Building an Organization to Last
Building a sustainable organization is much more difficult than you may assume. One of my goals in any new organization I’m involved with is to ensure it is ‘bigger than me’. As an entrepreneur this means you are not creating a company that provides you with a job but are building an organization that would continue on without you (Suggested Reading The E-Myth Revisited: Why Most Small Businesses Don’t Work and What to Do About It
Regardless of whether you are a church planter or an entrepreneur, recently I read a helpful book, called Predictable Success: Getting Your Organization On the Growth Track–and Keeping It There
Snapshot: ‘Predictable Success’ is the peak of the mountain, it’s what every organization does (or should) aspire towards. It is when everyone in the organization expects to succeed, where there is a healthy state of innovation and entrepreneurial new vision and the company has the necessary amount of systems and processes to help realize these expectations. It’s that state where the engine is tuned perfectly and you know that if you put gas in the tank, turn on the ignition, put it in gear, take off the brake, and press the accelerator – the organization will go forward.
The author, Les McKeown, breaks down an organizations state into 7 different phases that are:
- Early Struggle
- Fun
- Whitewater
- Predictable Success
- Treadmill
- The Big Rut
- Death Rattle
Here is a quick summary of these phases:
‘Predictable Success’ is the pinnacle, the top of the hill, what every new organization aspires towards. But let’s face facts, most businesses are born and die in the first one. In the ‘Early Struggle’, existence is all about finding the right customers with the right product or service and making a sufficient level of profit just to survive. It becomes ‘Fun’ when cashflow is positive and the business is succeeding and growing. But as the organization grows it reaches the ‘Whitewater’ – where the volume of orders and demands from customers exceed the organization’s ability to cope – fast and loose becomes fast and lost, and the organization begins to struggle because it needs more structure and process to cope with its own success. If the organization succeeds in establishing the systems and processes necessary to manage their growth, then they enter ‘Predictable Success’, but usually at some point organizations go too far with systems and processes and the culture and success of the organization begins to suffer. Left unchecked the organization falls into ‘The Big Rut’ – where people begin to work for the systems and processes instead of for the customers. And left unaddressed, companies in ‘The Big Rut’ will continue to bleed cash until they face the ‘Death Rattle’ and end up being sold or going bankrupt. Quote Source: Blogging Innovation
Reading this book caused me to reflect on my involvement in 6 church plants and 3 start-up companies since moving to San Diego CA in September of 2001. (Prior to that I started 2 companies in the 90′s and was at Mars Hill Seattle when it was relatively new at about 100 people). In all this time I’ve had some successes (eg. selling a couple companies) and failures (closing the doors on a couple companies) but all in all it’s been great to see the up’s and down’s first-hand and gain experience. But in many the phases cited by McKeown seem to hold true.
You can see this isn’t just for companies. As a church you can see how this impacts you. For example, what happens when your church grows too fast and how do you ‘process’ people? (Something I experienced at Mars Hill when they went through rapid growth, at the time I handed Driscoll a copy of the E-Myth) People can feel too systematized (treadmill) or miss opportunities to move into deeper community (whitewater).
We have experienced these phases acutely at Monk Development, Inc. (MonkDev). Many of you that read my blog are probably aware of this company (MonkDev) I began in 2003 to help church planters get a great website, but more than that, a total church web strategy. At the time, I wanted to help church planters like myself attract more visitors as well as deepen the relationship and communication with their existing community.
Since the launch of our Content Management System (birthed by Etienne de Bruin one of my two partners at Monk) we have grown from 0 to roughly 4,000 churches and ministries that use our technology to manage their presence on the web. Today, we serve large ministries like World Vision, one of the top-10 largest churches in American (Calvary Chapel Ft. Lauderdale launching soon!), church planters with 5 people in their basement and everything in-between. In this time we have gone from 0 to 20 people and this year we were recognized by the San Diego Business Journal as the 12th Fastest Growing Privately Held Company in San Diego County. With all this growth comes its share of problems. The year 2008 particularly was our ‘Whitewater’ experience. We were landing so many deals that we could not keep up with the growth and the lack of systems couldn’t keep up.
I am very thankful that this drove the leadership to seek help. In addition to prayer, this was the year I joined EO, James (our other partner who oversees operations) joined Vistage, Etienne joined the Web Leaders Collective, we brought in the 180 Group to help align us and we also were selected by the Chairmen’s Roundtable who served as a Board of Advisors for about 6-months. I really believe that by the grace of God we experienced all this pain to clarify our calling and work through very difficult circumstances as a team. It has not been an easy process at all, but it’s amazing what clarifying and unifying around vision and strategy does to the health of an organization. We agreed that: MonkDev seeks to redeem culture for the good of all using technology. We believe this means that we seek the good of our world primarily through serving the web needs of churches, non-profits and organizations that share our passion.
If you are building an organization, I recommend the above books. Also check out Small Giants: Companies That Choose to Be Great Instead of Big
GCM Collective Update
It’s been great to see the online community of GCM Collective grow to over 1,500 missional thinkers and over 10,000 people signed up on the mailing list. For those of you not involved here is a taste of what is going on:
Instead of doing a National Conference, we held GCM Everyday Austin 2010 a local conference that gathered over 300 missional thinkers in Austin. Our desire was to not have people fly from around the country, pay for hotels and the like, when we can host these GCM Everday’s in cities near you.
1. To help us plan where we host these, please put the city you are in under your Profile (if you haven’t already) so we can strategically plan these trainings. To edit your profile, click on profile on the sidebar under the “Hi, your name”.
