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MooWhil 10-05-66 |
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While
You Were Micro-Sleeping Fresh
Insights on the Changing Face of North American Missions Steve
Moore The
Mission Exchange, 2009, 68 pp. ISBN
978-0-615-33222-2 |
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Steve Moore is President and CEO of The Mission
Exchange (formerly called the Evangelical Fellowship of Mission
Agencies). He is also the author of The Dream Cycle:
Leveraging the Power of Personal Growth and Leadership Insights for Emerging Leaders
and Those Investing in Them. Moore’s passion is equipping young leaders
for involvement in The Great Commission.
In this book he shows how some of the current changes in the digital
and globalized world are affecting the North American missions
enterprise. The chapters of this book
consist of the scripts for Steve’s 2009 monthly video blog, accessible the 5th
of each month at www.TheMissionExchange.org.
1. A Metaphor of Missions Today “But the world is changing and so are the
rules. With the proliferation of
desktop computers, desktop publishing and lower cost printing, there are ways
to self-publish a book that completely circumvent the world of traditional
publishing. If you have a good idea,
the ability to write, access to a decent editor, a creative graphic designer
and a few thousand dollars to spend for printing, you can produce your own
book whether the publishing world wants you to or not. If you are willing to go print on demand,
you don’t even need the few thousand dollars.” (2) “These changes in the world of publishing serve
as a metaphor for what is happening in the world of North American
missions. There was a day when
individuals or churches who wanted to make a difference around the world had
little choice but to work with and through traditional structures. … Like
self-published authors, Christ-followers and churches can carry out their
grassroots Great Commission agenda in ways that complete circumvent
traditional systems and cultures. Like
it or not, the rules are changing.
Forever.” (3) “…we need to devise better ways to identify the
grassroots initiatives that have game-changing potential for the Great
Commission. We need to embrace
paradigm busting ideas that redefine how traditional structures work together
with viable grass roots initiatives.” (4) 2. While You Were Micro-Sleeping “Don’t blink or you’ll miss it” is a metaphor for
church and missions leaders responding to the challenges of our accelerated
world. If the pace of change in your organization
is slower than the pace of change in the world, you’re in trouble. We are dealing not with incremental change
but major, discontinuous, exponential, and irreversible change. Leaders must ask two questions: What’s
happening now? And What’s happening
next? The context informs your
strategy. You must be aware of what is changing outside your organization and
the implications for your organization.
4. From Invention to Innovation: How Inno-Friendly
is Your Organization? An idea is an invention. Converting the idea into something useful
and profitable is innovation.
Innovation is as important for missions as it is for business. But there is no correlation between the
value of an idea and the likelihood of its being implemented! Few people see the potential in
breakthrough ideas and even fewer organizations are structured to accept and
implement them. Most organizations are
limited by one-way communication from the top down and the leaders are
insulated from the best ideas from the grass roots. Where do you most need a fresh burst of
innovation? Would you recognize it if
you saw it? 6. The “Punkification” of Missions Punk is an anti-establishment do-it-yourself
philosophy and it is being driven in missions by the democratization of
information and the decentralization of initiative. Every person with a cell phone has become an
amateur reporter in an “upload” world.
But church and mission leaders mostly operate in a “download”
paradigm, pushing power and information down the chain of command. “Power is
moving away from the old elite in our industries, the editors, the chief
executives, and let’s face it, the proprietors. A new generation of media consumers has risen demanding content delivered when they want it, how
they want it, and very much as they want it.” (24, quoting Rupert
Murdoch) Initiative is also decentralizing. Because of the ability to upload,
individuals can now produce really complex things with very little money and
hierarchy. “If we don’t figure out how to collaborate
creatively—if we use all of our metaphorical bandwidth for downloading—our
constituents will increasingly pursue ‘punk missions’ that circumvent
entirely the old school structures.
Perhaps they will rewrite the punk music ad: “Here’s a cell phone,
here’s a computer, now launch your own mission.” (25) 7. The Power of Viral Ministry “Viral marketing uses pre-existing social
networks to communicate a message or enhance a brand, often leveraged by
technology through digital pictures, videos, email or even text
messages. It is word of mouth on
techno-steroids.” “For something to
‘go viral’ it has to have a purpose that goes beyond making a profit. That plays right into our hands.” (27) “Only in an upload world can you engage, or
could we say ‘infect,’ hundreds of thousands of people in a matter of days
for free. By leveraging twitter, youtube, facebook and other
social networking sites it is possible to communicate and mobilize large
groups without traditional systems or structures. That’s what makes it so scary. That’s what makes it so powerful.”
