Thanks for following the “Of Mouse and Church” series, reflecting on the Disney Institute‘s professional development courses. I hope you are inspired with their content as much as I am! I encourage you to find out more about the courses at their website: www.disneyinstitute.com.
The focusing question of this series is this:
What would it be like for people to have a faith formation experience so extravagantly welcoming; with such radically inclusive hospitality; and so deeply Spirit-centered in God’s love that they were already excited and planning to return for another experience before they left the building?
I think there’s a lot of wisdom contained in Disney’s guest-centered experience that can help us live out our calling to follow in Christ’s Way of welcome. This is Part Four (the last part) of a multi-part post on the first of the Disney Institute’s Three Pillars Approach : Leadership Excellence.
Sustaining Sustenance
The Disney Institute’s thesis on leadership is this:
Leaders establish, operationalize, and sustain the values and vision by which organizations thrive.
The previous posts in this series spoke on:
- Finding the origins of and Establishing an organization’s values;
- Aligning personal and organizational values; and
- Operationalizing shared values to build a thriving organization.
I want to look at a key term that our American/Western business-tied society often takes for granted: “Leaders set the vision.”
I’ll start with this: I’m conflicted with this premise. Specifically in the context of faith communities, I am not totally in agreement that leaders establish the values and vision.
Here’s what challenges me: Values produce vision; and values come from history. Churches have a long history. They have buy-in to community-owned values that span generations. And likewise (or like it or not…) churches’ long history provide vision periods to be elongated. Whether this elongation is healthy or harmful depends on the leader’s and organizations alignment.
Similarly, when a faith leader casts a new vision and fails to communicate how is aligned with the community’s values, the risk to the new vision’s success is incredibly high. No connection, no buy-in.
I think something like these better fit the relationship between a faith leader and their faith community’s vision:
- Faith Leaders steward a vision owned within the community.
- Faith Leaders develop others to understand their alignment with the vision.
- Faith Leaders sustain the traditions and “grow” them into alignment with the current vision.
Maybe this is just a challenge of semantics. But as the Disney Institute presenter said, “Values don’t change easily, so vision must be aligned with them, natural and easy to enact.” So the role of Faith Leaders is to steward, develop, and sustain the vision. And their job is to do this in a way that is aligned with the community’s history, while still being vision-focused for today.
Processes in Practice
Every faith community has its observations and practices that are driven by their vision. And so, too, do guest service/experience companies like Disney. Some of them are easy to see in action. Others are behind-the-scene (or backstage, in Disney parlance) but are just as essential to the vision.
But love is really more of an interactive process.
It’s about what we do not just what we feel.
It’s a verb, not a noun.
bell hooks
For a visual, here are Disney’s values and my congregation’s values in parallel:
| Disney | St. John UCC |
|---|---|
| Creativity | Christ’s Way is our inspiration |
| Innovation | An Extravagant Welcome in our Community |
| Belonging | Love for all |
| Storytelling | Worship is our Center |
| Ethics | Mission and Service |
| Optimism | |
| Decency |
For Disney, connecting their values with the organizational processes helps them to be “the world’s premiere entertainment company.” The processes are the lived-out vision in day-to-day decisions and actions. It does help to understand where a given process came from, and what part of the values did it grow from. The values are also understood against the Five Keys: Safety, Courtesy, Show, Efficiency, and Inclusion (Yes, it used to be four for those who are in the know). FYI, we’ll talk more about the Five Keys when they come up in “Quality Service.”
Here’s a little process, that any guest to Walt Disney World or Disneyland has witnessed: The Disney Point.
A widely circulated myth holds that this practice is retained in homage to Walt Disney himself…
But that’s not true. The real reason the cast members always use two fingers is that in some cultures — particularly in Asian cultures, where pointing tends to be associated with blame — it is considered extremely rude to point with your index finger. And nobody needs that at Disney.
(with thanks to Weird Disney)
The eponymous two-finger point is part of the value of “Belonging.” By extension, its use demonstrates the key of Courtesy. Disney Institutes has this to say:
Organizational processes reflect the values of the leaders who created them.
So how’s this as a parallel in church life: The Open Table.
We believe that all people of faith are invited to join Christ at Christ’s table for the sacrament of Communion. Just as many grains of wheat are gathered to make one loaf of bread and many grapes are gathered to make one cup of wine, we, the many people of God, are made one in the body of Christ, the church.
from “What We Believe” at ucc.org
The invitation is “Extravagant Welcome” lived out loud. It’s also an example of Christ’s Way inspiring the vision of the church.
