“Cultivating a Culture of Yes”

I often ask my horse to say yes. When I want to put a halter or bridle on his head, his tendency is to hold his head high, and I ask that he lower it. This makes the process easier and calms his emotions.  I put gentle pressure on the top of his head until he lowers it. Even if he only drops it an inch, I immediately release the pressure. He has said yes and he is rewarded.

What gets rewarded gets repeated. I reapply pressure until his head is where I want it. I then put on the halter and feed him a treat. My horses line up to get caught, because saying yes gains a positive reward.

He weighs 1,200 pounds and is very strong and very fast. He could bite me, kick me, knock me down, run away, or simply stand there and do nothing. Like leading volunteers, I have to lead him by persuasion. I often ask him to take me on steep mountain trails or through dense forests where there is no trail and no obvious exit. Since he is a prey animal, he hates that. But he says yes to my request because he has said a lot of yes’s to get to that point and we have developed a relationship of mutual trust.

To cultivate a culture of yes in a local church or district we need relationship, trust, time, and a compelling vision. One of the strongest deterrents to this kind of culture is fear. “We may fail, we can’t pay for it, the risks are unknown, etc.”

John Lyons, a Christian horse trainer, says; “Ride a horse where you can; not where you can’t.” Eventually you will build his confidence and yours so that you can ride him through scary stuff. People are a lot like that. Start with small, relatively safe yes’s and people will build confidence in God, in themselves, and in you as a leader. If you start with a big scary request, you may get bucked off.

Sometimes you need to dismount from your position and lead by walking ahead. For instance, if you are trying to create a culture of building redemptive relationships with messy people, you need to model it.

If you are creating an environment of saying yes to church planting, please understand that this is a big scary ask. Establish trust, take good risks, celebrate success, and don’t lose momentum.

If you are the leader, be a yes person yourself. Don’t take stupid risks, but look for ways to say yes, not for ways to say no. Make it a high priority to raise up leaders around you who are yes people. In shaping a board you don’t want all of them to be “early adopters”, but you don’t want any “never adopters”, and only one or two “slow adopters”. Saying yes will get you in trouble occasionally, but saying no will get you nowhere.

Saying yes can be contagious. If you are in step with the Holy Spirit, if you get me to say a series of little yes’s, if my peers are saying yes, and if you have a God-given vision, then I will say yes and influence others around me to say yes.

(Contributed by Rev. Isaac Smith, District Superintendent of the Dakota District of the Wesleyan Church.  Taken from the 3/3/2010 edition of the Expanding Wave Newsletter, which is put out by the Evangelism and Church Growth Department of the Wesleyan Church)

At the present moment, I find myself in a period as a pastor and leader in which I am pastoring a church in transition.  We are a church in transition in every sense of that word.  We are a small church and over the course of the last two-and-one-half years that I have served as pastor, I have performed fifteen funerals.  Not all of these funerals were for people from our church, although a great number were.  When you are a church of seventy-five-or-so, any funeral lowers attendance, results in a lost leader, and dramatically changes the dynamics of the congregation.

Add to that the fact that as a leader I have been through what is commonly referred to as the “honeymoon stage” of leadership in which everyone is excited that you are around and truly believes that the best days lie ahead.  The truth of the matter is that eventually the rose-colored glasses are removed, which results both in a great many people staying and rallying behind what they perceive to be a clear sense of God-given direction as well as a handful of people transitioning on to another church.  Once again, with each departure attendance drops, a potential leader is gone, and the dynamics of the congregation are in constant flux.

Additionally, one of the startling truths of life that we must all come to grips with is that we will not remain young forever.  The implications of this truth have a significant impact upon the church, its culture, and its ethos.  As congregation members age, some elect to remove themselves from ministry whereas others have to forgo leadership responsibilities because their age and/or declining health make it impossible to be as involved as they would like.

Each and every one of these things, as well as many others, create an environment, in the church, in which there is constant fluctuation and movement.  When new families and leaders are infused into the system things change even more.

