Guiding principles that impact ministry decisions

In a prior post I gave an example of guiding principles that can actually guide ministry decision making.

I liken guiding principles to the channel markers that one encounters when piloting a boat in inland waterways. The green and red buoys that mark the channel are there for one reason: to keep you and your boat safe. They tell you that as long as you stay inside the channel, you are in safe water. If you choose to leave the marked channel, you are in unsafe water. It amazes me how many would-be pilots think they don't have to stay inside the channel and find out the hard way that shallow water or shoals are not good for their boat's hull!

In the same way, an organization's guiding principles are designed to delineate the safe water or channel that everyone is to say within, If you review ReachGlobal's guiding principles from a prior post you will see that they delineate how we do what we do and provide concrete guidance to all personnel as to how they must approach their work. They are prescriptive in nature and measurable. Supervisors can dialogue with personnel on how well they are living by the guiding principles and hold them accountable if they choose to ignore them.

Many organizations have values that are so general they provide no real guidance and are ignored. I asked the president of an organization recently what the guiding principles or values of his organization were and he could not even remember them. Obviously they were of no help to him or others.

Guiding principles serve several key purposes that are central to a healthy organization. First, they allow you to define for all personnel the core commitments that you want everyone to live by. For instance, in our organization, 'team' is a non-negotiable commitment and our guiding principle makes it clear that all personnel work in a team context. It is not an option and the guiding principle makes it clear.

Second, taken as a whole, guiding principles allow you to craft the kind of ministry culture that you want to permeate your organization. When all of your personnel are living by the same set of guiding principles, you start to get significant alignment.

Third, they keep your organization in 'safe waters' by clarifying those things that are non-negotiables. By doing so, you prevent the unintended consequences of traveling outside the channel markers into unsafe waters.

To get to clarity on guiding principles you can ask yourself these questions:
-What are the non-negotiables that apply to our whole organization?
-Around what things must we have absolute alignment by everyone on the team?
-What are the principles, that if followed, will keep our organization in safe waters?
-If we had to describe the most important principles of how we do what we do, what would they be?

To be meaningful, guiding principles are not merely a phrase or word but should include and explanation of what the word or phrase means in your organization. That way they can truly guide behavior.

A well-chosen set of guiding principles also gives your organization permission to choose certain courses of action. One of our guiding principles is that "We measure results." That sends a strong message to our personnel that we are committed to seeing measurable results in our ministry and that everyone in the organization must be productive vs. busy. What we measure is important, but the ability to measure is ensured by the guiding principle.

Well-written guiding principles are not only the channel markers for the ministry but they empower personnel to make decisions that are consistent with the principles. They provide both empowerment and accountability.

A journey from ambiguity to clarity

I have worked for the EFCA for 18 years in the national office. It is a great organization. However, for the first eight or so years that I worked there we had a very nebulous idea of what our mission was. We knew it revolved around churches and we were focused on the number of churches we had. Apart from running good programs and focusing on church planting, however, it was very hard to define what we were apart from being one of those 'denominational offices.'

About ten years ago, a big transition took place for us as we worked through a process to define a new mission statement: "The EFCA exists to glorify God by multiplying healthy churches among all people." All of a sudden we had meaningful targets that were not simply about numbers. We are about multiplication of churches, the health of churches, becoming a movement of 'all people' in the United States, and reaching 'all people' globally. These four integrated foci began to drive everything we did.

At the same time, we determined that we had to be a service organization for the churches in our movements. We existed for them and not them for us! In other words, by helping our churches become all that they could be (the local church is God's chosen instrument to reach the world) we fulfilled our mandate. Our surveys show that about 98% of our pastors know and believe in the mission of the EFCA today. And, because our churches voluntarily give financial contributions to the national office, they vote on our effectiveness with their pocketbooks. In the past 10 years, the financial support of the EFCA national office has gone up dramatically. All this is the result of moving from ambiguity to clarity and then living out that clarity.

Moving from ambiguity to clarity is one of the most powerful things a ministry organization can do to increase its missional effectiveness.

The common dysfunction of bureaucracy

Bureaucracy is a first cousin to control because it is perpetuated through unnecessary 'toll booths' that must be stopped at and tolls paid before one can move forward. Bureaucracy is not usually created to control (although sometimes it is) but rather to ensure that right decisions are made and right directions pursued.

