Category: Leadership

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:

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.

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 Three of a multi-part post on the first of the Disney Institute’s Three Pillars Approach : Leadership Excellence.

I invite you to consider the three stories below, and what happened because of the values on display. And yes, these are real events in real churches (though the names and places have been changed). A warning: The story sections make the post longer than typical. I’ve formatted them with “Click Downs” so you can read the summary (TL:DR) section, and then open the full story and theological reflection for each. Also, You can skip reading the stories, and jump to the summary by clicking this link.

Values into Vision

The Disney Institute’s thesis on leadership is this:

Leaders establish, operationalize, and sustain the values and vision by which organizations thrive.

In the first post in this series, we looked at the origins of our values and where they drive our vision. In the second post, we looked at our alignment between the our values, our unit organization’s values (the local church), and the our larger organization’s (denominational/tradition) values.

Now, we’re going to look at the Operationalizing part: how things can become transformational when values are aligned. This creates a system of shared values. Or as Disney Institutes puts it:

Creating a system of shared values indicates what an organization stands for.

This idea of systemic values is one of the challenges in leading faith communities. Like I said in the last post, we’ll tell stories to integrate theory and real-life. I give homage to the master of this style of story/theory writing, Patrick Lencioni. Take some time and see if Pat’s wisdom gets you thinking!

The Story of “The Over-doer”

TL:DR

A new member of a faith community sees unmet opportunities for the group; but fails to understand how the community is living its values. Disney Institute gives this wisdom:

Leaders must intentionally align and integrate their values with the organization’s values.

The Story

The Inspiration

The story of “My Way or…”

TL:DR

A church staff and mission team come into a values conflict with the Lead Pastor, largely because the pastor did not share their beliefs openly with the congregation. Disney Institutes notes:

Creating a system of shared values indicates what an organization stands for.

When leaders’ and organizations’ values create conflicting priorities, the mis-alignment isn’t good for either party.

The Story

I was working with our Social Activism group on a project to support marriage equality (NB: this was before 2015). We got all of the way through the committee work, set up a four-part speaker series, and invited a pretty well-known attorney/activist to teach us how to use our social and peer networks to advance the cause.

We brought the whole plan to the Mission & Outreach Ministry (who oversees the group), and presented what had been planned. At the end of the presentation, the pastor - who knew all about the efforts - pulled back from the table and said, "No, I don't support this. My faith tells me that it's not Christian."

The group was dumbstruck, but continued on. They shared about the polling they had done with the congregation, and the high percentage of support within the church and the wider community. The committee nodded along. It seemed like we had their buy-in. 

The bottom line came at the end of the session, "This isn't an egalitarian ministry. I said 'No,' and I mean 'No.'" And that's where it stopped. 
The next week, the pastor and I sat down, and was reprimanded for not doing what they instructed me to do (even though they never voiced their opinion prior. So, benign neglect became active derision. I'm out.

The Inspiration

The Story of “Well, that happened…”

TL:DR

A retiring pastor and a declining congregation come together with the help of their judicatory leaders to vision themselves into a revitalized future. Disney Institutes notes:

Vision provides an ambitious view of the future that everyone in the organization can believe in and promises a future that is better than what now exists.

The Story

The Inspiration

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 we’re building this list of key ideas. Let’s keep them in mind:

• 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; and
• 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

The next post will wrap up the section on Leadership Excellence. I think it may be better to call this “Inspired Leadership” in our “Of Mouse and Church” thinking. It’s the Spirit that is still-speaking into our creative and engaged ministries. Specifically, we’re going to look at how a leader can cast a vision, communicate the vision with passion and conviction, and help the community sustain the vision through easy times and difficult ones (and we have our COVID stories to share about “those times!”).

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.

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 Two of a a multi-part post on the first of the Disney Institute’s Three Pillars Approach : Leadership Excellence.

Values into Vision

The Disney Institute’s thesis on leadership is this:

Leaders establish, operationalize, and sustain the values and vision by which organizations thrive.

In the first post in this series, we looked at the origins of our values and where they drive our vision. It’s good to keep in mind how the values remain foundational: remembering the original sources. They are as important as the regualr review of the “now.” They help us whom who we are and what we stand for. And maybe, they will help to tell us why we’re going where we’re going. Our values help us “explain the why” of what we believe and do.