For that reason, I can appreciate what Rev. Smith suggests.  If we can create a culture of “yes”- then we introduce into the system some equilibrium that is often sorely needed.  Change of any kind often results in fear, worry, and paralysis; yet, if we can create a culture that is willing to say “yes” and therein push through the fear and worry by continuing to risk then there remains the potential for growth, health, and multiplication.

I also believe that I can sense that it is Rev. Isaac Smith’s heartfelt desire that God’s church would reach a point where with clarity of vision and purpose they can whole-heartedly agree (say “yes”) to move forward and take some risks to make that vision and purpose become a reality.

My concern, however, is that far-too-often the unity of which Rev. Smith writes results in consensus rather than collaboration, which I think can be incredibly destructive.  Let me explain…

Joseph Myers, in his book Organic Community, writes, “The spirit of cooperation is a rigid spirit, one that stifles creativity and discovery. It is more concerned with sequence than rhythm. It squashes the human spirit. The master plan becomes the master.” [1]  Cooperation, for Myers, is a negative thing that causes a person to become less creative. From an organizational perspective, it quashes momentum and the natural rhythms and life that occur naturally. Cooperation does this by providing us with a master plan which every member of the system is expected to fall in line with. As such it leads to conformity rather than out-of-the-box thinking.

This, I think, is a potential downfall of the “‘yes’ culture” that Smith suggests we cultivate.  At the heart of the “‘yes’ culture” is the idea that one person or the organization as a whole has a clear understanding of the idea or the goal or the vision.  With a clear sense of vision uniting the church, Smith asserts, the church and its leaders can move forward and agree to say “yes” and therein take risks that allows the church to move towards the fulfillment of its goal/purpose/vision.

The problem with such thinking, on a practical level, is that far too often it results in paralysis.  A huge vision or goal exists but no one knows how to get from where we are right now to that blueprint of how we believe things should be.  An unintended (or maybe intended) result is that the leaders of the church tend to look to the pastor or pastoral staff of the church for clear pathways forward.  The pastor or pastoral staff then becomes the bearer of the vision, the protector of said vision, and the authority on how to make that vision a reality.

This begs the question, however, in many respects.  Should the pastor or pastoral staff be the sole bearer of the vision?  What qualifies the pastor or pastoral staff as the authority with respect to the question of how we move from where we are to where we want to be?

Of greater concern, I believe, is what a culture of consensus says about the way that we view people and how God works in and through people.  A culture of consensus, in which lay members of a board or leadership team, always say “yes” to a pastor or to the pastoral staff implies that the clergy clearly have a monopoly on God’s vision and its implementation (something which we, in Protestant circles, have firmly rejected since the Protestant Reformation and its emphasis on the priesthood of all believers).  Yet, it happens.  I’ve sat on leadership teams as a lay member of a congregation in which we were expected to say “yes” to whatever the pastor proposed.  The result was that we did risk, but many times problems arose that could have been avoided had we, as lay members, felt that we could voice or opinion or share our wisdom.

Moreover, a culture of consensus implies that the pastor has a much better understanding of the church culture and the wider culture than do those who live, work, worship, and converse in said culture(s) on a daily and weekly basis.  Within a denomination and within the church this type of scenario is far-too-common.  The leaders and those who are in positions of power and authority surround themselves with those who say “yes” and as a result decisions are made which are neither helpful or beneficial at the local level where life happens.  Denominationally this happens when decisions about how ministry should be done are made by those who haven’t pastored a local congregation for a number of years.  In the local church this happens when full-time pastors, who for better or for worse are disconnected from the factory where the majority of people in town work, make decisions about how best to minister to a group of people that they don’t know and have little or no clue as to the issues that Joe and Jane Every-person are dealing with.

Furthermore, a culture of consensus oftentimes results in the devaluation of the various gifts, passion, and wisdom that God has distributed to the various members of His church.  As a

pastor, if everyone around the table looks to me for the answer and/or the way forward, then we don’t take into account the fact that God has gifted some of the people around this table with a better financial mind than I have; or a more observant eye with regard to building upkeep and maintenance; or even with teaching knowledge or ability that could improve the teaching ministries of our church.

