employer to make a counter offer.”
If you’re a valuable employee, Sullivan says that smart companies will make an attempt to convince you to stay. “If you’re on their priority list, it would be considered ‘regrettable turnover’ for them and they’ll do what they can to keep you.” Counteroffers have become much more common… “They usually come with some form of flattery, promises, and even better conditions,” he says.
But be careful, he warns: “In my three decades of experience, I’m genuinely convinced that most counteroffers are bad for all parties.” He gives two reasons you shouldn’t accept a counteroffer. First, there was a reason you started to look for another job and that’s unlikely to change despite your employer’s promises. “The rule of thumb among recruiters used to be that 80% of those accepting counteroffers leave, or are terminated, within six to 12 months, and that half of those who accept them re-initiate their job searches within 90 days.” Even if your manager is able to make good on the promises in a counteroffer, there is the issue of broken trust. “They may still consider you less loyal and therefore offer you lower chances of future development.” Second, Fernández-Aráoz says, “you’ve made a commitment to the new company and you should honor it.”
Commentary by Dr. Whitesel: I teach my students that to understand transformational leadership they must first understand the transformational aspects of that which they lead, the Church (because of its supernatural, directional and eternal synergies). Here is a thoughtful analysis by a friend on Craig Ott’s important new book on mission and the church.
2. “Transformation always has to do with change from something to something else, whereby the change is substantive and affecting the very essence or nature of the object” (Page 5).
3. “A transformational church is a church that becomes God’s instrument of such personal transformation through evangelism and discipleship” (Page 13).
4. “If transformation is the dynamic of our mission, and God’s glory is both the source and goal of our mission, then the church in the power of the Spirit is God’s primary instrument of mission in this age. The church is the only institution on earth entrusted with the message of transformation—the gospel—and the only community that is a living demonstration of that transformation” (Page 19).
5. “Without the gospel there is no forgiveness, no new creation, no church, no transformation” (Page 23)...
7. “A missional ecclesiology emphasizes that the church does not merely send missionaries (as important as that is), but the church itself is God’s missionary, sent into the world as Jesus was sent into the world (John 20:21). In this sense the mission of the church is not merely a task or project that the church is to carry out, but rather is participation in God’s own mission in the world, the missio Dei” (Page 35).
In Team of Teams, by General Stanley McChrystal and his colleagues (2015, Penguin Publishing Group), McChrystal explains had to unlearn what it means to be a leader. A great deal of what he thought he knew about how the world worked and his role as a commander had to be discarded.
I began to view effective leadership in the new environment as more akin to gardening than chess,” he writes. “The move-by-move control that seemed natural to military operations proved less effective than nurturing the organization— its structure, processes, and culture— to enable the subordinate components to function with ‘smart autonomy.’ It wasn’t total autonomy, because the efforts of every part of the team were tightly linked to a common concept for the fight, but it allowed those forces to be enabled with a constant flow of ‘shared consciousness’ from across the force, and it freed them to execute actions in pursuit of the overall strategy as best they saw fit. Within our Task Force, as in a garden, the outcome was less dependent on the initial planting than on consistent maintenance. Watering, weeding, and protecting plants from rabbits and disease are essential for success. The gardener cannot actually ‘grow’ tomatoes, squash, or beans— she can only foster an environment in which the plants do so.”
Read more at … https://www.forbes.com/sites/stevedenning/2018/06/17/ten-agile-axioms-that-make-managers-anxious/#51ae8abc4619
If at first an idea is not absurd, there is no hope for it. —Albert Einstein
In June 2018, a time when “Agile at Scale” is emblazoned on the front cover of Harvard Business Review (read the original “Agile at Scale” HBR article here), the management journal with quasi-papal status, the era when managers could confidently ridicule agile management practices is fading fast. Instead, most managers have themselves grasped the need to be agile: a recent Deloitte survey of more than 10,000 business and HR leaders across 140 countries revealed that nearly all surveyed respondents (94%) report that “agility and collaboration” are critical to their organization’s success. Yet only 6% say that they are “highly agile today.” So, what’s the problem? Why the 88% gap between aspiration and actuality.
…The three Laws of Agile are simple—first, an obsession with continuously adding more value for customers; second, small teams working on small tasks in short iterative work cycles delivering value to customers; and third, coordinating work in a fluid, interactive network.
