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Productivity, the Gospel, and the City

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Last week I blogged about the upcoming conference, The Gospel and Our Cities. I’m excited for it because I love the three things it is about: the gospel, cities, and gospel movements.

But since the focus of this blog is productivity, we need to ask this question: What do cities, the gospel, and productivity have to do with one another?

Everything.

In fact, if we don’t connect cities to our understanding of how the gospel advances, we will be much less productive in our work and ministry.

Productive Christians Care About All of Society
First, we need to understand the in the Christian view, productivity is not just about our own effectiveness and peace of mind. Rather, a gospel-minded Christian also cares about their community and all of society. Our aim is not just (or chiefly) to make ourselves better off; our aim is to see society better off because the greatest command is to love God with your whole heart and your neighbor as yourself. Further, our concern for the surrounding culture is holistic: we want to both serve the common good and see the gospel advance.

How are we doing with this?

Christians Are Not Being Productive Enough in Serving the Culture
We might think we are doing well. But in To Change the World, James Davidson Hunter argues that, as Christians, our impact is far less than our numbers would lead one to expect. There are more than 50 million evangelicals in the United States, and more than 86% of Americans have some type of faith commitment. Yet, as he points out, “our culture — business culture, law and government, the academic world, popular entertainment — is intensely materialistic and secular.”

In other words, in spite of our numbers, we are not being “productive” in serving and renewing the culture. Our impact is far less than you would expect from our numbers.

Why is that?

To Change This, We Need to Reach Cities
It’s because, contrary to popular belief, culture is not simply the result of the number of people who hold to a certain view. Rather, culture is created in networks and institutions. Hence, you cannot change culture if you are absent from those networks and institutions. Since evangelicals are largely absent from the centers where culture is created, our impact on the culture has been small — even though our numbers are very large.

This is one reason it is crucial that more Christians move into cities and work in cities. For, as Tim Keller argues in “To Transform a City”:

People who live in large urban cultural centers, occupying jobs in the arts, business, academia, publishing, the helping professions, and the media, tend to have a disproportionate impact on how things are done in our culture.

Hence, if as Christians we are going to have a greater impact on the culture, we need to have an impact on the city.

Our Aim is Holistic Impact
What kind of impact do we want to have on the city? We don’t believe in imposing a Christian worldview. Rather, as mentioned earlier, our aim is twofold: to further the common good and advance the gospel. When it comes to the common good, the aim is to make things better socially and economically, as well as in the spiritual dimension. To bring justice, truth, beauty, respect, and generosity more to bear in all aspects of life. Leading from respect and service rather than command and control; making more usability products; and treating employees with generosity and trust are all examples of things that further the common good.

When it comes to the advance of the gospel, this means more people coming to faith in Christ and following him fully. This matters in itself — it is not simply for the goal of culture change. But it will have an impact on the culture when people come to faith and see that faith relates to all of life, and is not just individual pietism.

So the impact we seek to have is more people coming to faith and, in turn, living out their faith holistically in all of life — including in the institutions where culture is shaped and formed. Further, this cannot happen to a large extent across the nation if we ignore cities. For cities is where most of the people are, and cities are where most culture is forged.

It Takes a Gospel Movement to Reach a City
How can we do better at reaching cities with the gospel? In his article “What is God’s Global Urban Mission?” (get it by subscribing to the City to City conference mailing list at the conference website), Tim Keller notes:

What it takes to reach a city is a city-wide gospel movement, which means the number of Christians across the city is growing faster than the population, and therefore, a growing percentage of the people of that city are connecting with gospel-centered churches and are finding faith in Jesus Christ. That will eventually have an impact on the whole life of the city. That’s what I mean by a city-wide gospel movement.

In other words, it takes more than just one church or a few committed Christians to reach a city. It takes a movement of Christians, including churches of all kinds of denominations and styles.

How Do You Build a Gospel Movement in Your City?
That’s where I think we need to do a lot more work as Christians.

