Out of complexity, find simplicity. Einstein
Because of the complexity of modern life people are wanting simplicity. See Apple, google, graphic designers, successful airliners and interior designers for proof of this.
Papa John's pizza company:
at Papa John's we have a simple formula for success: Focus on one thing and try to do it better than anyone else. By keeping the Papa John's menu simple, we are able to focus on the quality of our product by using only superior-quality ingredients.In research surveys conducted across 400 churches of various sizes they found evidence that the vibrant churches were much more simple than the comparison churches. The difference was so big that the probability of the results occurring with one church by chance is less than one in a thousand.
In general simple churches are growing and vibrant. Churches with a simple process for reaching and maturing people are expanding the kingdom.The converse is true as well. Complex churches are struggling. Sadly the busy complex church is the norm.
What the book isn't saying:
1) Simple is not a change in doctrine or conviction
2) Simple shouldn't be done because it's hip or on trend (actually the world is busy busy complex)
3) Churches shouldn't become simple just because it works
4) Simple is easy. Ministry will always be messy and difficult because people are messy and difficult.
Jesus, the revolutionary knew the importance of simple.
He wasn't pulled around by the complex religious factions. He settled on the simple and 'straightforward' 'love sinners and love God' idea.
In stark contrast to the heavy yoke of the religious leaders Jesus offered an easy yoke and a light burden.
Jesus and Clutter:
As a simple revolutionary, Jesus was bothered by meaningless and distracting clutter.Jesus' behaviour in the temple gives us amazing insight into the heart of God. Jesus is adamantly opposed to anything that gets in the way of people encountering him.
Ministry schizophrenia. This is not a clinical disease. You will not find it in a psychology book, but it is present in many churches. You have noticed it before, but maybe you did not diagnose it as ministry schizophrenia. It is plaguing local churches.When ministry philosophies collide, schizophrenia happens.
Like many churches, success at pastor Rush's church is measured by how well a particular program goes. Parts are evaluated but not the whole.Story of the Bird Road rapist. Jose Diaz worked to set his father freed from prison. He did so by making them test the DNA of victims and the DNA of his wrongly imprisoned father. For 26 years the man was locked up until they did these DNA tests. Jose Diaz saw the whole picture. He saw the forest and not just the trees in the case of his father. Like Jose Diaz church leaders are called to free prisoners. Not from physical jail cells but from spiritual ones.
Leaders of simple churches are designers. They design opportunities for spiritual growth. Complex church leaders are programmers. They run ministry programs.
To have a simple church you must have a simple discipleship process. This process must be:
Clear.
It must move people toward:
Maturity.
It must be integrated into church life and we must get rid of clutter.
Chapter 2: The Simple (and not so simple) Church in Action
A very helpful church that contrasts two real life churches of similar sizes, one that is streamlined around a clear vision and strategy and another that is more of a 'whoever shouts the loudest', over complicated programming type church.
Helpful for seeing the need for us/the church to get 'simple' and clear about what we're aiming at and how we're going to do it.
Chapter 3: Simple Church and extreme makeover
Clarity, movement, alignment, focus
Church leaders are builders and architects of a community. In 1 Cor. 3 believers are called God's children, God's field and God's building:
Children, fields and buildings grow in process. They do not mature overnight. They are not built in a day. They are constantly redecorated.
Children, fields and buildings need the right environments to facilitate the process of growth. Children need nurturing, touch, food, and love. Fields need water, care and farming. Buildings need workers, materials, and someone like Ty (home makeovers, US style)Defining a simple church:
A simple church is a congregation designed around a straightforward and strategic process that moves people through the stages of spiritual growth.It's 'designed' - the ministry doesn't just happen.
'around' - it centres on something.
That something is a 'straightforward' - it is not confusing. The leaders know it and the people understand it.
It 'moves' people - programs are used as tools to promote this movement.
The authors conducted a survey (the Process Design Survey) in which they asked hundreds of churches questions relating to their church process strategies.
They assessed how well each church did on the four key elements of: clarity, movement, alignment and focus.
The results showed statistically that if churches wanted to grow/be vibrant then they needed to be simple. On average the growing churches scored 85 out of 100 whilst the 'comparison' churches scored an average of 69 points. The statiticians said: there is a highly significant relationship between a simple church design and the growth and vitality of a local church.
In short: a simple church strategy is effective.
The survey showed that simple and growing churches were also quite strategically focused around the four elements: clarity, movement, alignment and focus.
The above four elements ought to be at the forefront of ones mind as they seek to build a Simple system.