…The Laws of Agile are simple but their implementation is often difficult. That’s in part because they are at odds with some of the basic assumptions and attitudes that have prevailed in managing large organizations for at least a century. For example, Agile makes more money by not focusing on making money. In Agile, control is enhanced by letting go of control. Agile leaders act more like gardeners than commanders. And that’s just the beginning.
For the traditional manager, counter-intuitive ideas like these abound. This is not the way people say big firms are run. This is not by and large what business schools teach…
First Law Of Agile: The Law Of The Customer
Firms Make More Money By Not Focusing On Making Money
For several millennia, the notion that businesses exist to make money was seen as one of the immutable truths of the universe. Milton Friedman, the Nobel Prize winning economist, wrote in his article in the New York Times on September 13, 1970 that any business executives who pursued a goal other than making money for their firm were “unwitting puppets of the intellectual forces that have been undermining the basis of a free society these past decades.” Today, many public companies embrace maximizing shareholder value as their main goal, even though Jack Welch and many others have called it “the dumbest idea in the world.”
A growing number of companies have chosen a different goal. They have accepted Peter Drucker’s 1954 dictum that “there is only one valid purpose of a firm: to create a customer.” When delighting their customers through continuous innovation becomes the bottom line, making money is the result, not the goal, of the firm’s activities.
The interesting thing is that when firms operate this way, they make a lot more money than companies that focus directly on making money, including the five largest and fastest growing firms on the planet (by market cap): Amazon, Apple, Facebook, Google and Microsoft, now worth over $2 trillion. It involves a shift from a focus on inanimate things (money, products outputs) to a focus on people (human outcomes, experiences, impact)
Yet let’s face it: setting aside what many still see as an immutable truths of the universe doesn’t come easily.
There Are No Internal Customers
It’s common in many big bureaucracies to talk of internal customers. One unit services another unit and regards the other unit as its internal customer, who in due course becomes a producer for the ultimate customer or end-user. …
In Agile management, there is no such thing as an “internal customer.” The only purpose of work is the ultimate customer or end-user. Under the Law of the Customer, the original producers not only meet the needs the internal customers: they are given a clear line of sight as to what value is being provided for the ultimate customer. Satisfying so-called internal customers is merely feeding the bureaucratic beast. It is a pretend-version of Agile.
There Are No B2B Organizations
The situation is the same when a firm is providing products or services to another firm which acts as an intermediary for ultimate end user. The customers are the end-users who ultimately experience the products and services. Merely satisfying the needs of the intermediary is not enough for sustainability…
Similarly, Microsoft for many years saw the customers of its Windows program as the big retailers like Dell and HP. More recently, they have come to realize that their customer is really the end-user, not these intermediaries: there is now an immense effort to reach out to, undestand and interact with these millions of end-users.
Making Better Products May Not Make More Money
Making products better, faster cheaper, more convenient or more personalized is a good thing. But in a marketplace where competitors are often quick to match improvements to existing products and services and where power in the marketplace has decisively shifted to customers, it can be difficult for firms to monetize those improvements. Amid intense competition, customers with choices and access to reliable information are frequently able to demand that quality improvements be forthcoming at no cost, or even lower cost.
Making better products through operational Agility is an increasingly-necessary foundation for the survival of a firm. But it’s not enough for the firm to thrive. To make a lot of money, the company has to go further. It has to delight non-customers—those who are not already customers. That’s because there are usually vastly more non-customers than customers. They are non-customers for a reason: their needs are not being met. If the company can find a way to meet their needs, then a whole vast new ocean of potential customers opens up, in which there is usually very little competition. If the firm can appeal to both customers and non-customers, it can make a great deal of money. “Instead of being slightly better than everybody else in a crowded and established field, it’s often more valuable to create a new market and totally dominate it,” writes David Brooks in the New York Times. “The profit margins are much bigger, and the value to society is often bigger, too.”
The Second Law Of Agile: The Law Of The Small Teams
5. Forget Economies of Scale: Your Market Is One Person
The 20th Century firm tended to be focused on generic products to achieve economies of scale. By contrast, Agile is about generating instant, intimate, frictionless incremental value at scale. That’s the new performance requirement. When firms do this, as shown by the experience of Amazon, Apple, Facebook and Google they make a great deal of money.
