More on The Big Idea

The last thing the mission of Jesus Christ needs is more Christians…

Startling sentence? Yes – but the facts bear it out: While the majority of people in the US call themselves Christians (as high as 85%), how are they doing when it comes to accomplishing Jesus’ mission? Some recent research reveals the following:

• Christians are no more likely to give assistance to a homeless person than non-Christians
• Christians are no more likely than non-Christians to correct the mistake of a cashier giving them too much change
• A Christian is just as likely to have an elective abortion as a non-Christian
• Christians divorce at the same rate as those who consider themselves non-Christians
• Even though there are more big churches than ever before filled with people who proudly call themselves Christian, 50 % of Christian churches didn’t help one single person find salvation

The Barna Research Group did a survey involving over 150 items like the above comparing the general population with those who called themselves Christians. The survey found virtually NO difference between the two groups: no difference in the attitudes and no difference in the actions. There is a huge problem of the absence of distinction between Christians and non-Christians. Where is the church missing out?

Dave Ferguson and the leaders at Christian Community Church have approached this problem from a unique angle. The result: "The Big Idea", an action plan that will help you focus the message and sharpen the impact of your church on the community. Yesterday, I took a look at how they saw the problem; today, a sketch of a very workable solution.

It is one Big Idea at a time that brings clarity to the confusion that comes from too many little ideas.

• The Big Idea can help you creatively present one laser-focused theme each week to be discussed in families and small groups
• The Big Idea shows you how to engage in a process of creative collaboration that brings people together and maximizes missional impact
•  The Big Idea can energize a church staff and bring alignment and focus to many diverse church ministries

The Big Idea is a great resource for you to use in your church. I encourage you to get the book today! Here’s a link to order it!

Are you on a church staff? What's your Big Idea this Sunday? Or do you have a bunch of competing little ideas?

Revisiting The Big Idea, Part 1

In a recent conversation with some church leaders, I was trying to make the point that simplifying what we do increases our focus and power. Dave Ferguson and the leaders at Christian Community Church have approached this problem from a unique angle. The result: "The Big Idea", an action plan that will help you focus the message and sharpen the impact of your church on the community. I've posted about it before, and the book has been out for about 3 years, but it's worth visiting again. Here is a brief glimpse of the problem as they see it, and a sketch of a very workable solution.

Here’s a typical experience for the average churchgoer and his family. Keep track of the “little ideas”:

1. little idea from the clever message on the church sign as you pull into the church parking lot
2. little ideas from all the announcements in the church bulletin you are handed at the door
3. little idea from the prelude music that is playing in the background you as you take your seat
4. little idea from the welcome
5. little idea from the opening prayer
6. little idea from song 1 in the worship service
7. little idea from the Scripture reading
8. little idea from song 2 in the worship service
9. little idea from the special music
10. little idea from the offering meditation
11. little idea from the announcement
12. little idea from the first point of the sermon
13. little idea from the second point of the sermon
14. little idea from the third point of the sermon
15. little idea from song 3 in the worship service
16. little idea from the closing prayer
17. little idea from the Sunday school lesson
18. little idea from (at least one) tangent off of the Sunday School lesson
19. little idea from the prayer requests taken during Sunday School
20. little idea from the newsletter handed out during Sunday School

Twenty and counting. Twenty different competing little ideas in just one trip to church. Easily! If a family has a couple of children who attend a children’s church, and everyone attends his or her own Sunday school class, we could quadruple the number if little ideas. One family could leave with more than eighty competing ideas. And if we begin to add in youth groups, small groups, and a midweek service, the number easily doubles again. It’s possible that this one family is bombarded with more than one thousand little ideas every week explaining what it means to be a Christian.

We’ve bombarded our people with too many competing little ideas, and the result is a church with more information and less clarity than perhaps ever before.

The lack of clarity that churches give their people impedes the church’s ability to accomplish the mission of Jesus. “More” results in less clarity.

It is one Big Idea at a time that brings clarity to the confusion that comes from too many little ideas.

Tomorrow: Part Two of "The Big Idea"

Hello...How 'ya doing?...

I'm fine - how about you? Great...
Boy,isn't it hot today? Yeah it is...
Did you see the game last night? What a catch...

awkward silence

It's called small talk. Some people excel in it, others loath it. For the latter, new studies indicate that happy people have more substantive conversations than those who engage solely in small talk. The data don't disclose whether profound conversations causes happiness or vice versa, but a combination of both is likely. Small talk is a useful social skill, even a way to enter into deeper conversations, but intimacy is necessary to build and maintain real bonds.

