What does it mean to be Word based and Spirit empowered?

Many ministries I work with would say that they are "Word based and Spirit empowered" but have not defined what that means. It was an instructive exercise for our organization to go through the process of defining what we meant. Here is our definition. As you will notice it goes far beyond simply knowing Scripture.

Word Based & Spirit Empowered

1.    Believing – We are confidently believing that the Bible is the inspired Word of God, trustworthy and without error in the original writings, and the divine and final authority for Christian faith and practice; and that the ministry of the person of God the Holy Spirit is to convict, regenerate, baptize, indwell, fill, anoint, empower, sanctify, guide, instruct, comfort and distribute spiritual gifts to the believer for godly living and service.

2.    Listening – We are growing in our confidence, awareness and sensitivity to the Holy Spirit by intentionally taking time to wait upon God and listening to Him as individuals and teams.

3.    Engaging – We are growing in our regular practice of engaging the Scriptures personally, i.e. reading, studying and meditating upon them as a source of spiritual food, guidance and communion with our Creator; and engaging the Scriptures corporately, i.e. receiving within a grace filled community of the Body of Christ, truthful, challenging & helpful teaching and preaching to understand God’s truth and apply it to our lives.

4.    Seeking – We are regularly seeking and asking for the filling and supernatural empowering of the indwelling Holy Spirit in our lives and ministries.  This empowering is expressed as the Holy Spirit sovereignly chooses to empower the gifts He's given us, orchestrate events, produce transformation, and enable us to do the “greater works than these” that Jesus said we would do.

5.    Obeying – We are growing in our obedience to the Scriptures, to the prompting of the Holy Spirit and to His will for our lives. We are learning to more quickly confess our sin, repent for our failure and return to the Father to ask for the Holy Spirit’s filling.

6.    Abiding – We are growing in our intimate relationship with our heavenly Abba. And we embrace “Intimacy Before Impact” i.e. the necessity of this spiritual intimacy with God and dependency upon Him before we can have “much fruit” in our lives and ministry.

7.    Praying – We are growing in another aspect of this abiding relationship with our God, the ongoing conversation with God which the Bible calls prayer.

8.    Worshiping – We are growing in our personal and corporate praise, thanksgiving and worship of our amazing God.

9.    Expecting – We are growing in our faith, expecting that our Sovereign and Almighty God, because of who He is, will do the extraordinary, the miraculous, both in and through us and our ministries.

10. Impacting – We are growing in our passion for the glory of God and the above elements, all resulting in transformation and the bearing of much lasting fruit.

The most important issue for each of us: God's agenda for our lives

It is an amazing thing that God has designed a role in this life just for us - a role that we are uniquely wired and gifted to fill. A role that contributes directly to what He is doing in our world as part of His meta plan to redeem His broken creatures. It is exhilarating to be at the center of His purposes for our lives and to maximize the opportunity He has given us. Our responsibility is to figure out how to maximize that opportunity He has graciously given.

Central to living out our destiny is a very simple concept: We need to follow God's agenda for our lives! Many people have agendas for us but discerning His agenda and sticking too it is one of the most critical decisions we could ever make. At my stage of life, I know what God has not called me to do and I am fairly clear on what He has called me to do. Thus saying no to the former and yes to the latter is one of my disciplines.

The ability to make those decisions means that we are willing to disappoint some who would tug us in different directions. Ultimately, however, we have an audience of One to whom we will answer for our life stewardship and He is the One who counts. Following Jesus has always been counter cultural and to others our decisions may not always make sense. 

Remember this: Our world has an agenda, our friends have an agenda, our family has an agenda, our church has an agenda and our work has an agenda. There are pieces of those agendas we must pay attention to and negotiate but ultimately the One agenda that truly matters is that of Jesus Christ and He has a definite agenda for our lives (Ephesians 2:10-11) that goes back to long before we were born as to how we would fit into His work and His plan and His meta story.

