Make it Transformational: A Blog for Champion Discipleship

Are you comfortable with this title - "Let Your Clients (Customers, Consumers Constituents) Tell Your Story" - from a guest post on Kivi's Nonprofit Communications Blog?

Author Jubi Headley's post opens as follows:

"Whether you call them clients, customers, consumers, or something entirely different, your organization will benefit if you, dear organizational leader/employee/volunteer, get out of your own way (as Mama loves to say) and let the constituency you serve tell your story for you."

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Shhhhhh…. Are you able to keep silent long enough to hear what your champions are saying?

Or…are your meetings and calls with champions arranged so that you can tell all the good stories of what your organization is doing? After all, many believe that this is the most powerful tool we have to connect champions to our cause.

Champions do want to hear how the organizations they are supporting are having impact, but far too often we think this is all they want to hear.

We schedule these meetings and then fill our pockets full of great stories so we can share how busy we are and how worthy we are of their investment in us.

God forbid that there would be a moment of silence. Or worse yet, that we would give them a chance to tell their story of impacting the cause……which might even be better than ours.

I’d like suggest to you today that the most powerful strategy for connecting and growing champions is the art of listening!

Kevin J. Murphy in his book titled “Effective Listening,” demonstrates what effective listening means and what it can do for you. One of his main ideas is that keeping quiet at the right moment is an important ingredient for an open communication. The benefits of effective listening are endless.

Best of all…if you aren’t a good listener now, the skill can be acquired.

Once acquired and put to use, you will hear what is taking place in the trenches. You will learn what life is like outside the box you live in. You will gain greater understanding of who God has sent to help you have impact. And you will gain greater understanding of how you might fully engage those champions to grow in their walk with God.

My challenge to you today would be to take a step back and understand that it isn’t all about you. Your champions want to have impact with you.

Take time to schedule a visit, or a phone call, just to listen to them and hear their good stories.

I’m sure the cause you mutually want to have impact with will much appreciate your efforts.

A November blog posting by Bob Buford, author of Halftime: Moving From Success To Significance, tipped me on to a new book by Robert Putnam titled American Grace.  Putnam’s book encompasses his findings on the state of religion in America today based on 3,000 interviews he conducted.  Here’s how Buford introduces it:

“The book is titled American Grace, and it is the best work in print on the state of religion in America today. I want to give you a sense of the exciting findings that this dispassionate secular Harvard sociologist has discovered and documented. .. Putnam begins by saying “any discussion of religion in America must begin with the incontrovertible fact that Americans are a highly religious people. … In general, Americans have high rates of religious belonging, behaving, and believing."

Uplifting words to believers, huh?  But it’s the next part about ‘the cellular model’ of evangelical and megachurches that got me to thinking:

“The typical megachurch is both evangelical and nondenominational. For many people, their small group is their church. Putnam discovered that in any given month, Rick Warren’s Saddleback Church will host some 3,000 separate events. In a September 2005 New Yorker article entitled “The Cellular Church,” writer Malcolm Gladwell discovered the key to Saddleback was its small groups meeting together and working on projects together.”

It was while reading that last bit that I got inspired – why not create small groups for the champions within your non-profit ministry?    

Before I continue, you might be thinking about MIF’s summer 2010 webinar on giving circles.  Yep, it’s a similar idea of connecting people in a small group to get more deeply involved in a cause(s) – and to learn, together, about philanthropy and generous giving. 

Since giving circles seem to be catching on like wildfire, why not consider your existing champions.  What would it look like to create intentional small groups or ‘cohorts’ – even a group of two or three people matched up - to leverage the power of peer to peer relationships to promote growth in the cause? 

Transformational Giving principle #7, by the way, reminds us that peer to peer relationships are as important as peer to organization relationships.  Gladwell, too, confirms the effectiveness of small groups within mega churches when he writes,

“The small group was an extraordinary vehicle of commitment. It was personal and flexible. It cost nothing. It was convenient, and every worshipper was able to find a small group that precisely matched his or her interests.”

If you’ve tried some form of this idea, post a comment.  Otherwise, a good starting point would be to share this idea with a few interested champions (at the same level of involvement as far as P, E, and O).  Together with your champions, identify a small group willing to experiment.  Better yet, identify a P group as well as an E group.

·         1.  Encourage the group(s) to do some ministry projects together.  Ask the group to take 15 minutes after  the project to share meaningful moments or recognition of growth and transformation.  Ask them to update you afterwards.

·         2.  Read a book or watch a documentary about your shared cause and discuss what you learned or share observations.  This could be done over email as well.

·        3.  Encourage the group to brainstorm ideas for a new Signature Participation Project  which would equip champions in the cause.  Challenge them  to plan and direct an SPP for other champions. Ask one member to write it up in an upcoming newsletter.

·        4.  Recognize and ritualize any step taken by champions on the path to full maturity. (See Eric Foley’s related blog posting on this topic).

Remember, your goal as a ministry leader is to equip those around you to do ‘greater things’ in the cause.   And just think: it will indeed be a happy new year – for yourself and those individuals – when, together, you accomplish this goal!  

My dad had a pretty good sense of direction when I was a kid.