Clarity - Movement - Alignment - Focus
This is also true of projects generally. The chapter illustration is the design team in Extreme Makeover. They start by defining a clear vision, with blurprints to show it. They then get moving and implementing the plans, next they align every part of the job around the clear goal and finally they stay focused and 'on task' throughout the project.
Clarity
The ability of the process to be communicated and understood by the people. For a church to be simple it must have a high degree of clarity. Clarity and simplicity go hand in hand, they are close friends.
Without understanding, commitment wanes
If people are to embrace and participate in the ministry process, they must be able to internalise it. To be able to internalise it they must first grasp it.Movement
The sequential steps in the process that cause people to move to greater areas of commitment. This is about flow, assimilation. In a relay race the crucial stage is the handoff from one person to the next. This is what the 'movement' section is all about. It's about the handoffs, the bits in between the programs.
Sadly most churches are like poor relay teams. Instead of caring about the handoffs they care too much about the programs.Simple churches pay attention to the handoffs. They have grasped the truth that assimilation effectiveness is more important than programmatic effectiveness.
To implement the movement element, church leaders must take a fresh look at the weekly church calendar and the regularly scheduled programs. All programs must be placed in sequential order along the ministry process.Alignment
The arrangement of all ministries and staff around the same simple process. Alignment to the process means that all ministry departments submit and attach themselves to the same overarching process.
Alignment ensures the entire church body is moving in the same direction and in the same manner.
When a church is fully aligned all ministries are operating from the same ministry blueprint. The ministries not only embrace the simple process, but they are engaged in it... without alignment the church can be a multitude of subministries.All churches naturally drift away from alignment.
When misalignment on a car is not address, the results are damaging. Tires can blow out while driving. Damage to the wheels can occur. The same is true for a church. When misalignment is not addressed, there is damage.Focus
The commitment to abandon everything that falls outside of the simple ministry process.
Focus most often requires saying 'no'. It involves saying yes to the best and no to everything else.
If movement is the most difficult element to understand then focus is the most difficult element to implement.
The church needs more Hezekiahs
Hezekiah called God's people back to worshipping the true God. He was also willing to break the things that had become obstacles to their growth. He broke the golden snake of Moses' day because it had become an idol. He went beyond just destroying the high places, he also removed the things that had had their day and needed to be done away with.
Church leaders need to do the same. We need to stop the things in church life that have had their day and are now a distraction.
Hans Hofmann
Born in Bavaria in the late 1800s. He became an artist and a teacher of other great artists. He once indicated that if you want the necessary to stand out, you have to get rid of the unnecessary.
Churches need to learn to do the same.
Chapter 4: Three simple stories
Three Simple churches.
Story 1 - Immanuel Church, Glasgow, Kentucky
Bible belt territory, small 'city' of 16k residents. Immanuel has grown from 150-300 in just two years.
Tony Cecil is the Senior Pastor. He was 29 when he started (he's now 34).
Clarity: Connecting, Growing, Serving
Movement:
Sundays are for connecting believers. The worship service brings people into connection with God and other Christians.
Midweek Bible studies are for growing believers.
After the Bible study group people are encouraged to go to a smaller group which are deisgned ot help people become 'serving' believers.
Alignment:
Everyone and every age specific group uses the same terminology. Connect. Grow. Serve. Simple.
Focus:
They don't do many special events and programs, choosing instead to focus their attention on moving people with various levels of commitment to deeper levels of commitment: 'we havea ctually grown spiritually and numerically by doing this' Tony said.
Tony's perceived benefits for being a simple church:
- Increased Morale. Telling people how they're going to make disciples rather then just urging them to 'do it' has really helped them.
- Urgency. People feel the need to move and grow in their Christian life.
- Spiritual Growth.
- Conversions. From 2 baptisms in 18months to 40 a year!
- Stewardship. By cutting things that were peripheral, they had more money to spend on what really mattered.
- Unity.
Story 2: Christ Fellowship Church, Miami
Clarity
Like many established long running churches they had vision, purpose, strategy ad mission statements. They stripped back to one statement that would feature their single process. The purpose at the church is also a process: connect to God, connect to others, minister to people, witness to the lost.
Movement
From worship service to small group to ministry area and to witnessing to the lost. Everything serves their clearly defined purpose.
This is good:
Since the lat step in the process is not a program, people are challenged to do three things a week at Christ Fellowship. Come to a worship service, be in a small group, and serve in a ministry. Simple. These expectations are stated clear to people in the church.
Alignment
The vision is the same in every dept. : connect to God, others, ministry and the lost.
