Got Clarity?

If you don't know where you are going, any road will get you there.
- the Chesire Cat

Where's your red X?


You know, the spot that says "You are here."







Looking for the shortest distance between Point A and Point B?



The answers to the above questions aren't in Will Mancini's Visual Summary to his book "Church Unique," but you will be able to grasp the process that just might answer the tough qustions you're facing today.

Take a look.

Download the free e-book.

Start out on the journey...

...today!

Church Unique Visual Summary Released today

It's the Monday after Easter and you are wiped out in every definition of the word, right?

Here's a shot of pure vision adrenaline for you - in one hundred and eleven words, illustrated and expounded on:

The Church Unique Visual Summary 

Church Unique is the most powerful tool you can use in your church today.

Period.

It is a field manual for leaders like you who are in the ministry trenches daily - struggling along, not content with the status quo.

Download this free e-book, grab a cup of coffee and read through it.

Author Will Mancini just released a "Visual Summary" of the material in a free e-book. Use this link to download your copy today.

Take a look at the book here.

For additional resources about the process, go here to Auxano's website.

The Church Unique Visual Summary will infuse you with energy today - and start you on a path to vision clarity tomorrow.

History

Usually the word elicits one of two responses: a glassy-eyed stare and memories of those required classes in school that were mind-numbing, or an excited look followed by the phrase "Did you know that..."

I, proudly, am guilty of the latter.

Not content to read and study "normal" history (both my undergraduate and graduate minors are in history), I default to the obscure and strange. Who else would read books on the history of salt - or the history of dust - or the history of cod. Yes, cod. The little fish, that when salted, kept it edible for long sea voyages, allowing the "discovery" of the Americas by Europeans, among other uses (that's a two-for-one use of history, in case you didn't notice).

Leaders need to understand history, too.

Not just the history of books, though that's a great start. Leaders in the local church need to know the history of the people and place they are serving.

Only by understanding the past can you ever hope to lead to the future. Will Mancini, author of "Church Unique" and founder of Auxano, calls that "vision equity." It's the stories and actions over the years that have led that church to the place it is today. It's the solid foundation that tomorrow is built on. To be ignorant of it or to ignore it is an invitation to mediocrity at best, or disaster at worst.

History is a rock. Not an anchor to the past, but a bridge to the future.

Are you a student of the history of the people and place you serve? If not, there's still time.

Class starts today.

Leadership = Vision Clarity

When I was in graduate school in the early 80's, strategic planning processes included five-, ten- and sometimes even twenty-year plans. The past was relatively stable and indicated that things would continue as they were into the future. The assumption was that the near future would resemble the recent past.


Rapid cultural, technological, and geopolitical change has rendered that assumption obsolete. Will Mancini, founder of The Auxano Group and author of the best-selling book Church Unique states it this way:

Leaders must focus more on preparation than on planning.

Mancini taps heavily into Reggie McNeal's work here. McNeal, a consultant with The Leadership Network, has written several great books. In The Present Future he addresses 6 tough questions for the church. The one of interest here is “How do we plan for the future?” The short answer is, as both Mancini and McNeal elaborate, you don't plan - you prepare.

Planning on past actions and assumptions will lead you to cultural irrelevance, methodological obsolescence, and missional ineffectiveness. Churches looking to planning like they always have will be left answering the wrong questions at best; at worst, they will be answering questions not asked!

“Church Unique” is not a road map that assumes predictability of fixed points and roads that stay unchanged over time. Instead, the tools of Church Unique are more like the compass, sextant, and chronometer of the sailor who moves across an ever changing sea. Navigating the waters of today's rapidly changing times requires ceaseless observation and adaptation to the surrounding environment.

The better (and biblical) approach to the future involves prayer and preparation, not prediction and planning.

As a leader, are you seeking vision clarity first?

Glancing Back at 2009

Most church leaders are all too glad to be bringing 2009 to a close. The economic situation that began in the fall of 2008 is still impacting ministries across the country. While there is no denying the impact of that event, I prefer to take a “glass half full” approach and have been looking this week at some positive movements in the Body of Christ.

