Embarking

I read this today, and found it struck a chord:

Communities, like families, can be healthy or toxic, but western individualism provides no true alternative.  Ironically, the spiritual-but-not-religious embrace a consumerist mentality that in other contexts they harshly criticize.  The irony is compounded when one realizes that these spiritual individualists – inheritors of an “I” culture – most often pluck items off the shelf of “we” cultures.  Spiritual tourism offers the benefits of wisdom derived from those who submit to authority and discipline and tradition without having to do so oneself.

But spiritual tourists have no home to return to; they are always restlessly consuming new experiences.  They can’t eat, pray, and love enough…

…In worship we become participants, living members of a body, rather than observers and connoisseurs.

-Gregory Wolfe, “Religious but Not Spiritual” in Image, number 68.

Today in worship, Marlin Vis said that if you’re interested in a personal relationship with Jesus that isn’t in the context of community, then following Jesus isn’t for you.  A good but hard word.  Being a church-critic by standing strangely aloof while pretending to participate, silently observing and critiquing, is a subtle form of soul-bending.  I mean by that what Wolfe gets at in this paragraph, that we cannot merely glean the wisdom and benefits of community while remaining individualistic separate, over, and above.  True critique can only be made from within by those who are embedded in a spiritual oneness that comes through true corporate worship (and this is what I take Wolfe to mean when he uses the word “liturgy,” not merely a codified set of accepted traditions).  When we stand aloof outside community and try to critique as if we were embedded within that community, our souls bend and threaten to break under the weight of a hypocrisy that makes us two-faced.  ”Speak the truth in love.” Love requires a relationship.  So ultimately, those who merely shop for a better church, or a more palatable experience are firmly planting their spirits outside of the community of love that requires real relationships and all the good and bad those relationships have to offer.  The language of “spiritual tourist” hits the nail on the head.  A visitor to a community can critique the community all they  want, but without sharing history, struggle, victory, failure, success, context, and texture, a tourist can never truly understand the community.  It is only when one moves into the neighborhood and becomes a true neighbor that one can truly critique from within.  And that is exactly what Jesus did when he “became flesh and blood and moved into the neighborhood” (John 1:14) and taught us not only how to love one another, but also confronted our lies and dysfunctions with powerful truth.  Being a spiritual tourist is easier in some sense than being a spiritual resident of a particular community, but the soul-bending required probably makes us far less human.

Found this poem in an old journal today… I think I wrote this somewhere at the North end of Agawa Bay overlooking Lake Superior in 2000.

Great God of the gilded sky

Great God of the gilded sky
breathless here we stand
as if we’ve seen you painting
the birds that fly
over the seas, and hill
and deep valley where
the cold black water flows
and the trees stand still.
Rise.
Rise in the western blue
gales of sweetness
foaming over granite beaches
wind over the deep green hue.
Earth & wind
Water & wonder
Waves & rustling trees
& thunder.
Great God of the gilded sky
paint my wings
so that breathless
I, too, might fly.

One of the writers I love to read is Malcolm Muggeridge.  I’m not sure why, but his combination of journalism, seeking after God, his transformation to Christ, his keen political eye, and his incredible experiences make for interesting reading that – for me – leads to worthwhile pondering.  Here is a quote from the introduction to The Third Testament, which was original a TV series, I think for the BBC.

Considering [Saint Augustine, Blaise Pascal, William Blake, Søren Kierkegaard, Fyodor Dostoevsky, Leo Tolstoy and Dietrich Bonhoeffer] as a group, it became clear to me that, although they were all quintessentially men of their time, they had a special role in common, which was none other than to relate their time to eternity. This has to be done every so often; otherwise, when the lure of self-sufficiency proves too strong, or despair too overwhelming, we forget that men need to be called back to God to rediscover humility and with it, hope… Between the fantasies of the ego and the truth of love, between the darkness of the will and the light of the imagination, there will always be the need for a bridge and a prophetic voice calling on us to cross it.