For example, one of Jesus’ first “values” statement comes from his first words out of the desert:

“The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to set free those who are oppressed, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”

Luke 4:18-19 (NRSV-UE)

Right off the mark, the value of sharing the Gospel’s good news to the poor (in Gustavo Gutierrez’ words, a “preferential option for the poor”). That comes from freedom for the imprisoned, renewed sight for the blind, and the release those who have been crushed. And why is this the case? Because it is time to proclaim the year of God’s favor. So, Leaders/Disciples, how do we engage our Progressive Christian values with this vision to celebrate this?

Operationalizing our Values

Knowing the “Why?”, we turn our attention to the “How”: the vision.

Disney Institute has a great concept on moving from “Why” to “How,” from values to vision, called the Leadership Lens. They say beginning with consistent values, and expanding the vision to the present, and planning for the future, an organization can “build a culture by design.”

They emphasize that this “culture by design” happens when leadership and the organization have values that are aligned with each other. It starts with the proactive presence of the values. It changes in application to a given situation (as we can see in the Epistles of Paul and others). Even with this situational awareness of circumstance, the leaders are there to staunchly defend against potential threats to the values.

Finally, Disney Institute shares this belief:

“Everyone should be considered a leader.”

This is one of the parts of their leadership model that I find compelling for faith communities. The idea that everyone is equally invested is exciting! The belief that every member of its community are leaders shapes the lived ownership of the future. It creates a culture, by design, that acknowledges the unique giftedness that God has knitted into their being. What a great acknowledgement of their personhood!

An important lesson from Venn Diagrams

One of the repeated themes in the Disney Institute’s sessions on Leadership is this: “Tell your story.” By sharing who we are as people, and what our values are and where our values come from, we can help others understand where shapes our vision.

The idea is that when a person’s values are integrated within their “local” working area, and the values of that area are integrated with that of their larger organization, the aligned values will shine out. People will know what you believe, and what you stand for.
Note: This diagram is modified from the original (leader, unit, and organization) to reflect our focus on leadership in the church.

When a leader’s values are aligned with that of their organization, that is when the magic happens. This is key, as we’ll discuss in a moment. While local values may differ, they should still be aligned with the larger organization. In the case of churches, it helps others see what we believe and how we live in Christ’s Way every day. And, it helps us to demonstrate that our words and our actions match our values.

Telling our Story

One of the great things about our faith tradition is the dependence on Telling our Story. Jesus’ love for parable and storytelling is one of the tools that allowed the Gospel’s good news to spread fast. We have a great example of a value-sharing story in Matthew 13. I find it fun that the Disciples ask Jesus, “Why do you speak to them in parables?” He answers them with a story: The Parable of the Sower.

“Listen! A sower went out to sow. And as he sowed, some seeds fell on a path, and the birds came and ate them up. Other seeds fell on rocky ground, where they did not have much soil, and they sprang up quickly, since they had no depth of soil. But when the sun rose, they were scorched, and since they had no root, they withered away. Other seeds fell among thorns, and the thorns grew up and choked them. Other seeds fell on good soil and brought forth grain, some a hundredfold, some sixty, some thirty. If you have ears, hear!”

Matthew 13:3-9 (NRSVUE)

What can we learn from the Parable of the Sewer and our Venn Diagram on “aligned values?” Play with this story, and the tree parts of our Venn Diagram:

• It happens when a leader’s vision for ministry is strong, and aligned with the denomination’s values, but not in sync with the local congregation’s heritage. That creates a tension within the vision that breaks the relationship between shepherd and flock–an “Us and Them” relationship. The seeds on this path dry up, since the only place they are fed is where the pastor can tend them.
• And it also happens that the leader’s vision is not aligned with the denomination’s values, but the congregation holds tightly to their identity within the denomination. That creates a different tension within–a separation due to a “We and You” relationship. Here the thorns grow among the wheat, with competing visions vying for the available resources.
• Third (since there are three parts of this Venn system), it happens that the leader and the congregation have a mutual vision, but that vision does not align with the denomination’s identity. Part of me wants to say that this is the most distancing relationship. It cuts off the wider heritage and relationships that helped form a faith community’s original values. This tension–an “Us and only Us” relationship–is the seeds on rocky ground. No roots matter, only the moment’s most passionate vision.

