Gaining Clarity

I have had a problem in the past trying to explain to people my drive within the church to make changes that I know are for the best for the Kingdom of God. Since going into ministry I have had this burning desire to help transform the church.

In seminary I was taught to think theologically. Duke burned that into my brain. When I graduated, I was cocky enough to believe that they had done that. So I could teach, preach, and serve as a pastor. What they didn't teach me was how to take a dying church and a dying denomination and make it great, not just good. I thought for a while, who am I that I think I can do this? Then I began to study the people God used in the Bible to do great things. They were everyday, ordinary people that God chose to use. God does great things through people.

So I can think theologically, I can preach, and I can serve. But so can the vast majority of other pastors in my denomination and in the churches that I have pastored. So the question that has haunted me is, why aren't those churches great? Why isn't my denomination great?

The answer that kept coming to my mind wasn't theological. It was leadership. So I started reading everything I could on leadership. The only problem was that the only sector writing on leadership was the business world. I was so convinced that the difference was a leadership void in the church that I didn't care where I was getting the information, just as long as I was learning what it meant to be great.

Today, I read a monograph to accompany Jim Collins' book Good to Great - Good to Great and the Social Sectors. Collins writes about why business thinking is not the answer for non-profit organizations like the church.

"In my work with nonprofits, I find that they're in desperate need of greater discipline - disciplined planning, disciplined people, disciplined governance, disciplined allocation of resources."

"'What makes you think that's a business concept?' I replied. 'Most businesses also have a desperate need for great discipline. Mediocre companies rarely display the relentless culture of discipline - disciplined people who engage in disciplined thought and who take disciplined action - that we find in truly great companies. A culture of discipline is not a principle of business; it is a principle of greatness.'"

There it is. The thing I have been in search of is not business practices, but principles of greatness. I have been in search of this because inherently I believe that if anything on earth is going to be great it should be the church of Jesus Christ!