Those are the kinds of sentences I long for in books I read today, and can’t seem to find that often. I find the challenge of a phrase like “relate their time to eternity” throws me off balance for awhile and makes me think deeply about my own life and how my actions, words, and thoughts relate to the eternity that God has set before.  What conviction comes when you read a phrase like, and realize that the lure of self-sufficiency has grown strong, or maybe said differently, the lure of the illusion of self-sufficiency.  How many times have we seen throughout history those who have had to discover or rediscover humility?  How many times have we seen the mighty fall to their own failures, or implosion into depression because of unrealized, wrong-headed hopes and dreams?  How true it is that “between the fantasies of the ego and the truth of love, between the darkness of the will and the light of the imagination” we do need a bridge or otherwise we fall headlong into a chasm of self-destruction of our own digging.

Hope.  The prophetic voice calling. The truth of love. The light of the imagination. The rediscovery of humility, reliance, and the power and sufficiency of our God.  These things are worth pondering.

Candor:  Walsh is one who deeply values candor, honesty, and authenticity.  One thing that was helpful here was that Walsh said something like, “Let’s not waste time having meetings to decide what we’re going to say.  We’re just going to say what we believe.”

Differentiation:  At GM, employees were divided into the top 20%, the vital 70%, and then the 10% who needed to have something done with them immediately.  You can’t have a differentiating organization without having candor at the core of the organization.  People need to know how they are doing, what to change, and where they stand.  Walsh would say that this is not a heartless approach to people.  In fact, he would say it’s the most compassionate because everyone knows where they stand.

• Top “A” people, or the 20% are filled with energy, they are likeable and infections, they’re good people, and they love to see people grow.  They aren’t afraid to have great people around them.  They’re not mean-spirited or envious, but have a generosity of spirit.
• The Vital 70%, or “B” people are hard-working, but not necessarily as gifted as other people.
• The Lower 10% are not energetic, acidic, a pain in the “arm”, negative, boss-haters, disrupters, wet-blankets, antagonists.

We talked today at lunch about organizational culture, and what makes a good culture.  I’m really intrigued by this topic, and think it’s well worth not only talking about, but trying to be clear about defining your particular organizational culture.  If we don’t do that in our organizations, a culture will emerge, and culture is more difficult to change than to create.  I really like what Terri Kelly said today about the organizational culture of WL Gore and Associates as well as some other places I appreciate like IDEO, Google, and Disney as well.  Here are some of the ways that Google defines its organizational culture:

1. Lend a helping hand. With millions of visitors every month, Google has become an essential part of everyday life – like a good friend – connecting people with the information they need to live great lives.
2. Life is beautiful. Being a part of something that matters and working on products in which you can believe is remarkably fulfilling.
3. Appreciation is the best motivation, so we’ve created a fun and inspiring workspace you’ll be glad to be a part of, including on-site doctor; massage and yoga; professional development opportunities; shoreline running trails; and plenty of snacks to get you through the day.
4. Work and play are not mutually exclusive. It is possible to code and pass the puck at the same time.
5. We love our employees, and we want them to know it. Google offers a variety of benefits, including a choice of medical programs, company-matched 401(k), stock options, maternity and paternity leave, and much more.
6. Innovation is our bloodline. Even the best technology can be improved. We see endless opportunity to create even more relevant, more useful, and faster products for our users. Google is the technology leader in organizing the world’s information.
7. Good company everywhere you look. Googlers range from former neurosurgeons, CEOs, and U.S. puzzle champions to alligator wrestlers and Marines. No matter what their backgrounds, Googlers make for interesting cube mates.
8. Uniting the world, one user at a time. People in every country and every language use our products. As such we think, act, and work globally – just our little contribution to making the world a better place.
9. Boldly go where no one has gone before. There are hundreds of challenges yet to solve. Your creative ideas matter here and are worth exploring. You’ll have the opportunity to develop innovative new products that millions of people will find useful.
10. There is such a thing as a free lunch after all. In fact we have them every day: healthy, yummy, and made with love.