Focus
Extra programs are what business consultants refer to as nonvalue-adding work.
Andy Stanley: complexity dilutes your potential for impact.
Clarity
From the foyer to the living room, to the kitchen. That's their process. They seek to move people into increasing levels of intimacy and relationship.
Movement
There is constant movement at NP. Even when people reach the kitchen it's not over. Small groups must start new small groups.
Alignment
Every ministry understands their process. It's so simple it can be drawn on a napkin. The process can be drawn with three circles. The first circle is the largest. It is the foyer environment for each ministry. The second circle is smaller it's the living room and the third circle is the smallest, it's the kitchen.
Focus
Everything is executed with excellence. The reason for this is because they have chosen to not do very much but to do what they do really well.
Simple Church: Part II Becoming a Simple Church
Chapter 5:
Why would you try to build spiritual lives/buildings without clear blue prints? We wouldn’t do that with physical buildings…
Define:
Vibrant churches are more than twice as likely than comparison churches to have a clearly defined process.
The starting point then is define your process. Without definition, people are uncertain about how the church is making disciples.
Where there is ambiguity there is often confusion.
How’s your how?
Church leaders must define more than the purpose (the what); they must also define the process (the how).
Thom discovered in some research that: evangelistically effective churches have leaders who are clear about the purpose of the church.
Michael Hammer (business consultant) believes that the process is more important than the purpose of a company. It is the process that makes everything work.
Three concepts to wrestle with as we develop a ministry process:
Determine what kind of disciple you wish to produce in your church.
Describe your purpose as a process.
Decide how each weekly program is part of the process.
2. Illustrate:
Illustrating your process is vital. If you want your church members to see your simple process clearly, you must illustrate it.
People are more likely to experience the reality of the process if they can recall it.
3. Measure:
The cliche is true: What gets evaluated, gets done.
If you do not measure the process people will think it does not matter. It will be just another statement on the wall of in the bulletin.
To learn to measure you must learn to think differently in two critical ways:
Learn to view your numbers horizontally and not vertically.
Most churches measure vertically. They look at any given program to see how many people are in it in order to decide how successful that program is. To look at the numbers horizontally means to look at each program alongside the previous and next set of programs for a persons development.
Measure attendance at each level/stage in your process.
4. Discuss:
Clarity is not realised without consistency. To be a simple church with a simple process the new idea can’t become just another banner on a wall or vision statement in a drawer. It mustn’t be forgotten or dropped. Everything must be discussed relating to it and around it.
Michael Hammer: The leaders of an organisation must be the pioneers and the overseers of an organisation’s process. Ownership begins with leaders.
Pace yourself. This process takes time. The discussion is ongoing. It takes time for understanding and ownership to develop.
Four ways to surface and resurface the simple process in discussions among the leadership:
View everything through the lens of your simple process.
Surface the process in meetings.
Test the leaders on it.
Brainstorm new ways to communicate it.
5. Increase Understanding:
Understanding does not come easily. It does not occur with a one-time magical act of communication.
Three ways to increase the level of process understanding in your church.
Articulate the process corporately.
‘Leaders you must talke about the process to the church as a whole. When you are tired of talking about it, people will just be in the first stages of understanding… you are just one voice in their lives.’
Max Depree said: Leadership is like third grade: it means repeating the significant things
2. Share the process interpersonally.
Preachers note: it means more to people and people pay greater attention when they can see your heart off the stage.
3. Live the process personally.
If you are asking people to move from a worship service to a small group, you must be in a small group. If you are asking people to progress to a place of service, you must serve in a tangible way… off the stage.
If you are asking people to connect to people relationally who do not know God, you must meet your neighbours and the person who cuts your hair.
Don’t be a spiritual travel agent, telling people to go where you’ve never been.
Please, no more travel agents
There is a major difference between a travel agent and a tour guide.
Think of the difference between someone who sends you brochures for white water rafting and the guide who gets in the most with you and takes you down the river. People need spiritual tour guides. They have had plenty of spiritual travel agents. Take people on a journey with you.
Chapter 6: Movement: Removing congestion
Congestion is very frustrating. No one likes rush-hour traffice. Many churches are congested.
People are stuck, not changed, unmoved.
God is transforming us all the time, moving us on, growing us, sanctifying us.
Our part in the process: Discover the place God wants you to be and place yourself there.
Strategic Programming
You must begin with the process and not the programs. If you begin with the programs you will have a tendency to build a process around the programs.
There should be one program for each phase of your process. The temptation is to attach all of your existing programs to one aspect of your process.