Vision – Church leaders are increasingly concerned about their vision. My experience with vision planning matters goes back to seminary in the early 80's: Lyle Schaller, Aubrey Malphurs, Bobb Biehl, Kennon Callahan, Peter Drucker - these were the leaders in the field that we followed. Others have joined them in the years since, but all of these - and especially Malphurs - have influenced my own views of vision planning in the churches I served and in the churches I work with now as a development consultant.

Enter “Church Unique”, by author Will Mancini and the team at the Auxano Group. Church Unique’s approach centers on the powerfully simple concept that God has created all churches as unique. While we understand that God created His world with uniqueness (think snowflakes), and His children (DNA, environment, and culture) the same way, we think that churches are mostly alike. Do you think He would act any different with His church?

Church Unique serves as a map that will help you discover and live a vision that creates a unique church culture in your ministry setting. The book outlines a process that will help you discover, develop, and deliver your unique vision by creating your own Vision Pathway. The clarity and practical application you will realize through this process will take you to new levels of effectiveness and to a lifestyle of visionary leadership.

Leaders realize now more than ever that their vision will not move forward unless it ties into and brings together leadership, communication, processes, environments, and culture. “Church Unique” gives church leaders a practical tool to capture their culture and build a movement that flows into their community with contagious redemptive passion.

Tomorrow's final look back: The Greening of the Church

What's on Your Menu?

This week has been a closer examination of Will Mancini's book "Church Unique." Specifically, the chapter entitled "Lost Congregations" that examines how churches adapt to a vision vacuum. Using the metaphor of Soul Fast Food, Mancini challenges the church leader to examine how their structures, programs, and ministries may have become a substitute for the real meal - what God intends for the church.

To close out the week, I simply want to restate some of Mancini's questions for your consideration.

• What really happens in the soul of a congregant when left in a church's vision vacuum over time?
• What is left to excite the heart of church attenders?
• What then fuels the dreams of your people?
• What nourishes the identity of those who call your church home?

God's people have a heart for mission; we need guidance to carry it out - vision. When a church articulates and clarifies its vision, the people of God will be released in a powerful realization of God at work in their world.

What's on your menu?

Granite Etching vs. Sand Writing

This is the close of a four-day look at a section of Will Mancini's "Church Unique". I'm participating in the Charlotte Vision co::Lab, and this section has been jumping all over me!

For the past three days, it's been all about Soul Fast Food - but now it's down to some "solid" stuff!

The real nourishment of your people should come from the vision of your Church Unique. Only then will the enduring purpose of the church reflected locally can replace the substitutes of place, personality, programs, and people.

In his book "Built to Last", author Jim Collins found that enduring organizations have two dominant characteristic that are complementary opposites:

• A strong conviction about core ideals that never changes

• A clear understanding that everything else must change in order to preserve the core

If people are nourished by unchanging vision, they are more agreeable when the rules change with tactics. It takes clarity and discipline to understand which things in the organization belong to which category.


But what if our people were so captivated by the granite etching that it set us free to play with sand drawings? The leader’s role is not just to communicate in both granite and sand but to show how the two components work together. The leader should help people embrace change by nurturing an emotional connection to the unchanging core vision. The leader should preserve and champion the core vision by showing people how to constantly adapt.

Our change management problems today are vision problems first and people problems second. Many leaders want their people to run a missional marathon but unknowingly feed them junk food, leaving them malnourished and unprepared for the future.

If you are leader in ChurchWorld, don't be part of "feeding" your congregation junk fast food - focus on the Bread of Life, and watch your church thrive and grow!When we fail to clarify and nurture the things written in granite, our people get too attached to the things written in sand. This is how the four P’s (place, personality, programs, and people) fit in. These are sand, not granite. As the fluid and flexible stuff of the kingdom they not only should change, but must change. In the absence of vision, the stuff of sand becomes the vision. In the absence of granite, sand is all we can grasp.

Dessert Time

Today is the final day to order off the Soul Fast Food menu! For previous orders, see here. These thoughts are driven by my ongoing learning experience with the Will Mancini's Vision co::Lab - a collaborative group learning experience designed around the principles found in "Church Unique".

Apple Pie “People”
Perhaps the greatest substitute for healthy membership identity is the group of people at church – whether ten or a hundred – who “know my name.” This is not to be seen as a knock on relationships! It is identifying “community without a cause” as both unbiblical and a common source of identity for the churchgoer. Want a demonstration? Suggest a change in service times – or ask a Bible Study class or small group to multiply. People don’t want you to mess with their relationships.