In fact, some of the best ministries, outreaches, and things that we have done as a church have been the result of people standing up to me and saying, “No.  I respect what you are saying, but I don’t think that is the best way forward.”  I’ve then had the privilege of listening to them share about something that God has given them the skills, ability, and passion for and, in turn, have found myself saying, “Yes!  I think we should do that.”

Tags: Dakota District of the Wesleyan Church, Expanding Wave, Isaac Smith, James Surowiecki, Joseph Myers, Leadership, Organic Community, The Wisdom of Crowds, Yes
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KABOOM: “social proof,” church growth, and you

Why do some churches experience exponential growth, while some remained  stagnant?

Why are the voices of the leaders of large or growing churches seemingly valued more than those of small churches that can’t seem to grow no matter what they try?

Undoubtedly, there are a number of answers to questions such as these.  For example, one cannot discount the importance of a fresh wind of anointing by the Holy Spirit.  Let’s face it, if God shows up in a noticeable way each week in services and if lives are being changed- people want to go to churches such as these and other leaders want to hear about how the Holy Spirit might visit with their churches in this fashion.  This, in part, explains why some churches grow and why the voices of the leaders of growing churches are the ones that we most often hear.

Another reason for why some churches grow and others do not is location.  If a church is located in an area in which the majority of residents are “churched” and if there are no new residents moving into the area, for one church to grow it would require a mass exodus from the other churches in town.  Having grown up in a small town and having pastored in such environments, I’ve learned that while there are instances of churches that grow by welcome the disenfranchised members of other churches this is not a common occurrence in many small towns due to the fact that people are fiercely loyal to the church in which they have been raised since they were young.

One of the greatest factors for why many churches, especially those in small towns, do not grow is what social theorist refer to as “social proof.”  As James Surowieki reminds us,

“Social proof”… is the tendency to assume that if lots of people are doing something or believe something, there must be a good reason why. [1]

What constitutes “lots of people”?  I’m not really sure.  I think that cultural context and the subject that we are talking about make “lots of people” a relative term.  For example, many people are eagerly anticipating the first episode of the final season of LOST.  For ABC and the writers and creators of LOST “lots of people” does not mean a couple hundred of viewers.  Lots of people equates to lots of viewers when millions of people have tuned in to validate this show as must-see-TV.

If we applied that logic the local benevolent drive for food and clothes around Christmas and we were to say that the drive has not been successful until millions of people have pitched in to help- we would probably never achieve our goal.  Instead, “lots of people” in such an instance might be a few thousand people stopping by to make donations in a metropolitan area or a few hundred in a small community.

“Lots of people” to some degree is a relative term.  Yet, whether one lives in a city, a town, or a rural community the power of “social proof” still holds sway.  Why will a church that averages twelve eventually end up closing its doors- because as people drive past on a Sunday morning, only to see a couple of cars in the parking lot, they assume that there is a good reason why there are only a few cars in said parking lot.  So they continue on their way, driving five miles down the road to attend the church that has at least twice the number of cars in its parking lot as the one that they just passed.

Surowieki goes on to suggest that as,

…the crowd becomes more influential as it becomes bigger: every additional person is proof that something important is happening. [2]

We might say that as the crowd becomes bigger both excitement and momentum grow.  This helps to explain why movements experience what Malcolm Gladwell refers to as “tipping points.”  As the crowd grows, excitement and momentum often grow in proportional fashion, which leads to increased credibility and even a desire by others to be a part of whatever might be happening.

How large does the crowd have to be for this to happen?

Can a crowd exert the same amount of influence even if they remain smaller?

Is a large crowd truly indicative of the importance of what is happening?

How does cultural context change the dynamics of crowd size as it relates to such things?

[1] Surowieki, James, The Wisdom of Crowds (New York: Anchor Books, 2005), p. 43.

[2] Ibid.

Tags: Church Growth, James Surowiecki, The Wisdom of Crowds, Why some churches plateau and others grow
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The Nines

Tags: The Nines
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