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Making
things happen - with integrity. A weekly CyberMemo designed to keep you on task. Monday October 8, 2001 Volume III Number 41 |
FOCUS - Vision
Don Cousins was the organizational wizard behind the Willow Creek Community Church success story. For seventeen years, he and senior pastor Bill Hybels developed a mission strategy for one of the largest churches in the history of American ecclesiology. Hybels is the up front guy. Don was the infrastructure guy.
Hybels began his ministry career as a youth evangelist. His high energy, motivational talks stirred hundreds of young people to high levels of commitment. It was the early seventies, and Hybels soon turned his energies toward planting a local church.
From the start, he used highly creative contemporary music and drama as communication tools. They were so effective, that his home church commissioned him to start a new congregation. In October of 1975, they rented a movie theater on Chicago’s north suburb of Palatine. Just over one hundred people showed up. But within three years, the church grew to over two thousand, and with enthusiasm, the visionary congregation purchased sixty acres in upscale Barrington.
Today, the auditorium holds over four thousand people. There are four services every weekend.
The concept was a simple one from the start. In the wake of the turmoil of the sixties, Hybels and Cousins believed that people had generally lost interest in church attendance. And they could relate to the reasons why. Church, for most people, was dull and bland and irrelevant. Stale, predictable programs and musty, poorly maintained facilities; mediocre, under-trained volunteer staff, weary and unprepared; hymnology that sounded more like a sleepy lullaby as a prelude to monotony - a dreary sermon rehashed from an old ragged commentary written for some other era… well, that was the popular vision of church in those days.
Hybels
had a different idea. The message, he believed, is timeless. Communication was coming of age.
Why not make worship vibrant? Why
not utilize talented thespians? Staging.
Lighting. Sound boards. Video. High-energy
musicians. Color.
Pizzazz.
So Hybels had long conversations with his organizational guy, Don Cousins. And together they asked the simple question – what keeps most people out of church? As they identified the barriers, they designed a worship experience that eliminated them.
And people lined up. They wanted in. The momentum hasn’t slowed down for over twenty years.
* * * * * * * *
My favorite response came from my close friend Mark.
He’s seven years younger than I. Just a little more than a year and a half ago, when news broke that he was next in line for grandfatherhood, well, frankly, it hit him kinda hard. I’d tease him about it, you know, “Hey gramps!” I’d say from across the room, and he wasn’t laughin’. I think the reality of this new life stage rather blindsided him; it felt awkward, he would say.
No kiddin’. We’re both too young for this. How’d we get here?
Perhaps one of the most common inter-generational remarks we hear from our earliest days in childhood goes something like this, “You’d better enjoy this time in your life now. You won’t believe how quickly it will pass. Today’s best moments will soon become a misty memory…” And then the throwaway line, “The older you get, the faster time passes. That’s just the way it is.”
Our kids can see it comin’. They know the approach, and they cut it off at the pass. “I know… time goes by too fast,” they’ll say, gently, in good humor, in hopes that whomever it is from that older generation will find some other topic of discussion soon. Anything but the old time passes quickly routine.
Think about it. It’s not fair, really, for us older guys to rob younger people of their youth this way. We want to let them know how fleeting it all is and maybe we think it’s good to warn them. So they won’t be disappointed or surprised when they reach our stage. But why not simply let them enjoy their life? Why not just listen? Why all the advice? Why not find the joy in their stories and revel in their youth with them without all the doomsday stuff about how it’s all gunna end. Soon.
The whole thing is more a commentary on us than a nugget of wisdom for the young. We’re the ones who are having trouble with the fleeting passage of time. We’re the ones who are painfully aware that youth has slipped away whenever we are in the presence of a younger person… we don’t admit that it hurts. That we are filled with nostalgia. That we are wistful about a past we left behind. That we might like to do a few things over again… differently. That we have a little trouble accepting ourselves at this stage.
So we lay it on the poor kids, with stories they’ve already heard, and advice that comes straight from The Reader’s Digest or Poor Richard’s Almanac and they’ve tuned out before we start.
All that said, time does pass by. Quickly. And it eventually hits us all. And sometimes, it hurts.
And my good buddy Mark wasn’t quite ready to be called “Grandpa…”
Until little Kieran (we call him “Kie” pronounced “Key”) came along.
Then it all changed. Big time.
Kie’s walking now. He started early. At ten months, he toddles up and down the halls of our office building. He’s got a thick crop of blond hair and bright blue eyes and a smile you can see from across the room and my buddy Mark is one hundred percent full time head over heals through and through Gramps.
When the topic of Kie comes up, Mark lights up like Christmas on Madison Avenue. He’s already buildin’ swing sets and a tree house and even his marriage has hit new levels of happiness. He’s a man reborn.