Matthais Mehl of the University of Arizona suggests four ways to create more rewarding conversations:

• Dare to disclose - substantive conversations don't need to be driven by emotions, but they must involve some personal disclosure. The next time you're having a dialog, try inserting something revealing about yourself and watch the conversation open up.
• Be a full participant - Give your full attention to the person you're talking to instead of thinking of the next five things you've got to do. It will be noticed, and your conversation will be more lively and connecting.
• Find common ground - if you can find common ground, you're on your way to having more meaningful conversations.
• Embrace your environment - Find a place where you feel secure and confident. Whether a discussion is one-on-one or in a group, its important to go where everyone feels comfortable. When people feel relaxed, the guards go down and the conversations go up.

The study, published in the journal Psychological Science, involved 79 college students — 32 men and 47 women — who agreed to wear an electronically activated recorder with a microphone on their lapel that recorded 30-second snippets of conversation every 12.5 minutes for four days, creating what Dr. Mehl called “an acoustic diary of their day.”

So, what do you think of the latest on cognitive surplus? What a concept! Do you realize...

You Can't Improve by Coasting Uphill

The final post of "The Physics of Biking" or what I'm learning about leadership while training for a 24 hour bike ride...I am training for my 6th annual 24 Hours of Booty, a charity bike ride for the Lance Armstrong Foundation. As you might expect, riding even part of 24 hours takes training. I don’t mind training, but I hate hills – at least going up hills. Coming down, now that’s pretty cool. You can coast and catch your breath. The only problem is you can’t improve by going downhill all the time.



 
Living in North Carolina, there are hills everywhere; you can’t train without encountering them regularly. When I planned my training rides, I used to dread the uphill parts. No matter what techniques I tried, going up long, steep hills was a killer. Give me a flat surface and I can move along at a pretty good clip. Even better was a slight downhill run. I haven’t found a one-sided hill yet, so I would labor through, barely surviving, looking forward to the flying downhill on the other side.

Business blogger Seth Godin noted this in a recent post: It's very difficult to improve your performance on the downhills.


I agree completely. No matter what I tried, I couldn’t get any better by just going faster on the downhill side. Eventually, even I realized that the place to improve performance, to get better, is to work on the uphills. That's where the work is, the fun is, the improvement is. On the uphills, if I work hard and don’t give up, I have a reasonable shot at a gain over last time. The downhills are already maxed out by the laws of physics and safety.


Suddenly, the truth about biking can be translated into my work world as well. The best time to do great customer service is when a customer is upset. The moment you earn your keep as a public speaker is when the room isn't just right or the plane is late or the projector doesn't work or the audience is tired or distracted. The best time to engage with an employee is when everything falls apart, not when you're hitting every milestone. And everyone now knows that the best time to start a project is when the economy is lousy.

Godin’s 2007 book “The Dip” is a quick read that reinforces this line of thinking. A Dip is a temporary setback that you will overcome if you keep pushing. But maybe it’s really a cul-de-sac, which will never get better, no matter how hard you try. According to Godin, what really sets superstars apart from everyone else is the ability to escape dead ends quickly while staying focused and motivated when it really counts.

Winners quit fast, quit often, and quit without guilt – until they commit to beating the right Dip for the right reasons. Winners seek out the Dip. They realize that the bigger the barrier, the bigger the reward for getting past it.

What uphill are you facing right now? Will you push through it, improving your performance along the way and on the next hill? Or will you be satisfied with coasting on the other side?

Happy Birthday Amazon!

15 years ago today Amazon sold its first book - "Fluid Concepts and Creative Analogies." Launched by Jeff Bezos in 1995, It started as an online bookstore, but soon diversified, selling DVDs, CDs, MP3 downloads, computer software, video games, electronics, apparel, furniture, food, and toys.


In 2007, Amazon launched Amazon Kindle, an e-book reader which downloads content over "Whispernet", via the Sprint Nextel EV-DO wireless network.


I'm a big fan of Amazon, purchasing my first book from them in 1996. Over the years I have purchased hundreds of books there, as well as other products (one Christmas over one-half of our gifts were purchased at Amazon).

Unintentionally, but par for the course, I have 3 books coming in today: two for research on a major presentation at a national convention this fall, and one for additional consulting with a client in preparation for an upcoming project.


Happy Birthday, Amazon!

The Draft is Your Friend

Part 4 of "The Physics of Biking" or what I'm learning about leadership while training for a 24 hour bike ride...