Boards that require all items to come to them before decisions are made, or leaders who demand the same from team members, or layers of organizational leadership and oversight often create unhealthy and unnecessary forms of bureaucracy.

I define burearcracy as unnecessary toll booths that need to be negotiated by ministry personnel in order to move forward. Again, leaders have a significant role in whether or not bureaucracy is part of the culture.

Bureaucracy matters because it has a negative impact on the ability of the ministry to make timely ministry decisions, on the level of empowerment leaders and staff feel and therefore on their satisfaction level in their ministry. Where Return on Mission is affected by bureaucracy, it hurts the organization.

Considering your organization's culture

Every organization has a unique culture that defines it. If we have been in an organization for awhile, we don't even think about its culture - we have become part of it. However, it is worth thinking about because the culture will have an impact - positive or negative - on our ministry. Culture is never neutral. Leaders, especially, must be acutely aware of the culture of their organization.

Organizational culture is the unspoken ethos of a group of people including its beliefs, social behaviors, practices, attitudes, values, and traditions - all of which contribute to a collective way of thinking and practice.

Culture matters. The best ministry people will not stay long term in cultures that are unhealthy because they value as an asset the time they have to make a difference for the Kingdom, and they will not invest their lives where the culture does not support the desired returns.

Organizational culture has a direct impact not only on people, but also the ability of the organization to flex and meet rapidly changing ministry opportunities and environments. Mission agencies that have a traditional, change-averse culture and are still planting churches one-by-one using Western missionaries as their primary church planting method are missing the mark. They could be seeing multiples of church planting results if they concentrated on developing, empowering and releasing healthy national workers. Their culture is preventing them from being effective in their work.

Church cultures that are controlling and do not empower and release good leaders and team members are compromising themselves missionally. Culture matters.

Take 15 minutes and jot down one-word descriptors of the organization you are a part of - taking into account its beliefs, social behaviors, practices, attitudes, values and traditions. Then write a one-sentence description of its culture. Is it the culture you desire to have?

Maximum Clarity on your central ministry focus

The central ministry focus of an organization is the one thing that is must do day in and day out - the most important thing it does to help it fulfill its mission. The central ministry focus is the organization's most critical activity or perspective that has the greatest impact on missional success of the organization.

The question we must ask is this: Given our particular mission, what is the most important thing we need to focus on with a laser-like intensity to maximize our opportunity to fulfill our mission.

How one answers that question has huge implications for the effectiveness of one's ministry. The answer to this question ought to help your organization have the greatest impact on its mission and maximize its ministry opportunity.

The central ministry focus is the one thing that everyone in the organization must be committed to doing all the time. For many ministries - including churches - this will be about equipping and releasing people into ministry. You need to to ask, "What is the one thing that all of us must be committed to doing and that, if done consistently and well, will ensure that we maximize our ministry opportunity.

For the ministry I lead, the central ministry focus is to develop, empower and release healthy mission personnel and healthy national leaders. The more we focus on this the more effective we will be.

I believe that the central ministry focus for the church is found in Ephesians 4:12-13 where Paul says that the job of church leaders is "to prepare God's people for works of service, so that the body of Christ may be built up, until we all reach unity in the faith and in the knowledge of the Son of God and become mature, attaining to the whole measure of the fullness of Christ."

The key to our ministry, according to Paul, is the developing, empowering and releasing of the whole body for ministry rather than simply doing the ministry ourselves. Our ministry in large part is to release others into ministry themselves.

If every congregation lived out Ephesians 4:12 in developing, empowering and releasing people into active, life0-changing ministry in accordance with how God had gifted them the local church would be the revolutionary force God designed it to be. There are churches that live this out, but way too few.

The Power of Clarity on Guiding Principles

Values or guiding principles answer the question "how will we do what we exist to do?" They should be clarified and written in a way that actually provides significant guidance in how we do what we do. That is why I prefer to call them guiding principles to drive home the fact that these values were actually designed to guide everyone in the organization in how they make decisions and carry out ministry.

In our organization we defined 10 clear values or guiding principles that every leader and all personnel are expected to live by. As you read the following guiding principles, note that they actually describe how personnel will approach ministry. They are specific enough that it is possible for any leader to determine whether his or her reports are ministering in alignment with them.