Thus Agile organizations focus on providing intimate value, with an effective “market of one”, i.e. a level of customization and customer service at which a customer feels that he or she is an exclusive or preferred customer of the firm. For example, search engines are used by billions of people every day across the globe. However, each user gets customized search results based on their locations and refer to places nearby, weather forecast, or traffic condition…
Don’t Scale Up: Descale Complexity Down
A key Agile theme concerns descaling work, i.e. a presumption that in a volatile, complex, uncertain and ambiguous world, big difficult problems need to be disaggregated into small batches and performed by small cross-functional autonomous teams, working iteratively in short cycles in a state of flow, with fast feedback from customers and end-users…
Instead of constructing a big complex organization to handle complexity, the organization disaggregates the problem into tiny pieces so that it can be put together in minuscule increments and adjusted in the light of new, and rapidly changing, information about both the technology and the customer…
Control Is Enhanced By Letting Go Of Control.
In Agile management, there’s a presumption that in a volatile, rapidly changing world, big difficult problems should—to the extent possible—be disaggregated into small batches and performed by small self-organizing teams. The thought of self-organizing teams tends to make managers worry about losing control. What they need to understand is that they are giving up the illusion of control, rather than actual control. In a complex, rapidly changing environment, explicit efforts to impose control and predictability are doomed. Detailed reports may create the semblance of control, but the reality is often very different from what is in those reports.
The solution to reconciling disciplined execution and innovation lies in giving greater freedom to those people doing the work to exercise their talents and creativity, but doing so within short cycles so that those doing the work can themselves see whether they are making progress or not.
Agile Is A Mindset, Not A Process
Traditional managers typically approach Agile saying, “Show me the process so that I can implement it.” The problem is that Agile is a mindset, not a process. If it is approached as a process with the old mindset, nothing good happens.
But surely, people ask, there must be some model that we can follow. There is much allure for instance in the Spotify model as presented in the charming videos prepared by Henrik Nyberg. So there is a cry: “Let’s implement the Spotify model!” There’s just one problem: as former Spotify coach, Joakim Sundén, often explains, not even Spotify implements the Spotify model. For one thing, the videos are several years old. Second, Spotify continues to rapidly evolve and improve its model. In a pair of visits in 2016, we noticed significant differences even within a period of several months.
Talent Drives Strategy, Not Vice Versa
“The central premise of a talent-driven company is that talent drives strategy, as opposed to strategy being dictated to talent.,” says the book, Talent Wins: The New Playbook for Putting People First(HBRP, 2018) by Dominic Barton, the global managing partner of McKinsey & Company, and his colleagues Dennis Carey and Ram Charan, “The wrong talent inevitably produces the wrong strategy, and fails to deliver. Numbers like sales and earnings are the result of placing the right people in the right jobs where their talents flourish and they can create value that ultimately shows up in the numbers.”
The Third Law Of Agile: The Law Of The Network
9. The Top-Down Organizational Pyramid Is Finished
Success in today’s marketplace requires nimbleness, flexibility, adaptability and agility—everything that the 20th Century corporation was not. These firms were built for strength, with high walls and moats for the defense of the status quo. Their very raison d’être was to prevent change.
Turning a top-down pyramid into a flexible network is tricky. At the heart of 20th Century management thinking is the notion of a corporation as an efficient steady-state machine aimed at exploiting its existing business model. “Traditional, MBA-style thinking,” as Google executives, Eric Schmidt and Jonathan Rosenberg, write in their book, How Google Works, “dictates that you build up a sustainable competitive advantage over rivals and then close the fortress and defend it with boiling oil and flaming arrows.”
By contrast, when the whole organization truly embraces Agile, the organization is an organic living network of high-performance teams. In these organizations, managers recognize that competence resides throughout the organization and that innovation can come from anywhere. The whole organization, including the top, is obsessed with delivering more value to customers. Agile teams take initiative on their own and interact with other Agile teams to solve common problems. In effect, the whole organization shares a common mindset in which organization is viewed and operated as a network of high-performance teams.
Lead Like A Gardener, Not A Commander
In Team of Teams, by General Stanley McChrystal and his colleagues (2015, Penguin Publishing Group), McChrystal explains had to unlearn what it means to be a leader. A great deal of what he thought he knew about how the world worked and his role as a commander had to be discarded.