2. Sequential Programming
In the rafting illustration used the experience gradually builds toward the level 4 rapids, you don’t start at level 4.
Designate a clear entry point to your process.
Commitment should increase with each level of programming. Therefore attendance at the subsequent levels of programming will decrease as commitment increases.
3. Intentional Movement
Simple church leaders are designers. They design opportunities for people to be transformed. Complex church leaders are programmers. Programmers focus on one program at a time. Designers focus on the movement between the programs.
‘Without movement programs are an end in themselves. Without movement you are just running ministry programs.’
Create short-term steps. Saddleback’s 40-day focus at various points in the year is a helpful way of encouraging people to buy in because the commitment and expectation is low and for a set period of time.
Short-term challenges engage people.
Capitalise on relationships
‘People to not progress through the simple process because they hear it from the pulpit. People do not move through the process because they see a purpose statement on the wall. As helpful as these things can be, people move because someone else brings them through the process.’
Consider the ‘now what?’
As people move through the process always co sider what the ‘now what?’ questions might be that a person asks.
Connect people to groups
4. Clear Next Step
According to the research, offering a clear next step for new believers is essential. New believers are the greatest resource your church has to influence the community.
Next steps for new believers:
some use groups for new believers: either a new believers group or an existing group they fit into.
some use mentors. Two people meet for several weeks in an informal setting to go through some type of curriculum.
‘discipleship of new believers doesn’t just happen it must be intentional.
5. New members class
New members classes are extremely important: ‘The relationship between assimilation effectiveness and a new members class is amazing. Churches that require potential members to attend a new members class have a much higher retention rate than those who do not.’
At membership classes:
teach the simple process
ask for commitment to the process
Back to Jesus
Jesus approach to discipleship:
- the calling (Luke 5-6)
- the building (Luke 7-8)
- the sending (Luke 9)
Chapter 7: Alignment
U.S. gold medal winning hockey team. All of the players had to disregard the team’s they’d previously played for and instead recognise that they played for the United States. they had to all be aligned in their commitment that team and that time.
People are attracted to unity. Jesus wants unity, Paul encouraged the same. Unity is powerful. It is magnetic and its impact is great.
Alignment is the arrangement of all ministries and staff around the same simple process.
We need to be united around the same what (purpose) but also around the same how (process).
Herb Brooks’ hockey team: I’m not looking for the best hockey players, I’m looking for the right ones.
Recruit to the process
Key leaders must be aligned to the same philosophy of ministry. If not the church will move in a multiplicity of directions.
Offer Accountability
Without accountability people naturally drift away from the declared ministry process.
Avoid the two extremes of micro-management and neglect.
‘Micromanagement stifles creativity and hampers shared leadership. Neglect fosters complacency and leads to a fragmented team.’
The balance needed is good leadership. Leaders should outline the simple process but then allow ministry leaders to implement with freedom and creativity.
A tool for accountability:
Ministry Action Plans (MAPs) are based on Peter Drucker’s concept of Management by Objectives in the 1950s. Leaders and those they lead agree on measurable goals up front and their agreement becomes the basis for evaluation. Each person sets his or her own goals based on the direction of the organisation.
At the beginning of each year the senior leader sits down with his staff members individually to discuss their MAP. The MAP includes how that specific ministry reflects the vision and process of the church, how the programs are designed to move people through the process, the organisational structure of the ministry and a present evaluation of the ministry.
Then from these considerations each staff member sets five to seven measurable goals for the new ministry year. They also outline how these goals will be achieved.
Throughout the year the status and progress of the goals is evaluated.
Each staff member then presents his goals to the entire staff. They also pray for the individual for his or her goals for the year.
On unity: In reality it isn’t normally differences in theology or the Bible that splits churches, it is in the realm of ministry approach and philosophy.
Remind people of the process:
People need to be reminded more than instructed
Connect every decision in your church to the direction of your church.
‘At your church, all of the important details such as hiring, budgeting, facility changes, and building projects must be connected to the process God has given your church.
Management expert Edward Deming coined the term: MBWA ‘Management By Walking Around’
On new ministries: It is vital you make sure new ministries fit into the simple process before they begin, Afterwards it is too late.
Chapter 8: Saying Not to Almost Everything
Like McDonalds and other fast food chains churches keep expanding their menus to keep up with the expanding spiritual appetites of the people in them.
Focus and being single-minded is advocated in the Bible by the references to pursue God and God alone…
To get focused…
eliminate
‘Going Google’ however is hard .Other search engines can’t do it, they can’t get simpler. Too many companies/people are share holders and personally invested in being on their home page that Yahoo or MSN or… simply can’t get simpler on their homepage. That is, according to Marissa Mayer, the person in charge of Google’s homepage.