But, listen with your ears (hidden Mickey moment!): When each of us as Leaders in our Churches, and Disciples of Christ’s Way, ensure that our values are aligned If all three parts are aligned, that “good earth” moment happens! It creates an ambitious view of the future that everyone can believe in, and promises a future that is better than what now exits.

A Vision for Today

Let’s keep these things in mind:

• 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; and
• 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).

In the next post, we’re going to get super-practical on this (because while some folks like theory, others prefer the practical. It’s two different ways to tell the story! We’ll see how these seeds grow from the fertile earth of our Spirit-inspired minds!

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.

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 One of a a multi-part post on the first of the Disney Institute’s Three Pillars Approach : Leadership Excellence.

Leadership and Discipleship

A quick review of the Three Pillars:

1. Leadership Excellence
2. Employee Engagement
3. Quality Service

Honestly, I thought about working from #3 to #1, because it’s easy to talk about church work from a service-delivery perspective. It’s how we coach so many of our decisions. “We have extra funds. What mission can we help out?” “The food pantry needs more cereal. How can we fill that need?” Churches like to be pragmatic more than they like to be planful and purposeful. This hurts our efforts to build authentic relationships, though. Our guests get a confusing picture of who we are, and what God is calling us to do or be (Thanks, Gil Rendle and Alice Mann!).

The Disney Institute’s thesis on leadership is:

Leaders establish, operationalize, and sustain the values and vision by which organizations thrive.

They also note that: “An organization’s values often form intentionally by proactive leaders or organically in the presence of all types of leaders.” Given the nature of the relationships within faith communities–volunteer-based and membership driven–organic values tend to be the norm. They grow out out of interpersonal interactions and shared passions. But what if leaders looked to be intentionally organic, creating space for the values to come to fruit like the “seeds that fell on good ground?” This is where faith communities thrive, holding to their historic commitments while granting space for the Spirit to move and nurture.

No matter how a faith community’s decision-making is organized, our actions in how we serve our ministries are driven by the values and vision behind how we are organized. In our Christian context: Leadership is Discipleship; and Discipleship, Leadership.

Our discernment for today is in defining the foundational values, where they came from, and how they are alive in the faith community’s vision today.

Establishing the Values and Founding a Vision

In faith communities, especially long-living ones, “establishing” the values and visions of the organization is a tricky topic. We’ve got scriptural sources, and historical testimonies, and denominational differences, and internal community legacies–each establishing part of the values. So in my context, where do we claim our Progressive Christian values originate? I think it looks something like this:

• Jesus’ life and ministry described in the Gospels starts us off (Christ is our center).
• Paul and others in the “origin era” systematize the norms of what the church will become.
• Empire and Christendom take over, and codify what’s good (orthodox) and what’s not (heresy).
• The Reformation reformed (as it does), resetting the values and recasting the vision-even in the parts of the church that rejected the Reformation.
• And the modern, postmodern/metamodern church of today keeps that rolling reform going.

I want to acknowledge these Spirit-driven revisions that keep the church alive–and celebrate them. There’s a tendency to seek a history of “the church” that is monolithic and single-origin, or to call back to a specific point in the history of Christianity. Some would use the words like Biblical, or Traditional, or even Orthodox, and fixate on a moment as a defining “golden era.” Yes, there are threads that continue across the eras, and there are other ones that were knit in at different points that are now purely historical. That’s how a living history works.

Legacy, Heritage and Values

The past is malleable and flexible, changing as our recollection interprets and re-explains what has happened.

Peter L. Berger

As the engaged Body of Christ, the church is a growing, responsive body thriving in its unique time and place. Cultural historians will tell us, and our own experience confirms regularly: our history is as old as the one who told us the story. But it also has a lot to do with a faith community’s lived history. Take for example my current church:

• The founders were German immigrants, who left to escape the oppression and economic exploitation of the Thirty Years’ War.
• They arrived in their new community, and were challenged as outsiders (though the community was under 2,000 people, and occupying the land of a displaced Ho Chunk village for about twenty years old when they arrived).
• They cared deeply for family life, for raising children, and educating them in both their German heritage and the culture of new home
• And they were Reformed Evangelical Christians, coming from both Lutheran and Calvinist traditions.