Perhaps the most important question we could ask Him on an ongoing basis is this: Jesus what is your agenda for me today? He might just surprise you with a response. 

Truthful disclosure in ministry settings

One of the hallmarks of Jesus was his commitment to truth. It was not a hard truth for it was almost always delivered with grace (Pharisees excepted on occasion) but it was truth. Falsehood is one of those things listed in the Proverbs as detested by God.

Yet, ministries are notorious for delivering half truths, non-truths and outright falsehoods when dealing with issues that are unpleasant. This breeds predictable and appropriate cynicism among those who know the full story and is at worst no different than the spin control we see all the time from governments and at best is disingenuous. 

I am not suggesting that in every situation we disclose all that we know or could disclose. That is neither necessary nor appropriate in many cases. I am arguing that what we communicate must be true and accurate and that if someone knew all the facts they would be satisfied that what we communicated was not misleading. It is a matter of integrity, of truth and of the character of God who is the father of truth as opposed to Satan who is the father of lies.

This applies to situations where we might be tempted to spiritualize as a method of spin. Here we blame God for the situation we find ourselves in rather than taking responsibility for our own actions. I remember a time when an organization I was a part of lost a great deal of money through poor decisions and the leader talked about God wanting us to become more dependent on Him. I suspect that God actually wanted better management practices and I didn't buy the line. 

When we choose not to tell the truth we are also communicating that God's people cannot handle the truth. The truth is that we learn how to handle difficult situations by wrestling with them, not by avoiding them. It may not be a pleasant conversation but it should never be an untrue conversation.

I have elsewhere shared some principles for those instances when we need to have difficult conversations with our staff or congregations. One of the things that should separate us from the rest of the world is that we are people who worship the God of truth whose character is true and therefore our words must also be true and righteous and straight. Falsehoods are lies and lies do not come from God. Make sure that your words are always truthful even if you are not sharing all the truth you know.

The power of truth in as an accelerator of growth

The willingness to look truth in the eyes is one of the keys to organizational health. Too often, leaders gloss over problems and issues in the organization they lead rather than facing them squarely, admitting that they exist and using that reality as an opportunity to grow, become better and rattle the comfort of the status quo. The very thing we are often afraid to admit - our organizational shortcomings become powerful tools for change when named.

From time to time I receive a call from a ministry or industry leader who says, "We have a problem,  would you be willing to help us figure it out, identify it and solve it." That immediately tells me that this organization has the courage to be truthful about their situation, allow a third party who has fresh eyes to look at it and use the information to improve. It takes courage to bring in an outside party who can name the issues and help frame the solutions. 

Often we gloss over issues and problems that we know are resident within our organization as if ignoring them will somehow help them go away. We gloss out of fear, because we are afraid of what we might actually find or because we are conflict avoidant. It is a mistake! It is a mistake because the very problems we seek to ignore could become our greatest accelerators of growth if we were willing to face them squarely, name them and focus on solving them. 

I live by a simple leadership premise (and it works personally as well). Truth about our situation can be one of the greatest accelerators of growth when we are willing to face reality and solve problems. Seen in that light, problems are an opportunity not a threat. Truth has power. Wishful thinking does not.

Ministry founders and their ability or inability to take the ministry they founded to a place of maturity

I have come to the conclusion that it is harder to bring a ministry to maturity than it is to found one. That does not mean that ministry start ups are easy - they are not. However, what they require in the beginning -  moxie, energy, vision and enthusiasm is different than what is required to bring them to maturity - discipline, empowering others, letting go of control and being a steward of a vision and mission rather than of a ministry.

In fact, the very skills needed to start a ministry may keep it from maturing into an enduring ministry. After all, ministries start with the vision of a person but enduring ministries are driven by a team who have a common vision. Ministries start by the seat of the pants while enduring ministries exist with disciplined excellence. Ministries start with a fair amount of control by the founder while enduring ministries are not dependent on the founder but where authority and empowerment is given away to qualified individuals. Ministries start with a fair amount of chaos (you do what you have to do) while enduring ministries endure because of stability.