Nevertheless, there were more than a few occasions when just a couple of wrong turns landed us right back in the place we had started. After realizing that we’d simply made a circle he would initially deny it, then attempt to recall the place where he must have “taken a wrong turn,” and then boldly attempt to channel his internal Magellan and try try again – of course under the stern protest of my mother. As the male species is prone to do, it was only after a failed second attempt that we may have then stopped to ask someone for directions. Perhaps you can relate.

Relatively fleeting are the days when stopping to ask for directions is a necessity, especially with the proliferation of the personal GPS device, but the days of needing clarity of direction are not. NPR recently posted a fascinating article entitled A Mystery: Why We Can’t Walk Straight. While I would encourage you to visit the site and watch the helpful video explaining the research and read some of their postulated reasons as to why this is the case, here’s one conclusion I found very insightful.

Humans, apparently, slip into circles when we can't see an external focal point, like a mountain top, a sun, a moon. Without a corrective, our insides take over and there’s something inside us that won't stay straight.

Do you find that peculiar? I did, and then upon further consideration resonated with their conclusion and found it to be illustrative of my personal experience. It’s so easy to lose my external focal point and with it the clarity of direction that’s so necessary to faithfully following Christ.Though such a study is analogous in so many ways.

The Scriptures are full of wisdom concerning the importance of such a focus, and instruct us often, as in Prov 4:25-27, to:

“Let your eyes look directly forward, and your gaze be straight before you.
 Ponder the path of your feet; then all your ways will be sure.
Do not swerve to the right or to the left; turn your foot away from evil.”

Often at the end of the year we spend time introspectively reviewing the year past and resolving to make meaningful changes in our lives. So, how was 2010? Was it a successful year? Did you maintain your focus and a clarity of direction? Did you at times wander in circles? As well, where did God grow you into the past year? Where do you see evidence of His grace in your life and for what are you grateful?

In light of those answers, what changes are you considering relative to your own growth in the cause God has called you to serve in 2011? To be more explicit, do you have a personal growth plan or a PEO chart for yourself? Are you inviting other champions in the cause to speak into your personal growth plan? Do you have champions that are going to hold you accountable to fulfill those commitments?

I pray that 2011 will lead each of us into deeper intimacy with our Father, a deeper appreciation of His glorious Gospel, and further maturity in our respective causes.

P.S. - A word to the guys in the audience, while the NPR study is illustrative of natural human behavior when a focal point is lacking, and does give us some logical reason for our misguided directional nature, let’s make sure we’re not appealing to this study next time we find ourselves lost...as the people in the study were blind-folded.

I don’t know if you are like me, but don’t you find that our busy schedules sometimes consume us to the point that we never fully make the impact that we were created to have.

We lose perspective and nothing matters other than what we have set out to complete for that day. Those people God has allowed us to connect with often get pushed aside as our agenda becomes our priority.

This month John Wooden, one of the greatest coaches of all time, passed away. Those who connected with him, his players, his students, his family and friends all talk about the great impact he had on their lives. They don’t talk just about his great basketball mind, or how smart he was, but also about how he cared for them and showed them love as he helped them to become the best they could be.

In his book, My Personal Best -Life Lessons from an All-American Journey, John finished with these thoughts that I’d like to share with you.

Mind you, I’m in no hurry to leave, but I have no fear of leaving. When the time comes, it will be a very good day – Nell and I will be together again. In the meantime, each day of the journey is precious, yours and mine – we must strive to make it a masterpiece. Each day, once gone, is gone forever.

My father’s words and deeds – his wisdom – taught me that and more. He gave me direction I continue to try to live up to. His advice was good and his example even better. My mentors, Earl Warriner, Glenn Curtis, and Ward “Piggy” Lambert shared their knowledge and wisdom as all great teachers do. Their interest in students went beyond the basketball court or even the classroom. They wanted to help us have good lives.

I’ve tried to live up to my mentors’ examples in teaching those young people who’ve made my life so rich along the way. My goal has always been to help them become not only better basketball players or English students, but better people. That’s the most important thing a coach or teacher can do, and I have given it my personal best.

And as I hope you find in your own life, none of it amounts to a hill of beans without the love of family and friends. I’m a very fortunate man who has much to be thankful for. Love is the most important word in the English language, and my journey has been filled with so much love. I pray that yours is too – that your own journey is full of love. And that along the way you never cease trying to be the best you can be – that you always strive for your personal best.

That is success. And don’t you let anybody tell you otherwise.

My question then for you, and even for myself, is what do you want others to say about you?

Do you want your champions, which God has allowed to connect with you, to say that you loved them and you cared to help them grow? Or would you rather have them notice your busy work schedsule and accomplishments that diverted your attention from helping others as you reached your goals?

Remember this: Each day of the journey is precious. We must strive to make it a masterpiece. Coaching others and allowing them to come along on this journey with us is essential.

At Mission Increase Foundation our priority and purpose is to help you become all that God has for you to be. We would love to connect with you at one of our upcoming workshops, and subsequent coaching times, as we learn together to improve how we can coach our champions to grow and be all that God has for them in their lives.