I began to view effective leadership in the new environment as more akin to gardening than chess,” he writes. “The move-by-move control that seemed natural to military operations proved less effective than nurturing the organization— its structure, processes, and culture— to enable the subordinate components to function with ‘smart autonomy.’ It wasn’t total autonomy, because the efforts of every part of the team were tightly linked to a common concept for the fight, but it allowed those forces to be enabled with a constant flow of ‘shared consciousness’ from across the force, and it freed them to execute actions in pursuit of the overall strategy as best they saw fit. Within our Task Force, as in a garden, the outcome was less dependent on the initial planting than on consistent maintenance. Watering, weeding, and protecting plants from rabbits and disease are essential for success. The gardener cannot actually ‘grow’ tomatoes, squash, or beans— she can only foster an environment in which the plants do so.”
Read more at … https://www.forbes.com/sites/stevedenning/2018/06/17/ten-agile-axioms-that-make-managers-anxious/#51ae8abc4619
Commentary by Dr Whitesel: While preparing a new Doctor of Ministry course for Fuller Theological Seminary on interim/transitional pastoral ministry, I am researching why pastors leave churches. The article below throws light on this from the Gallup organization and suggests ways to retain talented leaders. Read the article and then find more insights at this accompanying article: CAREER TRANSITIONS & Why Do Employees Quit Their Managers? Here’s the No. 1 Reason in a Short Sentence.
“Why Would People Consider Quitting Their Jobs, Exactly? Gallup Research Sums Up the Entire Reason in 1 Sentence“ by Michael Schwantes, Inc. Magazine, 5/14/18.
Using data collected from more than 195,600 U.S. employees in 2015 and 2016, Gallup asked employees to indicate how important certain job attributes are when considering whether to jump ship and take another gig with a different organization.
The top factor in the minds of most employees across the country? Gallup summarizes it in one sentence: The ability to do what they do best.
When they don’t get to experience this regularly, they exit early. It seems like common sense. Shouldn’t every employer or manager allow for valued workers to feel this way about their work every day? Common sense, yes; common practice, no…
The “why” behind the need to ‘do what they do best.’
Sixty percent of employees — male and female of all generations — say the ability to do what they do best in a role is “very important” to them. How do you bring that into fruition?
Employees do their best in roles that enable them to showcase and integrate their biggest strengths: talent (the natural capacity for excellence); skills (what they can do); and knowledge (what they know).
And companies are leaving money on the table by not recognizing these strengths beyond a job description, and how it all translates to high performance.
People love to use their unique talents, skills, and knowledge. But most conventional managers don’t know what those things truly are.
The best leaders will leverage close relationships with employees by finding out what their strengths are, and bringing out the best in their employees.
In fact, when managers help employees develop through their strengths and natural talents, they are more than twice as likely to engage their team members.
Read more at … https://www.inc.com/marcel-schwantes/why-would-people-consider-quitting-their-jobs-exactly-gallup-research-sums-up-entire-reason-in-1-sentence.html
Commentary by Dr. Whitesel: I took my first-year DMin students to “the most diverse square mile in America” (Clarkston, GA) to learn first-hand from my colleague Brian Bollinger and Friends of Refugees. Here is an article about what another church is doing in the area.
“Reaching the nations from a small Georgia town” by NAMB staff, Facts & Trends, LifeWay, 3/8/18
More than 1,000 refugees come to Clarkston, Ga., each year.
Send Relief missionaries Trent and Elizabeth DeLoach and the believers at Clarkston International Bible Church (CIBC) have made it their mission to help these men, women and children feel not only welcome but at home in their new country.
A U.S. refugee resettlement program in the 1990s opened the door of opportunity for people from around the world to start a new life in Clarkston.
This suburb of Atlanta eventually became known as “the most diverse square mile in America.” More than 60 countries and 100-plus languages are represented, and the population continues to grow.
A place so rich in culture is exactly the kind of city the DeLoach family dreamed of finding—however it was hard to believe such a place existed in North America, especially in Trent’s home state of Georgia…
After they married, the DeLoaches moved to Kentucky to work with a church in Louisville. They were astonished that more than 5,000 Bosnian refugees lived in the area.