Drafting is an important technique in cycling. The cyclist, as he moves through the air, produces a turbulent wake behind himself. It makes vortices. The vortices actually make a low pressure area behind the cyclist and an area of wind that moves along with the cyclist. If you're a following a cyclist and can move into the wind behind the front cyclist, you can gain an advantage. The low pressure moves you forward and the eddies push you forward. A rider tucked just 6 inches behind another rider expends almost 30 percent less energy than the front runner. Increase that distance to  24 inches and the energy savings are slashed to just about 10 percent.

Surprisingly drafting not only helps the cyclist following the leader, but the lead cyclist gains an advantage as well. The interesting thing is by filling in the lead cyclist's eddy you improve the front person's performance as well. So two people who are drafting can put out less energy than two individuals (who are not drafting) would covering the same distance in the same time. While the lead cyclist gains some advantage in this situation he still needs to expend much more energy than the cyclist who is following. Thus, successful drafting techniques require constant lead rotations among the pack.


Although I typically train by myself, most of the rides I participate in have groups in them. My first experience at drafting happened several years ago as I was "pulling" a group of about 7 bikes. As I took the lead, we came to a small rise; due to the effect of the draft as explained above, we actually were able to accelerate to about 21 mph up the hill. I only lasted a few minutes, and then it was time to let someone else take the lead, but the experience of moving forward with less effort was amazing.

How do you take advantage of the draft? Like all the posts in this series, you will make the final choice, but let me offer you my suggestion:

Lead Leaders.

Leaders who develop leaders experience an incredible multiplication effect in their organizations that can be achieved in no other way - not by increasing resources, reducing costs, analyzing systems, or doing anything else. As a leader you will go to the highest level only if you begin developing leaders instead of followers.

Becoming a leader who develops leaders requires an entirely different focus and attitude from that of a developer of followers. John Maxwell's "The 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership" points out some of the differences:

Leaders Who Develop Followers   Leaders Who Develop Leaders
Need to be needed                    Want to be succeeded                 
Focus on weaknesses                 Focus on strengths
Develop the bottom 20%            Develop the top 20%
Hoard power                             Give power away
Spend time with others              Invest time in others
Grow by addition                       Grow by multiplication
Impact only those they              Impact people far
touch personally                        beyond their own reach

As a leader, do you ride solo most of the time or are you part of a team that together, accomplishes more? Leading a team is hard work - it takes time, energy, and resources. But when you've got the right team of leaders, with everyone pulling their weight, the results are amazing.

Leaders commit themselves to people and activities that provide explosive growth through teamwork.

Gearing Up

Part 3 of "The Physics of Biking" or what I'm learning about leadership while training for a 24 hour bike ride...

The development of the chain drive helped make the bicycle that we know today possible. The chain drive eliminated the need to have the cyclist directly above the wheel. Instead the cyclist could be positioned between the two wheels for better balance. With the advent of gears, the cyclist could also pedal more efficiently. Riders enjoyed increased speed and easier riding up steep grades.

A chain drive alone (without gears) is effective on flat surfaces and going downhill. However, when it comes to headwinds, hill climbing, and even starting on a bicycle without gears--the cyclist has to stand on his pedals and strain while pedaling at a very low rate. Gears allow the cyclist to pedal at a comfortable and efficient rate while traveling either uphill or downhill or with a headwind or a tailwind.The gears of a bicycle make pedaling more efficient, allowing the cyclist to travel faster and more easily handle steep grades and other obstacles.

Gears make it possible for riders to maintain the cadence (or rate of pedaling) that makes them the most efficient. While there are many opinions as to what exactly is the optimal cadence for bicycling, everyone seems to agree that cadence is important.

What are your leadership "gears"? What makes your organization go? How do you determine the speed of your movement? When do you have to push a little harder, and when can you coast? Just like yesterday's post on "wheels", only you have the right answer. But here's mine:

Priorities.

Leaders never grow to a point where they no longer need to prioritize. It's something that good leaders do whether they lead a small group, a church, or an organization of 50 or 5,000.

Successful leaders recognize that not all activity is accomplishment. The best leaders seem to be able to prioritize their focus while reducing their number of actions.

John Maxwell, writing in "The 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership," talks about three guidelines he uses when making priorities. To be effective, he thinks leaders must order their lives according to three questions:

1. What is required? Anything required that is not necessary for you to do personally should be delegated or eliminated.
2. What gives the greatest return? Leaders spend most of their time working in the areas of their greatest strengths.
3. What gives the greatest reward? Nothing energizes a person the way passion does.

What are you doing with your leadership potential? Are you successfully prioritizing your actions to produce maximum results? Or are you spinning away in the wrong gear?