Cohorts Notes 3-08-07

So we went as a team to Cohorts, which is always amazing. I wanted to post my notes so that anyone else might glean some info that might be helpful. So read the rest of the Article if you like.

CoHorts Notes
March 8, 2007
Keep the Vision Fresh!
The number one thing Mel hears from churches and church staff is that they don’t know where they are going. They are vision impaired.
Vision is being applied more to strategy than outcome.

Mission is being applies to outcome.
8 Errors Made by Organizations that Fail.
“Leading Change.”

1. Allowing too much complacency. — Church as Usual
2. Failing to create a sufficiently powerful guiding coalition — Not enough stake holders
3. Underestimating the Power of Vision
4. Under-communicating the vision by a factor of 10 (100, or 1,000).
5. Permitting obstacles to Block the Vision
6. Failing to Create short term wins
7. Declaring Victory too soon.
8. Neglecting to Anchor Changes firmly in the corporate culture

NOTE: 3 of the top 5 are connected to Vision. Churches that are failing are most likely struggling with vision problems.
Areas of Consensus from Leadership Research

1. Centrality of Values & Vision. — Have a Vision
2. Articulating and making meaningful the vision. — Help the people own the vision.
3. Need for trust and reliability
4. Leaders who know their strengths
5. Necessity of disagreement and conflict
6. Critical interplay of styles and situation in leadership.

Are we presenting a clear sound for our people?
We need the vision to sit in the hearts of the people.

Andy Stanley — Willow Creek Leader’s Summit
“If the Followers don’t get the vision it’s because the leaders haven’t delivered it.”
“If the Followers don’t own the vision it’s because the leaders Haven’t made it accessible.”
Clear Vision provides Focus, and cohesion and connection.
Where there is no focus there is sideways activity and no synergy.
Why Vision Doesn’t Stick

1. Success — brings options, and too many options confusion. And you can have a huge organization that adds complexity which is the enemy of vision. Everybody’s busy but you’ve lost your connection.
2. Failure — temptation to confuse plan and strategy with vision, failure makes folks believe that the strategy failure assumes vision failure. Plans and strategy must be flexible and changeable. Vision must be refined over time.
3. Everything in between — life works against vision. Vision is what could be and should be, life is about right this minute. To get people to embrace, remember, and understand what could be and should be is ripped down by the needs of today and the urgency of life.

How to Make it Stick

1. Cast it Strategically

• Provides Definition.

1. Be Strategic about when you cast it.
2. Be strategic about how you cast it (Needs to include – Define the Problem that needs to be solved, offer a solution – Vision, Present the Reason we must do this, and why we must do it now.) If you can’t do this, then you won’t cast compelling vision.
3. Celebrate it Systematically
   • Provides Inspiration (Puts Skin on the Vision
   • Make celebration a part of your culture.
   • People need to see what it looks like to hit the bull’s-eye on the target.
   • Staff meeting — Anything that helps you feel like you made progress in your mission?
   • Baptism — Wouldn’t it be great to do baptism every week?
4. Live it Continuously
   • Provides Credibility. Makes you a leader worth following.
   • Your willingness to embody the vision of your organization will give you credibility as a leader.
   • Do people ask, he would do it anyway? It’s not about prestige it’s about his heart-beat
   • If you lose your burden, you lose your passion if you lose your passion you lose your vision

Watching for Vision Leaks.

1. Keep an Eye on Programming — nothing defocuses a church like random program – think steps not programs
2. Listen to
3. Prayer Requests
4. Stories
5. What people complain about

Life is hard on vision but when you live it you have something to celebrate, when you celebrate it people will see it in you, and that will fuel your vision casting.
It’s gotta stick first on your heart.
– – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – –
No Perfect People Allowed – Questions

1. Ways your church can reach out to and connect with Post Modern or Post Christian society?
2. How can we help the un-churched overcome their struggles
3. What will we do in the next six months to reach more un-churched?

Are we intentional enough?

A Vision Strategy is a planned conflict with the Status Quo.

Three Dominant ways to strategic plan
1. Outcome Based Strategy
step by Step using outcome
Set Priorities – What Do you need to Do first (which should we give our greatest energy to so that we have greater return) leverage your energy on the highest return.
Strategically connect with your Church’s target
Strategically strengthen Your Church’s weakest primary strategy
Strategically Implement your church’s ministry model
Strategically align your church’s worship service style
strategically improve your church’s minimum health factor

2. Clarifying Your Wins

• Identifying your wins
• overall goals (wins)
  • Worship goals (wins)
  • evangelism goals (wins)
  • discipleship goals (wins)
  • community goals (wins)
  • ministry goals (wins)
  • serving goals (wins)
• Developing your strategy.
• Implementation Phase
• Overall Goals
• Weekend worship attendance
• People making Commitments to Christ
• people baptized in water
• people baptized in the Holy Spirit
• People in Discipleship
• People in a small groups
• People who are involved in ministry
• Now Break it down for
  • adult
  • youth
  • children

Focus on Minimum Church Health Factor

Vision Strategy
What is our Vision Strategy?
How will we get others as stakeholders with the strategy (ownership)?
How will we share it with the whole congregation?
How will we sustain motivation for the vision strategy?
Homework

• Bring Everything that is missing from our church Binder
• Bring Seven Copies of your vision strategy (implementation plan)
• Be Prepared to present it to the cohort