They started “restaurant hopping” and praying for connections. “The different cultures, religions, languages—it was all very intimidating,” DeLoach said.
Over the course of two years, Elizabeth’s influence and passion for those forcibly displaced from their homelands slowly affected her husband’s heart…
We have people [in the city] from different religious backgrounds that include Muslim, Hindu and Buddhist. Most refugees have significant physical and emotional needs. They need Christian friends who can share the love of Jesus while helping them transition to life in America..,”
By living next door to families with diverse cultural backgrounds, Elizabeth says they have opportunities to influence the nations.
“We share with our people a three-step process — learn a name, make a friend, share Jesus. It’s simple. That’s our dream. And we see God bringing the nations to us.”
Read more at … https://factsandtrends.net/2018/03/09/reaching-the-nations-in-a-small-georgia-town/
“Dodge gets pushback for Super Bowl commercial using Martin Luther King Jr.’s voice” The Washington Post
Dodge aired a commercial for its Ram truck series during Sunday’s Super Bowl featuring a portion of a sermon from the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. that has drawn a backlash on social media. The decision to allow King’s sermon to be used was made by his estate.
The ad begins by noting that King delivered the sermon – known as “The Drum Major Instinct” – on Feb. 4, 1968, 50 years ago today. In the same sermon, delivered the same year he was assassinated, King also advised people not to spend too much on cars.
According to Stanford University’s reprinting of his sermon, this particular sermon was an adaptation of the 1952 homily ”Drum-Major Instincts” by J. Wallace Hamilton, who was a well-known, white liberal Methodist preacher at the time.
Here is the text from the sermon that was used as a voice-over in the commercial:
“If you want to be important – wonderful. If you want to be recognized – wonderful. If you want to be great – wonderful. But recognize that he who is greatest among you shall be your servant. That’s a new definition of greatness. . . . By giving that definition of greatness, it means that everybody can be great . . . by giving that definition of greatness, it means that everybody can be great. . . . You don’t have to know about Plato and Aristotle to serve. You don’t have to know [Einstein’s] theory of relativity to serve. You don’t have to know the second theory of thermodynamics in physics to serve. You only need a heart full of grace, a soul generated by love. And you can be that servant.”
His sermon, delivered at Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta where he was a pastor, referenced the biblical passage Matthew 23:11-12, “The greatest among you will be your servant.”
… What the Super Bowl ad doesn’t include is the part from King’s sermon where he warns against the dangers of spending too much when buying a car and not trying to keep up with the Joneses.
“Do you ever see people buy cars that they can’t even begin to buy in terms of their income? You’ve seen people riding around in Cadillacs and Chryslers who don’t earn enough to have a good T-Model Ford,” King said in his sermon. “But it feeds a repressed ego. You know, economists tell us that your automobile should not cost more than half of your annual income. So if you make an income of $5,000, your car shouldn’t cost more than about $2,500. That’s just good economics.”
King concluded that sermon by imagining his own funeral, saying he wanted to be remembered for doing good deeds, including serving others. This year will mark the 50th anniversary of the death of King, who was assassinated in Memphis on April 4, 1968…
Read more at … http://www.nola.com/tv/index.ssf/2018/02/dodge_martin_luther_king_comme.html
Commentary by Prof. B: Below are two pictures from the first course I taught to our DMin in Transformational Leadership students. The course (LEAD 711: Foundations of Urban, Rural and Suburban Leadership) included visits to important #MLK historical sites as well as hearing from a diverse group of pastors.
The first is a picture of our #WesleySem #DMIN #Leadership cohort visiting #MLK birthplace and hearing from @Ebenezer_ATL Church pastor #RaphaelWarnock.
While pictured below are our students @WesleySeminary #DMin in Transformational Leadership students when we began our program in 2016 by attending Greater Traveler’s Rest Church formerly pastored by #MartinLutherKingJr. Current pastor Rev. Dr. Dewey Smith (pictured) hosted a day of learning. @HOHATL #WesleySem
I was asked by Fuller Theological Seminary, my alma mater from which I earned three degrees (M.Div., D.Min., Ph.D.), to explain to doctoral students how I was able to write four books and contribute a chapter to another during my Ph.D. work. Here is the video explanation that might be helpful to any current D.Min or Ph.D. students wishing to share the insights they are learning.