The last of these, their faith life, was bound to their understanding of self. It informed their response to the trauma of their homeland, the challenge of their new home, and their care for family. These experiences formed their values: Social and Economic Justice; Welcome and Inclusion; Education; and community. Advance these values across their 175 years of Discipleship, and you will find story after story of how the congregation was led by these ideals!

Hmm… Maybe sharing those stories will make it into another post!

Establishing a Vision

Again, Leadership is Discipleship; and Discipleship, Leadership. Once we know the foundational values, we can focus on where they are driving our actions and decisions. So, let’s ponder this together: What is the basis for the values for a faith community?

• Is it the sacred texts? And if so, which parts provide the values: the verses, the midrash/interpretation, or the apologist?
• Is it heritage and/or legacy? How does that understanding get codified as core? And what happens when heritage is proven to be “complex” or mis-remembered?

In the next post, we’ll look at how the values become infused into the culture and vision. Holding consistently to our values helps us to build a culture “by design.” We’ll see how making our values foundational in our decision-making helps to set expectations for who our community is known to be, and what they are known for doing.

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.

This is the second post in the “Of Mouse and Church” series. It’s my reflections on sharing in the Disney Institute‘s three-part 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?

Or to reframe the question in a quick sound-bite:

What if churches did ministry like Disney does entertainment?

I remain convinced: there’s a lot of wisdom contained in Disney’s guest-centered focus that can help churches live out Christ’s Way of welcome.

Before we get into the core content of the Institute’s three focus areas:

1. Leadership Excellence;
2. Employee Engagement; and
3. Quality Service,

I wanted to address the topic of using corporate business models within faith communities. This has been a pretty hot debate over the last two decades. And if we want to read the church’s whole history, truthfully a lot longer!

The Business of Church: the Books

I will start with this disclaimer. The Christian Church a lot of different leadership models in our faith communities over the years. From the three traditional church structures: Episcopal, Presbyterian, and Congregational; to the Military Hierarchy model of the post-World War era; to the Top-Down Business Hierarchies of the 1970s and 1980s; we’ve organized ourselves in many diverse ways. And in each model, there were successes and there were failures. And this I believe is because of this truth: Business Leadership and Faith Community Leadership are NOT the same thing.

There’s a ton of books out there that posit this idea, though: that churched can be run “like a business.” I read ones with this philosphy when they came out 20+ years ago. Books like Jesus, CEO; The Leadership Lessons of Jesus; and Jesus on Leadership were the vogue. I do not diminish these authors’ convictions in their books–they speak their thesis well.

The answer I read from these books was the intrinsic success of the “business” of church. Attendance, and mission collections, and online click-throughs and website views are important data to consider. They can tell you whether the weather was bad on a Sunday, and if people stayed home because of the Super Bowl. They can show if your social media and website are working to welcome potential guests (and if its worth the investment to redux the page). And they can give data on if you’ve made your case for that new mission project. What they cannot help you discern is what people feel when they are to be part of the faith community.

I offer this challenge. What is it that brought you to match a success-focused business with being a strong community of faithful people?

The Challenge of “Consumer Churches”

The business of being church is something different.

Eugene Peterson shared an excellent witness on this in The Jesus Way. He spoke of “the American way,” looking at the peculiar tendencies of American Christian churches to become “consumer churches.” Here’s a link to an excerpt at Eerdman’s.

Now, I would not be honest if I didn’t say I find inspiration from these books. I do love the organizational management wisdom of Patrick Lencioni. I have used his work in managing the business side of congregational life for many years. (Death by Meeting being a favorite!). I embrace the soft-but-firm guidance of Margaret Wheatley, and her call to embrace each other in collaboration. Spend some time with Turning to One Another, or her latest Restoring Sanity.

Yes, their work is also used in business leadership. But there is a difference. Lencioni and Wheatley, and their peers in thought, focus on the interpersonal to meet their desired outcomes. And I find this more authentic to Jesus’ call to the Disciples. Yes, it’s intangible. Yes, it’s emotional. And here’s a hint: It’s all about relationship!

The Business of Church: Relationships

You can design and create, and build the most wonderful place in the world. But it takes people to make the dream a reality.