In my experience no more than 50% of ministry founders are able or willing to transition from the start up stage to an enduring ministry stage. And that statistic may well be generous. Why is this?

First, it means giving up control of something we have birthed. For anyone that is hard. For some, it is impossible. It is "their" ministry and that is how they see it. Yet enduring ministries belong to a group with a common vision not an individual. Unwillingness to give up control allows the ministry to go only as far as the founder can take it with his/her span of control.

Second, it means delegating responsibility and authority. An unwillingness to give up control makes this hard for some and impossible for others.

Third, it means allowing the ministry to develop through a shared vision of others not the singular vision of the founder. This inevitably means that the founder is no longer the singular voice and this is how it should be. Only a shared vision with at shared plan can move from the founder stage to and enduring stage. But, the founder must be willing to allow this to happen and believe that the shared vision of the right group of leaders will be even better and more enduring than the singular vision of a single leader

Fourth, it means that the vision and mission become more important to the founder than that of controlling what she/he birthed. Enduring spiritual influence comes from an attitude that what we have birthed belongs to Jesus alone, not to us. We were simply the servants that Jesus used to birth what He wanted to birth. To the extent that I am unwilling to give up control even when that would be the best for the ministry itself - I am believing that it is more about me than it is about Him. And when this happens, it often is to the very detriment of the ministry He used us to found. Ministry founders can both start and hurt the same ministry depending on how they steward it.

From the moment a ministry is founded, good leaders understand that they play a unique role for a season. If they are unwilling to see their role change in the next season, they limit that which God used them to initiate. I have watched founding leaders make both good and poor choices in this and their choices impacted the ministry they founded for better or for worse.

Taking a ministry from start up to maturity is not easy. It comes with losses But if done well it comes with kingdom impact and even greater influence than when initiated.

Communicating in a matrix world - it is everyone's responsibility

Communication builds trust and trust minimizes conflict because information is power. The issue of how an organization designs systems where the right information gets to the right people at the right time so that good decisions can be made and everyone know what they need to know is complex. When it comes to information, everyone has an opinion and expectations are hard to meet. Some common complaints I hear are:

We don't get enough information.
We get too much information.
I don't know everything that is happening.
You did not solicit my opinion or input before you made the organizational decision.
My leaders don't tell me what is going on at their level.
Leaders can cascade information down through the organization but how do I send information back up to them?

There are some principles that if understood and practiced would help address these and similar concerns.

In today's flat world, communications is from the top down, the bottom up and horizontal all at once.

While there must be intentional organizational communication, the day of leaders simply telling the organization what it needs to know is long gone. I receive up to 100 emails per day, from people throughout our organization, from national ministry partners, from donors and pastors on any number of issues. And, I reply to every one of them or I ensure that the one who can address the issue they have raised replies to them.

One of the great blessings of our day is the access to information from many sources and the ability for most to quickly communicate throughout the organization to share insights, express opinions, offer solutions or share challenges. This works both ways. In the traditional top-down organizational structure, employees knew primarily what their leaders wanted to tell them. And, leaders knew primarily what their reports chose to pass back to them. No longer: I can solicit or receive unsolicited information from anywhere in the organization and so can anyone else in the organization.

In today's flat world, it is the responsibility of every team member to share information that needs to be shared with whom it needs to be shared and to solicit needed information in order to make healthy decisions.

Here is a paradigm shift. In the old paradigm, it was primarily the job of leaders to communicate pertinent information throughout the organization. In the flat world, it is the job of everyone to share relevant information that they possess to those who need to know it regardless of where they fit in the organization.