Commentary by Prof. B.: My students in Transformational Leadership have the opportunity to hear in Oxford the author of this article, Michael Moynagh, personally explain the shared economy strategy of the Fresh Expression Movement. Read this article for a good introduction. First is a lengthy video followed by a short article.
(Drawing from his experiences, both as the Director of Research for Fresh Expressions and as Editor of Share–a collection of resources out of the Fresh Expressions phenomena–the Rev. Dr. Michael Moynagh (based at Wycliff Hall, Oxford) shared with assorted members of the Trinity community the impact that this, more than 10 year pioneering movement continues to have throughout the United Kingdom; April 11, 2013)
Just as the pieces of broken bread – in their different shapes and sizes – belong to the one loaf, we see that in all our diversity we belong to each other because we each belong to the one body of Christ.
Phil Potter, Team Leader of Fresh Expressions UK has likened the ‘mixed economy church’ to rivers and lakes. Rivers flow, bubble with energy and bring new water into lakes. Lakes are deeper and more tranquil. Just as rivers and lakes need each other, new forms of church flow into the existing Church and are enriched by its depth and traditions.
Four Methods that Mix Things Up
In some cases, a mixed economy church develops when new believers have a blended church experience. They attend both a fresh expression and an established church. There is nothing in the Bible to say that you can’t belong to two local churches! Rather than consumerism, this is about commitment – to more than one Christian community.
Shared events between an established church and a fresh expression can also lead to the development of a mixed economy church. The two communities can share social events, study groups, short courses, outreach or occasional acts of worship. Both will have a richer church life for having shared together.
One place to start might be for a fresh expression to look out for opportunities to serve its parent church. Might it provide the refreshments for a church study day, for example? There is nothing like loving kindness to open others’ hearts.
A third expression of the mixed economy occurs when emerging Christians connect to the church at large. This can happen through events run by local churches together, or through regional and national conferences and training events, or through accessing Christian resources and making connections online.
Fourthly, the mixed economy develops when new Christian communities cluster together. In an English cathedral city, a small team hosts a monthly Sunday breakfast for people in the neighborhood who don’t attend church. Up to 60 have crammed into a house!
The Birth of a Mixed Economy Church
Picture this:
A house is crammed with people who do and don’t have a church. They’ve gathered around the breakfasts are other events, such as ice cream parties in the summer and hot chocolate parties in winter.
These individuals start to ask questions about spirituality and faith, they are invited to a weekly meeting at which the core team eats together, plans, prays and studies the Bible. If a person enjoys it, they are invited to join the team.
Within two or three years, the team grew from 8 to 18 people. It multiplied into two cells. The cells meet from time to time.
Now, picture the same scene after five years:
Some of the cells will no longer be new. They will represent an established church. As new cells keep being added and cluster with these older cells, they will give birth to….a mixed-economy church!
If you lead a fresh expression, keep connecting to the wider body! Existing churches may be refreshed and energized by the new life you bring. Your fresh expression may be deepened by the wisdom and experience of established churches.
Commentary by Prof. B: I encourage my students to do yearly 360° reviews of their leadership. This includes asking direct reports to anonymously evaluate them on a Likert scale and track changes. But what questions should be asked? The following study yields 10 suitable questions you should include to ascertain if you have “bad boss” behavior.
How Can You Tell Someone Has Horrible Leadership Skills? This New Study Just Revealed the Top 10 ‘Bad Boss’ Behaviors
by Marcel Schwantes, Inc. Magazine, 9/9/17.
So what’s your bad bosshorror story? You know you have one. Bad boss behaviors that lead to horrific employee disengagement and turnover are rampant, and study upon study has confirmed this epidemic. The most recent example is via an employee survey conducted by BambooHR.
They asked more than 1,000 US-based employees to rate 24 ‘typical boss behaviors’ from ‘totally acceptable’ to ‘totally unacceptable. Can you guess the worst behavior a boss can have in the workplace?
…Here’s a summary of the findings from the survey, which you can compare with the boss that currently bullies you or steals your thunder.