Biological Drive

Reward and Punishment Drive

Meaning Drive

Two Dimensional view of human beings is one in which we try to dampen the biological drive and pump up the reward and punishment drive, but it doesn’t work very well.  What researchers have found is that this focus on the reward and punishment drive works and increases productivity with simple “mechanical” processes, but when more cognitive functions were necessary, the higher the cognitive function required actually found that reward and punishment decreased productivity.  The research is so good showing the “carrots and sticks” don’t work, and yet it is routinely ignored in organizations every day.

Two False Assumptions in Organizations:

1. Human beings are machines, and if you hit the right buttons, they’ll respond the way you want them to.
2. Human beings are blobs.  The alternative to this would be that humans are active and engaged.

There are, instead, 3 enduring motivators:

1. Autonomy: Management is a technology from the 1850′s designed to get compliance.  We don’t want compliance in our organizations anymore.  Management leads to compliance. Self-direction leads to engagement.  People need autonomy over their time, their team, their tasks, and their technique.  A great example of this is the 20% autonomous time that companies like Google have instituted. (cf. this Google blog post)
2. Mastery: The single largest motivator, according to one study, is making progress.  As human beings, we feel the most loyal to the organization, the most useful, the most meaningful is when we are making some sort of progress and growth and change and impact.  In order to have mastery, we also have to have effective feedback.
3. Purpose: There is a rise in recent years of what could be called the purpose motive.  In the last decade we haver learned that the profit motive comes unhooked from the purpose motive, bad things happen.

Terri Kelly is the President and CEO of WL Gore and Associates, founders of Gore technology (Gore-Tex).  I’ve been looking forward to this talk since last year when one of the speakers spoke about the unique leadership culture at Gore which is not built with a traditional hierarchical structure, but organized around communities and teams in which the employees themselves decide who the real leaders are and what projects they want to work on.  Terry calls is a “peer based organization” in which everyone is concerned about the success of others in the organization.  This reminds me of a story I just ready about a similar company in the book Multipliers: how the best leaders make everyone smarter by Liz Wiseman.    Here is what Wiseman says about Hexal (sold in 2005 to Novartis) and the Struengmann brothers on p. 42-43:

Hexal doesn’t have jobs, per se, and they don’t have an org chart… Jobs were loosely created around people’s interests and unique capabilities.  They called their approach the “ameba model.”  Here’s how it works… At Hexal, you could work wherever there was energy.  Through encouraging their employees to use this heat-seeking approach, they were able to utilize people at their highest point of contribution.  They didn’t box people into jobs and limit their contribution.  They let people work where they had ideas and energy and where they could best contribute.  They let talent flow, like an ameba, to the right opportunities.

Terry spoke about “leadership on demand” as opposed to a “fixed hierarchy” where decisions go up and down the ladder.  The lattice organization is an organization in which everyone is connecting with everyone in their network – people being able to go to whoever they need to go to in the organization, rather than having “ladder” organizational structure where you may have 2-3 specific people you work through.  In this system, leaders lead by influence rather than by “direction”.  This give the employee commitment and ownership, and the energy transfers to the whole organization rather than only by specific leaders.

The key to not having totally chaos is having alignment around shared, foundational values and beliefs.  Gore’s 4 major values are the following:

1. Everyone can make a difference, give them the tools
2. Belief in small teams, to feel connected
3. Same boat, vested collectively together
4. Long term view, not short term results. First and primary is work environment, driving innovation, reaching out to communities.

Because the organization works by passion, influence, and good ideas rather than by power or position, selling your ideas becomes very important, as does peer review and collaboration to vet ideas as well as to make them better.  In this way, people become more motivated to work in the areas that they will be the most effective and impactful because their review is done by the peers they work with and around on these projects, which creates a built in mechanism for momentum, commitment, and contribution.  Those who make the greatest contribution, then, is paid accordingly.

This also creates an environment where there are more “coaches” than “bosses.”  A coach, or personal sponsor, is committed to helping another person make their maximum contribution to the organization.  This person is not a supervisor, but a coach, encourager, “cheerleader”.  There is clear separation between leadership roles and coaching in that coaches are not leaders, but those who are committed to the personal contribution of the person they are coaching.

Gore plants rarely get larger than 250.  Terry said,

“One of the core ideas is learning how to divide so that we can multiply.”

