Exponential Day 2 - Learning to Listen to your community

I grew up learning about acts of service as a way to show God's love. These were good things, rarely received poorly by the people served. And yet, they also rarely led to any lasting change either in a community or even in my church's relationship with the community.

A breakthrough occurred when I learned a seemingly simple truth: Service is most effective when it meets a felt need. Felt needs are discovered through listening and within a relationship.

The first step to listening to ones community is to form relationships with people in the community. That is often done by volunteering. Schools, non-profits, chamber of commerce, and other civic organizations are a great place to start.

Go. Volunteer. Look. Listen. What needs do you see repeated from person to person or place to place? What needs to you hear expressed in the conversations that happen around you? What assets (strengths) exist in the community that might be unknown or underutilized?

PS - This thought has been repeated time and again in many different sessions and will shape much of what "Community Impact" looks like. The basic, simple truth is that the community knows what it needs, and if I will do the work of listening... I can actually design projects that meet those needs, rather than merely bringing my "good" ideas to the table.

Other ideas from today that will become later posts:

1. Vision requires clarity and consistency. Someone must create it and measures for it.
2. Another value that we often state and rarely measure... healthy leaders.
3. Missional Problem (yea it was very cool having Alan Hirsch come and ask if the seat next to me was empty... um, Yes, yes it is!) - "How do we communicate the good news to people who have heard our message and rejected it?"
4. Everyone needs an apprentice. This is something you will get sick of hearing, and I will rejoice on that day because hopefully you will then be close to understanding and believing it.
5. Church leader in India on "casual" Christ followers - "Why would you lose everything for something that you only casually believe?" Quick answer? We don't really lose all that much for our beliefs in America.

Exponential Day 1 - Core Values vs Core Practices

I have noticed an alarming trend among leadership teams in recent years. There is an increase in conversation about core values, but the conversation stops before discussing core practices. They behave as if values have benefit without action. However, principles are not helpful until they are practiced. Using the example of honoring volunteers I will walk through three key elements of core practices. Core practices are:

1) Clearly defined. If my core value is to honor my volunteers, what does that mean exactly? What does an honored volunteer look like? How do they feel about the job they do? How do they describe it to others? How do they participate in our training and recruitment?

2) Systematic. When are we going to evaluate how well we honor our volunteers? (at our weekly staff meeting?) How will we measure it? How often should we ask these questions? (every week? month?) What happens if we fall short of our expectations (we discover a large number of our volunteers do not feel honored)?

3) Relentless. People will ask, "How long to we need to maintain this focus?" However long you want to maintain your core values. You must relentlessly pursue clarity and consistency, repeating your evaluation system over and over again. The reality is that you will never stop doing this, it will only feel like you have. At some point what once seemed extremely aggressive will be normal, and what may seem over-the-top to outsiders will be status quo for your organization.

What core values have yet to become core practices in your organization? What stage in the process do you need to address? (clearly defined, systematic, relentless)