Walt Disney

I believe that faith communities that are centered on a vision that builds Relationships is the answer to our question. Let’s start with this as a first premise. This is where the fire of Spirit-excitement to return is fueled.

And for a second premise, I believe this is from where our successes should be scaled. This isn’t a numbers game of tithes and offerings, or a weekly filled seats-in-the-sanctuary counting. Those measurements are helpful marks, yes. They are secondary indicators, though. They measure the health of the community’s center: its relationships.

Benjamin Cremer said this of the value of those relationships in Matthew’s Gospel:

Matthew 25 tells us that when [the son of man] returns and judges between the righteous and unrighteousness, he doesn’t judge them based on their orthodoxy, their patriotism, or their individual definitions of morality.

[They] judge them based on their compassion towards vulnerable people.

Benjamin Cremer

Compassion, being vulnerable with the vulnerable in our society. Cremer’s got it. “When did we do this?” “Whenever you did it to the one in need,” is the answer we receive. When you engaged in relationship.

I also believe that we need to learn from the values knitted into our history and traditions. They’ve brought us to this time and place. It’s the “This is the song we sing every year on All Saints’ Day.” And it’s the hot wax of Christmas Eve candles on our fingers. It’s knowing that our old Sunday school teachers will be there when we come back from college. It’s the sum of where our faith community has been that brings us to today’s moment in ministry. Lots of decisions, lots of engagements, lots of relationships–all leading to now.

The church today does embody the founding principles of the Gospel. And it also holds the apologetics of the Epistles, and the generations of Christian theology in everything we do. I take that as granted. And we, the body of Christ right now, also embody a living, growing Spirit, inspired to live out those values in light of today’s realized experiences.

It takes us, the people, to make the dream a reality. It takes relationships.

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. 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.

This question has been bouncing around in my morning devotionals for some time:

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?

The words of the question have varied, but the essence is still there: how do we create a “Kairos Moment” in every moment as a faith community?

Today, we continue to live out of the liminal period created by the COVID-19 Global Pandemic. We are still realizing its lasting impact on our community life and decisions about where we spend our time together. And these decisions impact our faith communities directly–we’re built to be together!

I believe that we need to pray, ponder, and discern what it means for us to Be the Church now as we grow into tomorrow. And I believe that this discernment is rooted in the joy that comes from God’s presence in our lives every day. I trust that God is still speaking, and still calling us together into the world in ministry.

Now, let’s cover some background thoughts, and see what magic moments we can find in answering the question!

Seeing Church Through Mouse-shaped Lenses

Leadership, Engagement, and Service. These three principles are the core of the guest service/guest experience created every day across The Walt Disney Company. They are realized in their mission: to entertain, inform and inspire people around the globe through the power of unparalleled storytelling, reflecting the iconic brands, creative minds and innovative technologies that make ours the world’s premier entertainment company.

But they are also something else. These three principles are what being church is all about, too. We just have a different language for it: Presence, Witness, and Blessing, or Discipleship, Relationship, and Outreach. These words are how we express our values and vision in living our faith out loud. This is the part of Mouse and Church that got my pondering heart beating a little faster.

To reframe the question in a quick sound-bite:

What if churches did ministry like Disney does entertainment?

This series of reflections comes from my participating in the Disney Institute‘s three-part professional development courses (and seeing their values lived out on a recent trip to Walt Disney World Resort). I hope to inspire you with their content as much as I was! Please take a moment to find out more about the courses at their website: www.disneyinstitute.com.

Leadership, Engagement, and Service

“Whatever you do, do it well. Do it so well that when people see you do it, they will want to come back and see you do it again, and they will want to bring others and show them how well you do what you do.”

Walt Disney

I believe that when faith communities are open the person-first nature of ministry– following Christ’s example of welcome and service–the “business” of the church is creating the most welcoming, deeply personal, and faith-centered “guest” experience every time we open our doors.

And this is where Disney Institute’s approach meets today’s kairos moment. Over this series of posts, I’ll be sharing more on the three pillars of the program:

1. Leadership Excellence
2. Employee Engagement
3. Quality Service

and how these pillars are analogous to the behaviors, the values, and the vision behind being church today. Again, we’re going to find that we have a different language than Disney does, and we’ll need to interpret their insights through the lens of a progressive Christian faith community.

But I remain convinced: 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.

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.