The idea is that multiplication of small communities with great ideas that are highly productive, with shared values and high productivity, will grow the organization in a faster and more effective manner.

Waterline Concept: if you are considering an investment that could put the organization in jeapordy, don’t do that because it could sink the ship.  You can drill holes above the waterline, but anything that could harm reputation, financial success, or the work environment (below the waterline) is too risky.

Leadership is defined by followership in the sense that followers follow the leaders they want to.  This, I suppose, makes John Maxwell’s words that “if no one is following, you’re just out for a walk.”  This creates a culture of real leadership that is based on people who follow because they want to, not because they have to or because of their or someone else’s place, position, or power in the organization.   When, in a survey of Gore employees they were asked if they are a leader in the organization, 50% answered yes, which is powerful in terms of distribution of the leadership role, equipping, and empowering of every person in the organization.

(Download a free chapter of Jeff’s book “The Land Between” here:http://www.willowcreek.com/events/leadership/2010/between.asp)

Jeff did a great job of exegeting Numbers 11, and what he calls “The Land Inbetween.”  He equated these time in our lives when we are stuck wandering in the desert between land of blessing and land of blessing to the time when Israel was wandering between fertile Egypt and the fertile crescent of the promise land.  He reminded us that the story of Moses and the people is a real story of real people going through real problems and issues.  He reminded us that the land between is fertile ground for complaint. (Numbers 11:7-9) I laughed hard when he read this passage, and said it had to be read in a “whiny voice.”   The land of between is not only fertile ground for complaint, but it goes further than that to the place of meltdown. (Numbers 11:10-15)  Moses is done, fed up, and says, “Kill me right now!”  We have all been in this place when the finances are gone, we’re jobless, stuck in an unhealthy marriage, nailed with cancer, in a broken relationship, when our friends betray us.

Often we’re prepared for some disappointment, but not necessarily for years of disappointment.  After awhile we just get crushed by ongoing disappointment after disappointment.

And God doesn’t leave Moses alone, but says that he will provide to help Moses carry the burden.  God provides other people to shoulder the load with us in the land between. (Numbers 11:16-17) What if God provides not only for Moses and the Israelites in the land inbetween, but also for us?  What does it look like for us to leave our hands open to let go of the crushing anxiety that is beating us down.  What if he’s good?  What if he provides for us, like he provided lunch instead of a lecture for Moses?

Why do we respond like the Israelites do, thinking we are better off on our own without God?  It’s interesting when the people complain that God responds, and we find that the land between is fertile ground for God’s discipline (Numbers 11:18-20).  Pain, from God, is not to hurt us, but it is for redemptive purposes, to rescue us from something.  He does not hurt us to hurt us.

The land between is fertile soil for transformational growth. But, God says that in order for transformational growth to happen, we have to trust him in the land between.  It is in this space that we learn to pray, to depend, and to trust God.

Jeff used a great metaphor of battling roommates.  Complaint comes unexpectedly into the house and resists eviction.  Trust seeks to move into the house, too, but can’t live with complaint, and eventually, when we begin to trust God, trust is the thing that evicts complaint.

May God bless you int he land between.

May you guard your heart.

May trust grow.

There are 4 premiere stages in the world, and China has a strong presence in all of them:

1. Economic Stage – China has become an economic superpower
2. Political Stage – China has a table on major political issues
3. Sports Stage – hosted the recent Olympics
4. Faith Stage – China is coming back to this stage

Leadership is about influence.  Leadership is also about the right direction.  If you lead people from here to there, and it’s the wrong direction, what are you going to do?  Martin Luther’s revolution and Protestantism is the most significant change of the last couple thousand years.  The discovery and settling of America is the most significant change of the last 500 years.  What will be the most significant change of the 21st century?  The most significant thing of the twentieth century is not 2 world wars, it is the rise of China because its rise will make hundreds of years of difference.  Even more than “rising up,” China is “coming back.”