Our familiar friends, albeit essential to church life, have become central to the person’s identify.

Relationships are critically important to community life in a church. But, like too many apple pies or anything taken to excess, they can be damaging to the overall health of the body.

Tomorrow: the source of real nourishment for your church - and it's not found at your local drive-through!

More Soul Fast Food

Big Mac “Personalities”
Spiritual leaders matter to our people. But most pastors do not want their personality to be the primary umbilical cord connecting their members’ identity to the church. Charisma is not vision. It is a vehicle to deliver the vision. But for many churchgoers, connection to their church is connection to the pastor. The “person” of the pastor can easily become the primary connection point so that in the absence of vision, people cling to something – or someone - even those with little capability to lead.

Supersized “Programs”
Programs are important, and good methodologies for doing ministry should come and go. Unfortunately, most of them come and stay – like sour milk, they hang around long after their expiration date! For years, church leaders have struggled with how to dismount a dead horse. When the program exists in a vision vacuum, the how of doing the program displaces the why in the heart of the program’s leaders. Mastering the how is what makes the volunteer feel important. The problem is not the volunteer but the vision. We need the vision to raise our sight to see the why behind the program to begin with. Their hearts find more meaning in working efficiently on yesterday’s methods than in working effectively into the future.

What about your church? Does your fast food diet include Big Mac personalities and Super Sized programs?

Part 2 of Soul Fast Food: Adapted from Will Mancini's "Church Unique."

Tomorrow: Dessert Time

Filling the Vision Vacuum

When life around our house gets hectic, we often slip into a bad habit: fast-food for our meals. Both my wife and I enjoy cooking, especially when we can try out new recipes. But when the work day gets long, that's one of the first things tossed aside. That usually means a quick stop at a neighborhood fast-food place for a quick meal. I'm not here to debate the health issues, but generally speaking, what we consume in a hurry is not as nutritious as what we would prepare on our own at home.

Will Mancini, author of Church Unique and founder of the Auxano Group, makes an application to many churches by using the fast food metaphor. I've just completed my second training session in the Church Unique process, and the concept of vision vacuum is fresh on my mind. This week, let's take a closer look at what Mancini calls "Soul Fast Food".

To set this up, consider the following Scripture from Psalms 29:18 in The Message version:

When people can't see what God is up to,

they stumble all over themselves.

Unfortunately, most churches today are living that Scripture out. There is no clear vision of what God is up to, and the result is a vision vacuum. And when a vacuum exists, something is going to try to move in to fill it.

The Heart of the Matter – what really happens in the soul of a congregant when left in a church’s vision vacuum over time?

• What is left to excite the heart of your church attenders?
• What then fuels the dreams of your people?
• What nourishes the identity of those who call your church home?

The simple answer is something does, even when vision is absent. People need vision and they need hope. If visionary leaders are not providing and nourishing it, were do people find meaning?

Soul Fast Food – According to Mancini, there are four substitutes for a well-balanced diet of vision. They fuel your most faithful people; it is how they get hope for a better future. Unfortunately, they are also four sources of a malnourished membership identity. Each of these junk food categories are not bad in and of itself. They all malnourish, because they are used inappropriately as a substitute for a well-balanced vision.

French Fried “Places”
The places of our encounters with God matter – but space itself has addictive features, just like your favorite fries. There are spots where we encounter God; they are important. But in the absence of a vision that transcends our favorite nooks and crannies, the space itself becomes the vision supplement. The primary use of the term church to connote place compounds the issue.

The meaning of place reflects God’s design, starting with the Garden and ending with the New Jerusalem. But space is essential, not central, in the economy of vision.

Do not underestimate the gravitational pull of the physical place on both members and leaders. Is it possible that the building itself becomes a cheap substitute for real vision?

If you put too much focus on the physical place, people can be robbed of the more substantial articulation of the church's future.

The result? Anorexic vision.

What about your church? Is it time to pass the salt - or pass over french fried places all together?