A great place to start is by attending Redeemer City to City’s upcoming fall conference, The Gospel and Our Cities. It is in Chicago this October 18-20. By attending, you will not only learn about the city, creating gospel movements, urban challenges, faith and work, and more; you will also have a chance to meet others in your city and develop the networks necessary for a gospel movement to start.

The way we are serving and renewing the culture right now is not very productive, because it de-emphasizes the place of the city and gospel movements. It’s time to learn the more productive approach of reaching cities through gospel movements. 

That’s how a concern for productivity and the gospel leads to a concern for cities and gospel movements.

Register at the website, and use the code “chicago” to save an extra $25 before June 4!

This is a sponsored post for The Gospel and Our Cities: Chicago 2018

Come to Together LA This February

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I’m very excited about the TogetherLA conference, which will be this February 26 – 28 with Tim Keller as the keynote speaker.

Tim Keller has helped call our attention back to the importance of cities in the mission of God. But what does it look like to actually love your city (in this case, LA)? That’s what this conference is about.

The aim of the conference is thus to “engage pastors, ministry leaders, non profit leaders, lay leaders, and marketplace leaders on what it means to love Los Angeles.”

I love the fact that it is for people in all areas of life, not just ministry. Christians in every type of vocation are called to engage and love their city for the glory of the gospel. TogetherLA is thus seeking to bring together Christians from every sector of society to learn about what this means for whatever vocation they have.

It is also bringing together an amazing and diverse range of speakers. Here is part of the description from the website:

At this event we will hear what churches and church planters are doing.  We will learn about partnerships in the city and ways to partner together.  We will discuss how social problems impact LA.  We will learn how LA is integral in shaping culture and why culture is important.  We will hear from leaders in the entertainment, arts, political, and business community.  And we will discover how the men and women of LA, Asians, Caucasians, Hispanics and African Americans are loving and engaging their city for the Gospel.

The conference will be divided into four parts:

Thursday:  The Church (church planting, church partnership, church renewal, and so forth)
Friday morning: Social problems in Los Angeles
Friday afternoon and evening: Culture and Los Angeles
Saturday: Faith and work

This conference will be an incredible opportunity for equipping and encouragement for those who are in LA. And even beyond that, it is in itself a model for how all of us, in any city, should be seeking to ask and answer the question of how we can love our cities most effectively.

You can learn more about the conference at the website, and register online.

Here is the trailer for the conference:

And here is also a brief video of Tim Keller talking about why you should come to TogetherLA:

How People Change: A Conference January 23-25 in Jacksonville, FL

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This January 23 – 25, Paramount Church in Jacksonville, FL is having a conference on “How People Change” with Tim Lane.

My friend John Fonville is the preaching pastor at Paramount, which is hosting the conference. John is one of my favorite preachers in the whole world because of his relentless gospel-centeredness.

I am excited about the work that their church is doing (you can check out their website to learn more). This conference would be a great opportunity to both experience the great work they are doing there and learn about how to create lasting change in your life.

Here is the description of the conference:

What does it take for lasting change to take root in your life? If you’ve ever tried, failed, and wondered why, you need to come to How People Change. Tim Lane will show us the biblical pattern for change in a clear, practical way you can apply to the challenges of daily life. But change involves more than a biblical formula: you will see how God is at work to make you the person you were created to be. That powerful, loving, redemptive relationship is at the heart of all positive change you experience.

The conference includes five sessions with Dr. Lane: two sessions Friday night, and three on Saturday morning. Each session is followed by Q&A time where you will be able to ask Dr. Lane your questions.

Learn more and register at the website.

Message Notes from Day One of the Global Leadership Summit

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The Willow Creek Association Blog has a great summary of each of the messages yesterday from the Global Leadership Summit. Here they are:

They will continue posting notes from the messages throughout today as well, so check their blog periodically to stay up to date.

The Global Leadership Summit: Beginning Now

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The Global Leadership Summit is today and tomorrow. For those who aren’t familiar with it, here’s a brief description:

The Global Leadership Summit is a two-day, world-class leadership event experienced by more than 170,000 leaders around the world, representing 14,000 churches. This event is crafted to infuse vision, skill development and inspiration for the sake of the local church.