One might not even be aware of these processes (unless you’ve experienced the opposite lived-out). They speak quietly to a vision that can be seen transparently in simple actions.
Seeing with Vision
The more a vision can be expressed in a vivid, imaginative way, the more it will motivate people to action in the present.
Disney Institutes on “A Leader’s vision”
There’s a story that the Disney Institute shared about Walt Disney that demonstrates his seeing with vision. In the early years of animation, Walt got an idea to move from the short cartoon-style animation to a full length feature film. His idea was tell the story of Snow White and the Seven Dwarves. Here’s the brief version of how he expressed it “in a vivid, imaginative way:”
Of all the countless stories and anecdotes about Walt Disney, one of the most iconic and oft-recounted by those who knew him was of the fateful evening in the mid-1930s when Walt assembled his core group of artists in the sound stage at the Disney studio on Hyperion Avenue. There, without aid or introduction, Walt single-handedly performed the story of what would become Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937). Adopting the voices and gestures of each character, he moved across the stage and held their rapt attention. “We were spellbound,” Art Director Ken Anderson would remember, “He was all by himself and he acted out this fantastic story.”
with thanks from thee Walt Disney Family Museum
“It’s okay, and often necessary to be unconventional when presenting your vision” Disney Institute says. “You’re often looking ot change ingrained behaviors, and that might require a jolt to the system.”
Vivid, Imaginative, Motivational, and Actionable; in inspirational language with aspirational goals. What a great way to describe the Christ’s Way in the Gospels. I can imagine, though, that early in his work, Jesus too had to find the right way to talk about God’s Realm–to find the right words to inspire, and the right means to share their motivational message. As we are blessed with the stories and parables that allow us our motivation and “actionable” life in faith.
In their telling, what did Jesus do? He “performed the stories,” acting out each voice. He inspired the “wrapped attention” of the Disciples and the crowds. And he motivated them all to catch the vision of a world that could be more inclusive, more loving, and more centered on God’s call.
The role of the leader is to understand all of this. The challenge for is is to put the message into words or images–vivid and imaginative ones. And then we are called to bring that “ambitious view of the future” into every part of the faith community. Centered in Christ’s example, we are called to show a future that is better than what now exists, that everyone can believe in and have ownership to bring to flower.
A Vision for Today
This is the heart of the matter (or as Disney Institute reminds us):
Leaders establish, operationalize, and sustain the values and vision by which organizations thrive.
So here’s the list of key ideas from my journey with the Disney Institute:
- It’s all about Relationships, the “business” of being church is discovering who is our neighbor. It takes us, the people, to make the dream a reality;
- Leadership is Discipleship; and Discipleship, Leadership. And every person, member and guest, leads in their individual giftedness within the church;
- Telling our Story helps everyone understand who God has called us to be and do. We can help others understand what we believe (our values) and where we feel God is calling us (our vision);
- Once you know your values, you can look to your vision. The more vividly the vision is expressed, the more clearly others will be motivated to be part of it; and
- It’s up to the Leaders to communicate and steward the vision for the faith community, their “ambitious view of the future,” with a passion and conviction that everyone in the community can believe in.
We’ll be “testing” this five-point summary will be tested and rarified in the lived practices of congregational life at St. John UCC over the coming year. Specifically, we will be looking at how our ministry can better live out our values and vision as we plan for the next “season” of church life in staffing, ministry programs, and mission outreach.
This is the conclusion of this section of my experience with the Disney Institute: On Leadership Excellence. I’ll be reflecting on two additional parts of their wisdom, “Employee Engagement” and “Quality Service.” We’ll see how these translate to “Living our Faith Out Loud,” and “Practicing what we Preach.”
For now, I say, “Thank you!” for the time you spent reflecting with me on the Disney Institute’s lessons on leadership excellence.
What’s Next?
I invite you to join me in prayerful discernment on how God is calling us to understand our Leadership, Engagement, and Service. And I invite you to help form the language that best speaks about these areas from our heritage and values.
This series will be posting out over the next week, and I’d love to hear what you think about seeing the church through Mouse-shaped glasses. Do leave a comment and add to the conversation.
Until next time, friends. Hope to see you real soon!
-HEF
Note: You can read about the inspiration and the foundations of my 2024 Sabbatical by following this link.
