For as long as I can remember vision has been the primary topic of many leadership discussions. It has long understood said that it’s the leader’s responsibility to get his people from “here” to “there.” Vision is the leaders ability to show people where to go, while inspiring them to get there.
It does not matter how compelling your vision statement. If the people in your church aren’t carrying that vision through the actions of their daily lives, then you will never see that vision realized. For a vision to have an effect it must be accompanied by a culture that is consistent with that vision. Your vision must be something that most of the people in your church are working toward most of the time.
In missions, our vision is simply to glorify God by making disciples and planting churches. In other words, we want to see God made famous in the lives of people who are learning to believe in and obey Jesus through intentional relationships. This vision, as simple and straightforward as it is, does us no good if our members are not actively making it a reality. Our vision must become our culture.
The Five Building Blocks of Culture
The following five principles have helped us take great strides in developing a discipleship culture in our church. We’re not doing these things perfectly, but as we consistently practice them we are, by God’s grace, seeing some decent progress.
1. Establish Clarity. Culture begins with clarity. If you want everyone in your church or ministry on the same page, heading in the same direction, then they need to know exactly where you’re taking them and why. Paint a crystal clear picture of your end goal. What specifically are you going for? For us, this means clearly defining what it means to be a disciple and identifying a clear process of making disciples.
2. Create Alignment. One of the quickest ways to sabotage your culture is to give people who are not aligned with your values and processes the opportunity to lead. If you want a culture that is consistent with your clearly defined objectives, then you must be intentional to guard the gate of leadership.
Do not, under any circumstances, let anyone into a place of leadership who does not clearly embody the goals and strategies you’ve established. In missions, we create alignment through an apprentice development process that filters out anyone who is not aligned with who we are and where we’re going.
3. Communicate Consistently. Clarity and alignment are not enough to get your entire church, ministry or organization on board. Your people must constantly hear about your vision, values, strategy and processes until they can recite them in their sleep. Put simply, what gets repeated gets done.
In missions, we accomplish this by dripping the big ideas of the gospel and discipleship through every means of communication we can. We talk about them in sermons, in small groups, in emails, in one-to-one discipleship, in announcements and in leadership team meetings. We do everything we can to keep sound doctrine, clear objectives and simple processes on the forefront of people’s minds.
4. Give People Experience. One of the reasons that culture doesn’t get established is because the leaders are too quick to do the work and not quick enough to give church members the experience of doing the work. It’s not enough for people to hear about your objectives and processes, they must experience them for themselves.
For us, this means practicing the buddy system. If a current leader has a meeting to attend, a person to meet up with or a task to accomplish he is encouraged to bring an inexperienced leader with him. This allows the current leader to get the potential leader experience, to coach him up and to thoroughly explain what we do and why.
5. Reinforce Right Behavior. There’s something powerful about celebrating your beliefs, values and processes that catalyzes culture development. On a large scale, the things that get celebrated get repeated. Publicly celebrate the people, events and opportunities that embody the culture you’re wanting to build. This is because, Ev. Emong Willies says, “whoever tells the best story shapes the culture.” Make sure the things you celebrate tell the best story of who you want your people to become.
Discipleship is one of our biggest values in missions. It typically takes place in small groups. We reinforce our culture by publicly celebrating when someone steps into the apprentice development process, when new small groups start up and when people are added to the church through a discipleship relationship with one of our members. This let’s everyone know that it’s important to us.
The best way to realize your vision is to make it become your culture. These five concepts will help you take strides in establishing a healthy culture in your church or organization today. Give it a try.