Speakers this year include Susan Cain (author of the great book The Power of Introverts), Jeffrey Immelt (president and CEO of GE), Patrick Lencioni, Carly Fiorina, Louie Giglio, Bill Hybels, and more.

This is the Summit’s twentieth year — a great milestone. I’m excited for the Summit every year because Bill Hybels and the Summit leaders actually understand leadership. Their thinking is in line with the best contemporary research and studies on leadership, and the Scriptures. This is, unfortunately, sometimes a rare thing in the church today.

So, it would be worth your while to follow along with the Summit online these next two days. Here are three chief ways to follow the Summit:

  1. The Summit Facebook page
  2. The WCA blog
  3. WCA on Twitter

Through those avenues you’ll also find links throughout the day to posts by some of the blogging team for the Summit, which are always a highlight.

I’ll also try to post a few thoughts or quotes if I can.

 

All My Posts from Catalyst Atlanta in One Spot

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This post is part of the series Catalyst 2013.

Here are the links to all my posts from blogging Catalyst Atlanta this year:

Day One

Day Two

Andy Stanley's Closing Message at Catalyst: Leadership 101

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This is part of the series Catalyst 2013. 

Andy Stanley’s closing message at Catalyst was fantastic. He went to the core, the foundation, that you need to understand in order to lead. These are the absolute basics, but they are almost never talked about. If you were at Catalyst and had to catch an early flight, I would especially suggest reviewing these notes so you can catch what you missed.

Here are my notes:

“Level 5 leaders have the humility to aspire to be the dumbest person in the room” — Jim Collins.

Today, it’s leadership 101. Taking it down to the most fundamental level. I had to do this to survive.

Here’s where this came from. When we started North Point, there was so much to do, and I felt early on it was getting too big too fast for me to keep up with. I have to reduce things to an irreducible minimum to keep my eye on the ball. So I wrote down off the top of my head what I’m about to give you to keep me centered. This is at the core and epicenter of my personal leadership.

So, when it starts getting confusing, and there are too many people demanding too many things, and you aren’t even sure what to focus on, this is what I retreat to. And perhaps we should all consider retreating to this. This is at the essence of where leadership begins.

Always have an answer to these 3 questions. If you can answer these, you’ll be OK.

  1. What are we doing?
  2. Why are we doing it?
  3. Where do I fit in?

Everybody in your department, student ministry, staff, everyone in whatever your organization is, ought to be able to answer these questions.

The very next thing you should do in regard to your leadership is wrestle these questions to the ground.

1. What are we doing?

This is a participle. “We are creating” or “We are building” or “we are leading.”

About 24 years ago, Stephen Covey wrote The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People. I got it right when it came out and couldn’t put it down. And there was a whole section on mission statements. Covey talks in there about the Ritz-Carlton, where mission statements had been embraced from the top of the organization all the way down. Part of their success was that everyone, even the cooks, had a mission statement. And I thought “can a maid really have a mission statement?” It turns out that the owner of the company was a friend of my dad, so I called him. I said “seriously?” Not disrespectfully, but I was wondering. We couldn’t even get our church to have a mission statement.

He said: “the only way to understand this is to go through our training for maids, cooks, and bellmen.” So we went and sat in on that training.

I cannot over emphasize the power of a statement that answers the question “what are we doing?”

In the training, the trainer brought everyone to a single statement: “we are ladies and gentlemen serving ladies and gentlemen.” It was empowering and dignifying to the staff. They saw they were people worthy of respect–just as much as the wealthy people they were serving.

“That’s when I became a raving fan of the importance of mission statements.”

Most decisions are pre-decided when the mission is crystal clear.

It is critical to push decisions down in the organization. The better leader you are, the fewer decisions you are making. And people are empowered to make good decisions by a clear and compelling mission statement.

You’ll never be great at what you’re doing if you don’t know what it’s for. There are no great organizations that aren’t clear on what they are doing.