Reach Global Guiding Principles

We are word based and spirit empowered
As a Word-based organization we are committed to ministry that aligns with God's Word. Spirit empowerment comes from intimacy with Christ, a deep commitment prayer, watching where God is at work and always listening to His voice.

We are team lead and team driven
Believing that there is strength in teams and in the voice of multiple leaders, we are committed to a paradigm of team leadership under a gifted leader at each level of ReachGlobal ministry. We believe that ministry personnel are more productive when they are deployed in ministry teams and in community with one another. We will build strong teams with healthy relationships wherever we deploy personnel.

We are partnership driven
We are committed to carrying out the Great Commission in partnership with local churches in the United States, national partners and other evangelical organizations. We recognize the Biblical value of healthy cooperation with national partners. This includes the avoidance of paternalistic attitudes and a willingness to appropriately share in ministry decisions that affect both parties. Healthy partnerships included mutual cooperation without either party losing its identity or ability to work toward its intended objectives.

We empower personnel
We are a permission-granting - within agreed-upon parameters rather than permission-withholding. We help personnel discover their strengths and deploy them in ways that maximize their gifting and abilities.

We practice entrepreneurial thinking
In global ministry, one size does not fit all and, while our mission remains constant, the strategies to complete the mission vary and change. We always look for 'best practices' and better ways to fulfill our mission.

We measure effectiveness
ReachGlobal is committed to being accountable to EFCA churches and supporters for tangible ministry results. A commitment to effective ministry requires the accountability of measurements.

We do multiplication rather than addition
ReachGlobal is committed to providing ongoing training and equipping of personnel in life and ministry skills. ReachGlobal will only be as good as the leaders who provide leadership at each level. We will find, equip and deploy those who have the gifts of leadership and who have proven leadership effectiveness.

We resource for maximum ministry
A well-resourced organization is more likely to be an effective organization. It is the responsibility of all ReachGlobal personnel to participate in the three-fold resourcing of personnel, strategy and finances.

We are holistic and integrated in approach
Historically, missions have emphasized the Biblical mandate of ministering to the whole person in the name of Christ. This includes ministries of compassion, education and other ministry platforms in addition to those of evangelism and church planting. A distinctive of ReachGlobal is that all ministries are integrated into the goal of multiplying healthy churches.

Notice that each guiding principle is followed by a clear definition of its meaning. These definitions have been carefully crafted and edited over time to clarify as well as we can what we mean by the guiding principle and how it actually impacts how we do ministry.

Both the headings and the explanation of each principle are designed to provide maximum clarity. Today there is no question in the minds of our personnel that we are committed to these guiding principles and that all of us are expected to live by them. They inform and influence everything we do.

The Power of Clarity around Mission

For a congregation or ministry organization to reach its God-given potential, leaders must have absolute mission clarity and an unwavering commitment to that mission. Mission clarity allows leaders to lead in a specific direction that fulfills God's mandate for their ministry.

Mission answers the question, "Why do we exist?" The ability to clearly answer this question and help our organizations and churches understand the answer is key to good leadership and healthy, effective ministries.

Vagueness on mission leads to a diffusion of ministry effectiveness and competing, sometimes contradictory, directional emphasis. The greater clarity we have for why we exist, the more focused our ministry energies can be. Mission does not answer questions of specific strategies you are going to pursue. Rather, it answers an important directional question and, if answered well, allows leaders to move whole congregations in a common direction.

In our organization, the mission is clear: "We exist to glorify God by multiplying healthy churches among all people."

This answers the question for us, "why do we exist?" We want to glorify God. We will glorify God through church multiplication. But the multiplication we are after is not general, it is specifically healthy churches. And we have a commitment to do that multiplication among all people.

This is what we know. Our goal is to glorify God. We will be successful only when we see true multiplication take place and where that multiplication is healthy and includes not just some kinds of people but all kinds of people.

Most organizations have a mission statement. The problem is that most of their constituents either don't know what it is or what it means. Mission is not something to be written in our materials but lived in our lives. In our organization we insist that all initiatives undertaken can be tied clearly back to our mission. If they cannot be, they are probably not things we should be doing.

A key ongoing question for leaders ought to be "how well are we doing in living the mission?" In some organizations the mission will need to be clarified so it is possible to answer the question. Your mission is the main thing and the main thing is always to keep the main thing the main thing.