And, it is the responsibility of each of us to solicit information we need (if we don't have it) from those who do have it to make the best-possible decisions. Rather than allowing a culture of blame to exist (you didn't tell me), we need to create cultures of proactive communication in which people at all levels of the organization are responsible to others at all levels of the organization. This is empowering for those who practice it because anyone, at any level of the organization has the ability to influence the direction of the organization if they are willing to share what they know or solicit information they need to have to do their job well.

Flat organizations that are intentionally healthy create an egalitarian communications culture where everyone has the responsibility and freedom to communicate with those who need information they have and to solicit information they need. At the same time they retain organizational structure and accountability and the support for decisions by the right people at the right level of the organization. The central theme here is that every one of us has responsibility to communicate relevant information, not just some of us.

Not everyone needs to know everything

Small organizations are like families. In families, everyone kind of knows what everyone is kind of doing. It happens naturally through family relationships, shared meals and relational proximity. As organizations grow, this changes because of the complexities of ministries, relationships, the number of personnel and the need for everyone to focus on their particular areas of responsibility.

For those who were in the organization when it was small, this is a tough transition because where they always used to be in the know, they no longer are. This is a painful transition for staff members in growing churches.

Historically, the organization I lead has called itself a family. And, back in the '60s when the denomination was small and the mission family was small, it felt like family. Today, it is not a family but an organization because you cannot be 'family' with 550 personnel scattered across 40 countries of the world (Except by Facebook). Thus, like a church that has grown out of the family state (at about 150 people), we have as well but the expectation is still there by some (who remember the old days) to think we are family.

A family knows what is going on with all its members, a clan does not. When people say to me, "I don't know everything that is happening anymore," I reply, "neither do I." The truth is that I need to know certain things, but not a lot of things. I expect members of the organization to share significant breakthroughs or issues, and always their concerns. But much of what happens I don't know. I am trusting good people to do the right thing. Anyone who expects to know everything, or even most things in a growing organization, will be disappointed by their unrealistic expectation.

In a flat organization everyone has responsibility for communication:
To communicate concerns to appropriate people.
To communicate with appropriate parties after decisions are made.
To solicit information that is needed for making wise decisions from any level of the organization.
To alert leadership of barriers, concerns and opportunities.
To be as transparent as possible on any issues that are raised.
To recognize that no one will know everything.
To take personal responsibility for getting information they need rather than complaining that they did not get it.

Your organization has a mission but has it created a culture that will support that mission?

Most organizations are clear on their mission - a good thing. What many organizations don't understand, however, is that unless you have a culture that supports the mission it is unlikely that you will fulfill it the way you desire to. In other words, an inadequately designed organizational culture can sabotage your ability to achieve your mission.

Many churches, for instance are committed to introducing people to Christ and helping them grow in Him - a good way to understand the Great Commission. However, if the culture does not reflect the Great Commandment - Loving God with all our heart and loving our neighbors as ourselves. What attracts people to Christ? The grace and love of Jesus as expressed through His people. No matter how much a church might want to see people come to Him, unless they have a culture that reflects Him, it will rarely happen. The culture sabotages the mission!

The mission of New Life Church in Stockholm Sweden is to Impact our world with Hope. That will not happen unless they have a culture of Hope - which they have defined in this way: Hope in the transforming power of the Gospel; Hope that we can be transformed; Hope that others can be transformed; and Hope that our world can be transformed.  With a constant emphasis on this culture of hope New Life Church cannot help but be a place of hope and impact their world with hope. Their culture is designed to support their mission.

Many businesses have mission statements that reflect a commitment to their customers but do not have an intentionally created culture that reflects that commitment. Without a culture designed to put the customer first, those mission statements mean little to nothing. It is easy to write a mission statement. It is much harder to create a culture that supports the mission.

Take a moment to consider the mission of your ministry or business. I assume you believe in the mission. Have you intentionally created a culture within the organization that is designed to support that mission? Could you describe that culture and could your staff and people define it? If not, this needs to become a priority. Attention to your culture can significantly help you live out your mission. It is an investment worth making.