(29) 8. Who’s Your CD? Why Every
Successful Enterprise Needs a Chief Destruction Officer “Success almost always translates into growth. …
Two fundamental, albeit unintended, consequences of sustained growth are a decrease in urgency and an increase in complexity.” If you don’t deal with complexity you can’t
sustain growth. So urgency shifts from
producing growth to solving the problems of complexity. Success tends to block the larger view of
opportunities as well as the changes you will face around the bend. Complexity has birthed professionalism and
elitism at the expense of innovation.
We need Chief Destruction Officers to wreak havoc on the status quo,
rail against incremental change, focus on the fringes for increased
flexibility, and spawn new structures.
9. How the Next Generation is Redefining Loyalty and Why It Changes
Everything Older generations are loyal to institutions and
their programs. The focus is on our
uniqueness and distinctives. Younger generations are loyal to
relationships and are focused on shared identity, capacity and
opportunity. They will engage with
multiple diverse organizations as long as they add value. Young leaders expect to get experience in
multiple career fields. They are
absolutely committed to very few theological distinctives. And they insist on being empowered versus
controlled by leaders. 10. The Un-Provider: What God
Might Be Saying by Not Providing “Maybe
you’ve heard the old adage, ‘Where God guides, he always provides.’ We made up a new saying: ‘God often guides
by what he doesn’t provide.” “Are you
up against a wall with no good plan to get past it? Have you hit an obstacle that appears
impenetrable? Maybe God will guide you
to see something that you couldn’t have seen if he’d just removed the wall.”
(44, quoting Craig Groeschel in IT, How Churches and Leaders Can Get IT
and Keep IT.) God may be pushing us into a new season of
creativity and innovation, calling us to more partnership and collaboration,
pressing us to explore mergers and acquisition, and perhaps gracefully
leading us to some closures of ministry structures. 11. Movement 2.0: The New
Levers of Social Change and Why You Can’t Ignore Them Levers of social change may be institutional,
organizational, tribal, or viral.
These two new unstructured entities are more flexible and can produce
change more quickly. The tribal lever
is not hierarchical, but relational, flowing along the lines of natural
connection. It is dynamic, feeding off
the passion of others in the tribe.
Viruses are flexible, unmanageable, and chaotic. These new levers bring new digital
realities and we must learn how to collaborate with them and harness their
power. What does it look like to be
viral friendly? Tribal friendly? How can we make this hybrid partnership
work? What risks and failures are we
willing to accept? 13. The Hourglass Effect: Why
Partnership Momentum Stalls in Middle Management and What to Do About It “I believe one of the challenges of implementing
partnership is middle management, not because the people who serve there are
any less open to working with others than their senior leaders or grass roots
colleagues, but because they are responsible for hashing out the details, and
we all know who is in the details. It
is at this middle management level, in the center of the hourglass that we
have to figure out how to collate all of our policies and procedures with the
practical realities of doing something together that we would have otherwise
done ourselves. And that’s the real
challenge.” (61) 14. Re-Thinking the Issues of Faithfulness and Fruitfulness “Christ-following leaders are especially
vulnerable to denying, or at least downsizing reality and we do so to our own
peril.” (63) “Unless you are prepared to look your
stakeholders in the eye and say, ‘It is not possible for us to know if we are
moving in the direction of our vision and mission,’ you have to identify some
metrics because if you say yes (or no for that matter) you have to have,
either implicitly or explicitly, some point of reference that serves, as the
basis for your answer. Unless you are
prepared to tell your stakeholders, ‘Stop asking this question because we
can’t and don’t know…’ deferring any answer until Jesus comes, you have to
identify some metrics, some indicators of the outcomes connected with the
bottom line of your vision and mission.
And wrestling with the performance, or we could say success of your
organization, will bring you face to face with reality.” (65) “You can’t say you are truly faithful if you are
not diligently seeking to grow your capacity, develop your giftedness and
refine your strategy. Faithfulness
goes so much deeper than just showing up.
So at the heart of faithfulness we are constantly asking, ‘What could
we be doing differently? Is there a
better way?’ These questions are only meaningful if linked to the other part
of the feedback loop, fruitfulness, which asks the question, ‘Are we bearing
fruit? Much fruit? Lasting fruit?’” (65) Afterword “Amidst all the urgency, uncertainty and
vulnerability that comes with leading in this moment in history we are faced
with unprecedented, perhaps never to be repeated opportunities. God,
please help us not to miss them.
Difficulties, complexity, even tragedy, are some of the most potent
fertilizers for the soil of leadership.
God, please take our roots
deeper and our branches higher.” (67) |
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