So the day came a few weeks back when he was sittin’ in my office, just us two. We had some time to talk. As he gave me the update on Kie’s latest exploits, it hit me that I needed to tell him. It was still somewhat pre-mature for full disclosure… but oh well. I couldn’t keep it to myself any longer.
“Mark… I’ve got great news,” was all I had to say.
He looked at me with intensity – curious, just to check my response. He saw the smile in my eyes. Instantly, he got it. I didn’t have to say any more than that.
“Kristyn’s pregnant!” he jumped out of his chair. “Ken,” he looked me dead on in the eye, “you’re gunna be a Grandfather!”
It was a big old bear hug I’ll never forget. “That’s so awesome!” he exclaimed. My old buddy Mark laughed and cried and there we stood by my desk, two grown men, huggin’ and weepin’ with joy.
Marchin’ through one more of life’s passages… together.
* * * * * *
I sat there in the conference room with about thirty other church leaders, most of ‘em clergy. The subject was caring for volunteer leaders – how to motivate and nurture the people who make church work the way it should.
The setting was pleasant enough. Quintessential San Diego. Balmy blue sky. The feel of the waterfront. Lots of palm trees and banana leaves and birds of paradise swaying in a gentle breeze outside the white pane glass windows of the business hotel.
Don Cousins is a walking encyclopedia of practical theology. He’s passionate about doing things right. He’s lean and fit. He salts and peppers his talks with a keen sense of humor. He’s serious about biblical leadership. For the three or four hours he spoke, he showed no signs of fatigue… it was a rapid-fire seminar on making church significant.
People sat up straight in their chairs along lined up tables. Most everyone was taking notes.
No signs of boredom anywhere.
“We don’t do announcements,” Don said flatly. “We don’t believe in them,” he added.
Announcements don’t motivate anyone. You can get information from lots of sources, why waste precious time on Sunday morning going through a laundry list of dates and times and places, he asked.
Watch this now. See if you catch the difference, he said.
“Three weeks from today the men will meet in the parking lot to leave for a Men’s Retreat from 4 o’clock Friday through 2PM on Sunday. It will be a neat time. The cost is $125. If you are interested, there is a sign up sheet at the back table in the lobby after the service.”
It was monotone. Flat. And all too familiar.
Then he said, “OK. Now, in contrast, check this out…”
He held both hands in the air, stretching all fingers and thumbs flat then tapping the palm of his left hand with the perpendicular straight fingers of his right hand, forming the shape of a “T.” “What does this mean?” he asked. “What’s the signal here?”
“Time out,” several said in unison.
“Time out. That’s right,” Don Cousins said, nodding. “Now when do we call TIME OUT?”
“When the coach wants to stop the momentum, usually when the other team has the upper hand,” said a guy in the front row.
“Good,” Cousins confirmed. “When else?”
A woman toward the back of the room offered another suggestion. “When the team needs a rest,” she said and everyone in the room agreed.
“Certainly so,” the teacher was on a roll. “When else? When do we call TIME OUT?”
“When your pre-schooler has pushed you right over the edge,” a young dad blurted out. His classmates laughed out loud.
Cousins laughed, too. “Exactly.” And then, after making his point, he went on.
“Men need TIME OUTs, too,” he stated it matter of fact. “In a couple of weeks, we’re asking all the men in our church to take a time out. Time for a pep talk. Time for a rest. Time to get some perspective.”
All of us guys in the room were thinking, “where do I sign up?”
“See you there… the men’s retreat. Three weeks from today.” And then he let it sink in.
“So which works better? The announcement of time and place and cost, or a compelling description of the ‘why’?”
We got the point.
“That’s how we did it,” he said. “We filled up every one of those camps.”
Leaders don’t just announce. They motivate. They create enthusiasm. They make the case.
They make the magic.
* * * * * * * *
It’s Monday morning. You are a leader.
You want to be a person of vision. You want to make the magic. You don’t like mediocrity. You despise the lukewarm. You want to be a person of passion. You want it done right.
Don Cousins and Bill Hybels spent nearly twenty years on the cutting edge of growth. Their plan was simple. Take ordinary events and make them extraordinary. Take ordinary people and convince them that extraordinary things can happen. Take the biblical message of the gospel, so familiar, and make it compelling. Cast the vision of how the world might be, and watch what happens.
People will come alive.
Take a couple of mid-life guys, and make them Grandpas. And the whole world makes sense again.
These are serious, dangerous days.
It’s a sober Monday. As you exercise leadership in your own sphere, remember those who courageously enter in to harm’s way today and tomorrow and the next day. Pray. Pray for our nation’s leadership – those who diligently work to protect our homeland. Pray for unusual wisdom.
We’re in this thing, together.
© Copyright Kenneth E. Kemp 2001
Special Thanks to my good friend David Belcher, owner of Rhino Media Group and creator of WisdomGram
LeaderFOCUS is a service of Good Stewardship Associates
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