Bad Boss Behavior | Percentage who call it unacceptable or a deal breaker
Your boss takes credit for your work
63%
Your boss doesn’t trust or empower you
62
Your boss doesn’t care if you’re overworked
58
Your boss doesn’t advocate for you when it comes to compensation
57
Your boss hires and/or promotes the wrong people
56
Your boss doesn’t back you up when there’s a dispute
55
Your boss doesn’t provide proper direction on assignments/roles
54
Your boss micromanages and doesn’t allow you “freedom to work”
53
Your boss focuses more on your weaknesses than strengths
Foresight thinking (also known as futuring or future thinking) is of increasing importance due to today’s rapid pace in technology, artificial intelligence, ChatGPT, etc.
1990s: The next decade saw a dizzying proliferation of programs, tools and tactics. There arose tools to proliferate small groups, plant churches, share your faith, indigenize worship, etc. It was during these years that I developed close friendships with my fellow coaches Charles “Chip” Arn, Kent Hunter, Gary McIntosh, Elmer Towns, Ed Stetzer and others. My greatest angst during this time arose when programs were adopted by churches without sufficient analysis of the community and its trajectory. Ill-advised and ill-suited programs often ended in failure, even though they had worked elsewhere. The result was that at the end of the decade there was an increasing suspicion about church growth tools. 
I spent the last twenty years in varying leadership roles in this organization, which drew me deeper into the thinking and foresight of Donald McGavran. I began to see that McGavran‘s DNA was based on two elements. First, an element of his DNA was his analytical mind. He loved observation and prediction, much like famed church growth writer, Lyle Schaller, who had been a former city planner.
George Hunter summarized these “driving” questions of Great Commission research: 
Question 3 is a gateway to understanding McGavran’s mind, what I call his strategic DNA. It is a question about foresight. Notice it is about “factors that canmake the Christian faith a movement among some populations” (underline mine). Though this foresight question was foundational to McGavran’s DNA, its lack of immediacy made it less attractive to practitioners and publishers. Yet this third question is what makes his writings ground shaking. McGavran’s visionary foresight was to see the harvest not after it ripens, but as it begins to emerge from spiritually fertile soil. 
A problem which befell the Great Commission Research Movement was that McGavran‘s emphasis upon foresight was overshadowed by the popularity of replication. And who could blame his readers for this partiality? For the first time cross-denominational scientific measurement was applied to the church. Judicatory leaders as well as local pastors were either enthralled or alarmed. But they all were interested, especially in shortcuts. Such shortcuts were not peering into the future, but locating what is working today and replicating it. The focus on the future faded from view as the shortcuts of the present clouded it out. 
While both replication and foresight are important tools, Wagner‘s enthusiasm moved the emphasis away from foresight and placed it on copyright. Thus, began decades of finding what’s working and following it, rather than finding where the Holy Spirit is preparing to move and following Him.
The more that people experience certain tactics, the more good (and bad) experiences will result. Because bad experiences are more likely to be shared than good ones,
McGavran saw methodology as dependent upon the opportunity. Opportunity was observed through foresight. Foresight dictated the methodology, not reduplication.
What then is the antidote to prefab tactics? The solution is to focus on where and how the Holy Spirit is moving and to begin planning to meet future needs. Richard Slaughter, the scholar most associated with foresight thinking (also known as futuring or futurethinking), described foresight as “the ability to create and maintain a high-quality, coherent and functional forward view, and to use the insights arising in useful organizational ways.”
Leadership foresight as a practicum has largely escaped the examination of theologians and practical ecclesiology. But we have been dancing around it for decades. As a secular academic practice, it first came to prominence with the research and writings of Richard Slaughter in the 1990s during a ramp-up to the new millennium. Slaughter came to be concerned about societal upheavals might bring in the next twenty years. Towards that end, Richard Slaughter began to study both how we think of the future and how we act upon that thinking. He studied historical examples of people who thought long and deep about the future and who were then able with a degree of accuracy to predict the future and take advantage of it. 
2. Predicting is not enough; we must academically critique our forecasts.
Why prediction alone is insufficient was brought to my attention by one of the pastors in the 
3. Use future thinking to inform current strategies & innovation will result. 
There’s a difference between predicting the future and adopting future thinking into our current actions. Dreaming about the future is easy, but it is not enough. We must start planning now how we will engage it. This is the fundamental difference between fantasizing and futuring.
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