Often people complain that long-range and/or strategic planning is squandering time. When asked why planning is wasteful, the resounding response is that nothing is ever done with the plans. Why do we spend so much time in planning only to watch the strategies get shelved using the notebooks of our plans for bookends? It is because we do not know how to implement a strategy plan. In 2000 alone, forty CEO’s of the top two hundred companies on Fortune’s 500 list were removed – not retired, but fired or made to resign. (cf. Execution: The Discipline of Getting Things Done by Larry Bossidy and Ram Charan, p. 14) Most of the dismissals were attributed to the inability to execute a strategy. According to Pierre Mourier and Martin Smith in their book Conquering Organizational Change, roughly 90 % of reengineering initiatives fail to produce breakthrough results.
Many churches fail to see any outcomes from their strategy planning as well. These stagnant churches are plateaued and declining not because they do not have a vision or plans. It is that the plans are never realized, because people fail to communicate and execute their dreams and strategies. To see change, acceptance, and implementation of new ideas and plans, leaders may need to change the way that they communicate first.
“A picture is worth a thousand words” as the old saying goes. It is also true that one word can create hundreds of pictures or mental models in the listeners’ minds as we share our visions and plans. “New insights fail to get put into practice because they conflict with deeply held internal images of how the world works,” according to Peter Senge, in The Fifth Discipline. Our word pictures fail to communicate because the listeners have a different mental image than the one that we think were are sending.
Take the word “team.” The leader of one denominational organization that I once knew shared with all his staff that he wanted to be a team-based institution. After a year of trying to get his team approach working, this manager was totally frustrated. His team was not doing what he wanted them to do. When asked to draw his model of a team, the leader drew a sculling team with the captain shouting out orders and the team members rowing in synchronization with his commands. When most of the staff drew their picture of a team, it was an ad hoc Saturday morning playground softball team with rotating captains. The staff pictures of team were in conflict with the leader’s view of team.
When we use the term “church,” what mental model do most people envision? Is it a gathering place or a group of people? My guess would be that many view the church as a building. We reinforce that view of church from early age of a child with the saying and hand sign: “Here’s the church. Here’s the steeple. Open the doors, and where are all the people.” You may hear people use statements like “let’s go to church.”. The hymn “The Church is One Foundation” is often sung. If church is a building in some minds, then they will want to build buildings and develop an attractional model for church. This model is based upon the temple concept.
If member’s view of church is a group of believers gathered for worship, then the place will be immaterial. They still may have a “come and see” model, but the emphasis will be more on the gathering of individuals than the building. The term “the church gathered” will be heard. This model developed from the house churches of the New Testament.
The model could be the people are the church. With this model the people will tend to have an incarnational viewpoint of the church - with a “go, serve, and tell” focus. You will hear someone say “the church dispersed” or “we are the church - be the church.” The Great Commission provides the base for this model of church.
The Gospels and Revelation refer to the church as “the bride of Christ.” (Matthew 9:15; Luke 5:35; and Revelation 19:7). This mental model of the church is rarely used as a mental model for church in today’s world, although it is extremely powerful.
The question is not which model is correct. They all have Biblical bases, and all offer value. The question is which mental model does your church members have of the church. Once you know the answer, then you can start with their mental models to communicate the vision, direction, and change initiatives of the church or introduce a new model of church.
To help people to see beyond the four walls of a building, Peter in writing to a Jewish audience, took the building blocks of the Temple and morphed them into living stones “you also, like living stones, are being built into a spiritual house to be a holy priesthood, offering spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ.” (I Peter 2:5.) If the model of church is a building built with living stones, then the questions for church members are “with what material are the stones and what is holding the stones together?”
If the church is the “bride” of Christ, then what is her personality? Describe the church as a person. Is she a whiner, a gossip, or an affirming, loving, and positive type? What would you hear her saying? How active is she? Is she a recluse or active in her community?
Our failure to understand the mental models that we and our members have create communication barriers. To overcome these communication barriers so that we can see change initiatives and budgets reallocated, then we must learn to either understand and build upon them or transform them.
Margaret W. Slusher
Director of Church Planting
Leadership Network
Wow! This is the barrier we've been struggling with in our Strategic Direction team. The Team has a mental model, but the congregation has other models. We won't get far till we learn to bridge the gap.
Posted by: Michael Higgs | October 09, 2007 at 04:30 PM