Until the 14th century, China was  a leader in most areas, and even in the 1800′s, China was the largest world economy and in the 1820′s had 1/3 of the world’s economy.  In the last century, China has fallen back, but the last 30 years, China is beginning to catch up again and is experiencing the fastest and most dramatic growth in human history.   By the end of this year, China will be the 2nd largest economy in the world, and by 2020 China will likely pass America and once again become the largest world economy.  This is China’s come-back to the center stage of being a superpower and into its leadership role in the world.

Question:  Will being the greatest economic power ensure that China will be a leader in the world?

• 1/ 3 of China was polluted
• 1/5 of the river’s were polluted
• There are major resource challenges as many of the resources will be consumed in the near future.  There is much disparity, corruption, and great, critical, and severe challenges.

If China does not have the ability to export values and ethics, it will not become a superpower.   America has something called “The American Dream” and there are “American Values”. China must go through more than economic changes.  It must go through values changes in order to mature as world leaders.  China must learn from the values of the whole world, and most importantly from Christian values and the Christian faith.

It was cool to hear Dr. Xiao as he thanked us for the missionaries that have come to China through the years, and hoping to see China become the largest sending nation in the future.

A couple questions I had in response to Dr. Xiao:

• Was this a bit of a prosperity gospel mix, China style?
• I heard some borderline civil religion and empire/ Christianity connections that I’m always wary of which remind me of the rise and fall of the Roman Empire.  I’ve seen this in America in which the gospel is co-opted, syncretized, and sometimes recreated with the success of the empire as the focus rather than the Kingdom of God.  I find this especially interesting in light of the 4 world stages that Dr. Xiao mentioned earlier… 4 stages that Rome and America (and England for that matter) have mixed together into an interesting civil religion.  I only hope that as China’s Christian community grows that the leaders pay attention to the dangers of mixing empire and Kingdom, but I suppose that’s for a longer discussion for another time.

Francis Schaeffer Institute: 30% of pastors admitted to some sort of sexual failure in their ministry

Adam Hamilton had a tough talk today.  He admitted himself that this was not a fun, motivational talk, nor one he delighted to give.  It has to deal with the moral failure that so many leaders fall into – often, and particularly some sort of sexual/ relational failure.  Hamilton himself experienced the moral failure of two of his colleagues who developed an inappropriate relationship with one another.

As he continues to speak right now, let me just mention how close this is to my heart for a couple of reasons.  First, I have several friends who have been personally affected by such a failure by a parent, friend, or close colleague.  Second, I’ve seen the damage in my own denomination and congregations I’m close to who have experienced this very thing.  Third, because it’s not just leaders who struggle with this.  I’m working with a number of couples right now whose marriages are on the rocks because of some major failure… and all of these are within the church.  Lastly, I have had some people close to me and my family that have affected our lives personally.

Here are 4 ways a church or organization can approach these moral failures:

1. Ignore it and hope it would go away.
2. Be evasive and say the two pastors were leaving because of personal reasons.
3. Scarlet letter approach – add more shame and exile.
4. Approach it with transparency, honesty, and compassion.

In such situations, many people look to see how the church will approach these situations in order to a) either reinforce their greatest fears that we really are the Pharisees or b) to be surprised that the church can respond in a way that is human, biblical, compassionate, and filled with truth seasoned with grace.  The hope is that such a defining moment will be lived out in a way that is closer to the second.

What are some things that churches can do to help avoid sexual misconduct among and between staff members?

1. Develop policies and staff covenants
2. Talk about it among the staff.  Have the sex talk with the staff.  We are wired for reproduction, intimacy, and sin.  The combination of these three can often lead us to places of self-destruction.  Even if you have the feelings – even if they’re normal – don’t share them.

5 R’s for Resisting Temptation

1. Remember who you are:  pastor, father, husband, child of the King.
2. Recognize the consequences of your actions.  ”Will I feel better after I do this?”  ”Will I feel more or less human?”  ”Will I be proud or ashamed?”  ”Who will be affected by my actions?”  ”What will my congregation thing about this?”
3. Rededicate yourself to God.  In the moment, Stop, Drop, and Pray.
4. Reveal your struggle to a trusted friend.  When you share it with a friend, it loses its power.
5. Remove yourself from the situation.  Jesus said, sometimes there are radical things you need to do to avoid sin.