Without a mission statement, you’ll have a hard time convincing others to join you. For they won’t know what you are doing.

Leaders love to work for people who have given them crystal clear marching orders.

I am always hearing from sharp leaders who are frustrated because their organizations don’t make it clear what the mission is.

There is something that rises up in a leader when it’s clear what we have come togehter to do. And there are few things more discouaring to a leader than to be given a responsibility that isn’t clear and tied in to a mission.

The reason you don’t have a simple and sticky mission statement is becuase you haven’t taken the time to create one.

Some people say “the local church is too complex and doing too many things; you can’t boil it down to one thing.” Oh yes you can. You just haven’t thought about it yet.

I’ll tell you what will happen when you do this: you will be perceived as the leader, you may make some waves, you may get fired, and we’ll hire you.

In 1997 Jobs comes back to Apple, and he says “Here’s what we are going to do: we are going to create easy to use computers. That’s what we do at Apple.” Boom.

For us, we decided we are going to create a church that unchurched people love to attend. And some years went by, and we said “let’s go create some churches unchurched people love to attend.”

My question for you is: what are you doing? One of the most healthy exercises is; your church probably already has a mission statement, and it’s way too long. If I were to ask you your mission, if you have to look away to remember it in order to say it, it’s too long. It needs to be short and memorable.

What’s the point of change if you don’t know what you’re trying to do? Change means you were going this direction and now you are going that direction. If you don’t know what that direction is, you can’t change. You aren’t changing.

What have you come together to do? If you can’t answer that question, you will never bring about meaningful, healthy change.

Wherever you have influence in the organization, start the conversation. “What are we doing?”

2. Why are we doing it?

The answer to this question is where you find your inspiration. This answers the qeustion “what’s at stake? What goes away if we go away? What problem goes unsolved? What question goes unanswered? What service goes unprovided?” When you drill down on why, you will find the emotion rising and rising.

Don’t be afraid to reach back to God’s personal call on your life to answer the question why.

Here’s why: your personal call is where you found the courage to take the first step. You have to stay close to that, because ministry requires courage. And your personal is where you are going to find your passion.

What was it that first got you into the ministry? Behind your call was a why. Go back to that. You need to tap into this even in your division and department and organization. This is not selfish, because you are a leader, and when leaders tap into their passion, they attract people with a similar passion. And before you know it, you have a movement.

That’s how great things are accomplished.

Some of you right now have a calling that is so deep, and so rich, but you’ve allowed it to become vanilla because you are in a place that has squashed it. Get out of there!!! You will wake up one day and say “what happened to me?”

My dad would say: “Don’t you ever, ever let money, don’t you ever let money stand in the way of what God has called you to do.”

Maybe just one person in this room, God wants to do something extraordinary through you; if you stay where you are too long, and let organizational structures constrain you and the fear of how you’ll pay your bills keep you back, not only will you miss out, thousands of people will miss out.

Step into the gap. It’s not about you are your ego, it’s that you can’t imagine devoting your life to anything else.

Why has the power to get you through the tough times. When you retreat back to why, you will find your energy.

3. Where do I fit in?

Ask yourself, “what is my unique contribution. What is my core responsibility?” If you could only do what you could do, you need to identify it and schedule accordingly.

Your organization will be at its best when you are doing what you do best. Your entire organization.

To drive this deeper, create a one sentence job description for each of your direct reports. This is time consuming, but it’s almost magic. No matter how big the job is, you can boil it down to one sentence. And when you do, it’s gold.

My one sentence: “Inspire our staff and congregations to remain fully engaged in our mission and strategy.”

Our CFO: “Create, implement, and monitor systems that ensure our organization remains fiscally secure.”

My administrative assistant: “To keep Andy’s path clear of nonessential tasks and decisions so that he can do what only he can do.”

Leadership team: “Create a lcoal church culture that inspires, empowers, and equips our staff and congregation to engage in our mission, strategy, and vision.”

Can you imagine what would happen in your department or division or church if even just 75% of the leaders could answer these 3 questions?