Be a wise steward of people’s time
Be a wise steward of people’s money
2. Limit Adding
Travis Bradshaw at the University of Florida thought that the more services a church offered the more the church would grow. After he tested his hypothesis he realised he was wrong. His research proved the opposite. Less, is more.
Less programs means you can make more impact.
Add more options, not more programs.
3. Reduce Special Events
Michael Jordan’s focus! He once asked to borrow a jacket from a friend (Fred Whitfield) who had in his wardrobe a mixture of Nike & Puma clothes. Jordan took all of the Puma clothes out of the wardrobe, laid them on the floor, grabbed a knife from the kitchen and then proceeded to cut up all of the Puma clothes, literally butcher them to shreds. He then said to his friend ‘don’t ever let me see you in anything other than Nike. You can’t ride the fence.’
4. Easily Communicated
Communication is key. If key leaders do not grasp the process in the midst of change, division is certain. As programs are eliminated and special events reduced, you must point people to the simple process. You must communicate.
5. Simple to Understand
Choose simple language. Any word that has to be parsed or explained should not be used to describe your process.
Be Brief.
‘The amount of information people are confronted with today is overwhelming. And it is increasing. It has been estimated that the world produced five exabytes of information in 2002. That is the same amount of information produced from the beginning of time through the year 2000.’ — Linda Tischler ‘Google’s Secret Weapon.’
Focus & Greatness
Proctor & Gamble. From 1996-98 they reduced their products by 20% by selling or ‘burying’ them. Yet doing so didn’t just reduce costs it also bolstered sales. Market share increased by five points. Reducing clutter produced big results.
Chapter 9: Becoming Simple
On impacting generations:
‘In Super-Size Me Morgan Spurlock is seeking to prove how effectively McDonalds impacts upcoming generations. So, he meets with schoolchildren and shows them pictures of famous people. Most of the children recognise a depiction of George Washington. All recognise a depiction of Ronald McDonald. None of them recognise a common depiction of Jesus Christ.’
Change is hard
90% of heart transplant patients do not change their lifestyle. People find change hard even in a ‘change or die’ situation like that one.
Leadership expert Tom Peters once commented: It is easier to kill an organisation than it is to change it.
Experts disagree on how to implement change: all at once, or bit by bit?
Complexity is often synonymous with mediocrity.
Steps to change:
Design a simple process (clarity)
Place your key programs along the process (movement)
Unite all ministries around the process (alignment)
Begin to eliminate things outside the process (focus)
Post-Script
Five years on from the book’s first print 6 things they’ve observed.
Churches drift. Inevitably vision drifts and churches drift toward complexity. Churches drift off mission.
Stat: multi-tasking means your focus on any given task drops by an average of 10 IQ points. Compare this to smoking weed. Smoking weed lowers your IQ by 4 points. Smoking weed is better for your attention span than multi-tasking.
Process is a big mind-shift
There is a good section where the authors explain that they are not trying to create another model for churches. The first chapter begins with the words ‘this is not a church model’. They intentionally don’t address issues that a book presenting a church model would do.
‘The proclivity of leaders to look for another church model is a sign of the church’s shallowness and not its maturity.’
The original title of the book was going to be: Process-Centered Ministry since the key idea of the book is about the importance of process.
They also make the point that out of Wesley & Whitfield, it was Wesley who left the bigger legacy because he was more concerned with process than Whitfield. He administrated the move of God.
Big idea of the book:
View discipleship as the whole process
Be careful not to over-program early in your discipleship process
Mission must be deeply embedded in your process:
We are concerned that some church processes end with the church. In other words, the end result of some discipleship processes in the church is the church itself. We believe that mission must be deeply embedded in a discipleship process that is truly reflective of the type of disciple Jesus makes. If your church discipleship process sounds like, ‘Come to our church, get connected and help us do church better.’ you need to repent of too shallow a vision for discipleship.
Live the Vision: Personally as leaders.
John Kotter of Harvard Business School wrote: Behaviour from important people in the organisation that is contrary to the vision overwhelms all other forms of communication.
Quote: In other words if the leaders do not live what they are asking people to live, time was wasted on the new logo, money was squandered on the new banner, and the statement in the bulletin is worthless.
On Multi-site:
When a pastor asks if his church should consider launching another campus, there are two essential questions that must be answered. 1) is your church healthy? 2) Is your church reproducible?
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