Tomorrow: More Soul Fast Food

Be the Church

Today concludes a series of posts celebrating the anniversary of Church Unique, a book by Will Mancini. Mancini, a former pastor, is the founder of Auxano, a national consulting group whose mission is to navigate leaders through growth challenges with vision clarity. Church Unique outlines the processes that Mancini and the “navigators” at Auxano use in working with all types of churches. The book was published a year ago, and is powerfully impacting churches all over the country. Here are some more thoughts from Mancini that you will find applicable to your church.

The idea of the missional church has single-handedly captured the imagination of church leaders of all backgrounds and denominations. But what does it mean? I’ve spoken with pastors and leaders across the country, attended several conferences and workshops, and read more than a dozen books on the topic. Mancini’s definition of missional is a simple, but challenging one:

“Missional” is a way of thinking that challenges the church to re-form and reforge its self-understanding (theologically, spiritually, and socially) so that it can relearn how to live and proclaim the gospel in the world. Church is not something you do or a place you go, but what you are.

Three dynamics illustrate the missional characteristics being seen in churches today.

From Doing to Being
The missional reorientation represents an important shift in focus from methodology to identity. In this post-Christian era, the question of church identity becomes “Now that our influence is gone, how do we reshape our self-understanding so we can be like Christ in the world?”

Attractional vs. Incarnational
Attractional means that the church’s basic strategy for reaching the lost revolves around getting “seekers” or the “unchurched” into the church building. Once inside, the opportunity to present the gospel defines the primary opportunity for evangelism. In contrast, the Incarnational emphasis of the missional mindset focuses on living and sharing the gospel “where life happens.” Importance is placed on the church “disassembling” itself for the primary work of evangelism in the nooks and crannies of everyday life.

Lost People: Prospects, or the People Jesus Misses Most?
A church’s language about the people it wants to reach quickly identifies an attractional or incarnational mind-set. Growing up Southern Baptist (attending, educated, and serving on staff), I am very familiar with the term used: prospects. The implication is that the church defines success as “selling” the church and getting people to join. But the heartbeat of the missional church has found different language to carry a renewed identity of being sent. Jim Henderson, a megachurch pastor and author, suggests that the emphasis in the parables of the lost sheep and coin is not on what they feel, but what God the Father feels. Henderson adapted his language to say that unbelievers are not lost; they are “the people Jesus misses most.” The shift in language assumes that followers of Christ will likewise have people they miss most, and will inspired and oriented towards actions in the lives of these people.

This brief discussion of the missional church is but one of literally dozens of learning opportunities you will find in Church Unique. I encourage all church leaders to obtain this resource immediately, and dive into the discovery process of what makes your church – unique.

Things ain't what they used to be...

...and probably never was!

This comment by humorist Will Rogers in the early part of last century was a biting commentary on the memories of longing for the good old days. Were they actually so good? Or were we remembering a past that never was, longing for a future that could be?

As I noted in yesterday's post, we should have a very high value for our past - celebrating those who labored so diligently to establish the church. While we correctly look back, we must also be looking forward - but in different ways.

When I was in graduate school in the early 80's, strategic planning processes included five-, ten- and sometimes even twenty-year plans. The past was relatively stable, and indicated that things would continue as they were into the future. The assumption was that the near future would resemble the recent past.

Rapid cultural, technological, and geopolitical change has rendered that assumption obsolete. Which leads to another quote from Will Mancini's book Church Unique.

Leaders must focus more on preparation than on planning.

Mancini taps heavily into Reggie McNeal's work here. McNeal is another of my favorite authors. In The Present Future he addresses 6 tough questions for the church. The one of interest here is How do we plan for the future? The short answer, as both Mancini and McNeal elaborate is, you don't plan - you prepare.

Planning on past actions and assumptions will lead you to cultural irrelevance, methodological obsolescence, and missional ineffectiveness. Churches looking to planning like they always have will be left answering the wrong questions at best; at worst, they will be answering questions not asked!

Church Unique is not a road map that assumes predictability of fixed points and roads that stay unchanged over time. Instead, the tools of Church Unique are more like the compass, sextant, and chronometer of the sailor who moves across an ever changing sea. Navigating the waters of today's rapidly changing times requires ceaseless observation and adaption to the surrounding environment.

The better (and biblical) approach to the future involves prayer and preparation, not prediction and planning.