2. To share some of these resources, we’ve created a new group called GCM Everyday Training. Go to http://gcm.cobblestonecn.com/group/browse/ to find this group & join. All the resources are an “open source” collection created by all of us in the www.gcmcollective.com. Feel free to take these resources and tweak them for personal use:
- Gospel Fluency – Jeff Vanderstelt
- 3 Marks of Gospel Community Formation
- 3 Steps for Gospel Community Multiplication
- Missional Community Leader Checklist
Lastly, join in the conversation. Recent topics include: [To participate you must sign-up at http://www.gcmcollective.com/community/ ]
- Rate of Multiplication
- Working in the tension between the ideal and the real
- Traditional to Missional
- Cell Church
- How Do We Contextualize Missional Church Resources For Our People and More…
- How do u teach the gospel to small kids?
- Immigration and the Kingdom
- Moving from Mercy to Justice Ministry
- Can Missional culture survive in a business model?
- Do we need to meet in groups?
- A communal life vs. a busy life
- Frontyard Parties
- equipping parents to disciple their children
- “Sending” Songs
- Launch strategy query
- What gospel-centered international local churches and/or missionaries would you recommend?
and many more! Remember, to participate you must sign-up at http://www.gcmcollective.com/community/
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Exponential Communication & Technology Track Sessions
Just finalized the Communication & Technology Track Sessions for Exponential 2011. If you do anything at a church, this is one conference you won’t want to miss!
Preconference Session: OUTSPOKEN: Conversations on Church Communications
Session facilitators include: Kem Meyer, Tim Schraeder, Justin Wise, and others.
The church has the greatest story ever told, unfortunately we don’t always do a great job of sharing it with others. In today’s hyper-connected world we need to know how to use mediums of today to communicate the timeless message of the Gospel in way that’s relevant to reach our culture. This prelab will bring together some of the leading voices that are shaping and influencing the ways churches communicate and give you the opportunity to discuss and dialogue how we can steward the opportunity we have to share the greatest story ever told with clarity.
These proven practitioners will share their insight, share how they’ve implemented significant change in their unique contexts and give you next steps to create a communications strategy for your church. All in attendance will receive a free copy of the forthcoming ebook OUTSPOKEN: Conversations on Church Communications, a collaborative ebook bringing together over 60 different voices to talk about the topic of church communications.
Breakout: The Story-formed Way: Making Disciples with Biblical Narrative and Dialogue
Speaker: Caesar Kalinowski
Is the Church speaking the language of the culture we find ourselves in? 2/3 of our planet is still illiterate, and a growing percentage of North Americans are becoming less literate. God’s story, and his interaction with man, was originally given as an oral document—a story. The Bible we have today is approximately 75% narrative. God has given us a way, for all generations, to communicate his great gospel—through story.
In this breakout we will look at the missional imperative of speaking the language of the culture and how this is being done through the use of biblical narrative to create, encourage and equip gospel communities on mission.
Breakout: Social Media for the Rest of Us
Speaker: Justin Wise
Author Clay Shirky says that we are a people “looking for a mouse.” As a society, we’ve come to expect interactivity in all that we do. What, then, do we do with a culture that expects interaction even while at church?
In this session, we’ll look at the “why?” and the “how?” of the social web. We’ll look at how you can build interactive communal experiences into the lifeblood of your church. We’ll demystify social media and see how we can harness the power of these new communication tools for the sake of the gospel. It’s social media for the rest of us.
Breakout: Reworking Church Communications
Speaker: Tim Schraeder
One of the challenges of managing church communications is knowing when you need to change. With the fast-paced culture of change we live in, being able, willing and knowing when to change is vital in staying connected with your audience. Oftentimes, conventional wisdom won’t work. Sometimes you need to REWORK how you’re communicating. Using principles and ideas adapted from the New York Times Best-Seller REWORK (Jason Fried, David Heinemeier Hansson), this session will challenge you to rework your church communications to effectively adapt your message to reach your audience
Breakout: Everything a Pastor needs to know about the Web
Speaker: Drew Goodmanson
We have all heard about the importance of a church website, social media and mobile. But how effective are these strategies really in being missional and gathering people? Learn from a 2010 study on “The State of the Church Online” involving numerous church websites & strategies where we learn what really is happening. Answer questions such as: What is an effective church website? Who is visiting your website? Where do these visitors coming from? What are best practices in design and outreach? Learn how to enhance your web ministry and impact hundreds, if not thousands of people. This valuable session will equip you with practical strategies that your church can implement whether you are an online expert or a beginner.
Breakout: Preaching on the Power and Peril of Social Media & Technology
Speaker: John Dyer
In a sermon on conflict, would you talk about email vs. face-to-face? In a sermon on giving, would you discuss the significance of writing a check vs. automatic draft? We don’t normally think about addressing technology like texting or social media in our sermons, but the people in our churches use these tools every day and they have a profound influence on everything from relationships to devotions. This session will give you a basic overview of media ecology (the study of how technology influences culture) and then use that knowledge to surface important issues you can address with your church to help them live God-honoring lives in our technological world.
GCM Collective – Discussion about the Gospel forming a Community on Mission
It has been six months since we went live with the GCM Collective website and already there has been tremendous fruit. As of today, we have emails for 10,131 church planters and missional leaders who are somehow interested or connected to the collective. Of these 1,422 are part of the community site participating in the hundreds of discussions, praying for one another, sharing resources and events. Have you joined the collective to take advantage of this valuable exchange of ideas and resources?
Why Join the GCM Collective?
A Community of Missional Thinkers
Over a thousand missional leaders and thinkers are gathered together online to share insight, experiences, resources, prayer and more to help you in your effort to lead a local community on mission. Engage in meaningful conversations with others from around the world or who live near you.
Discussions & Messaging
There are numerous groups that allow you to join the conversations that are most important to you. Get a daily email digest of new conversations, reply to email to post or login to interact. A few of the groups discussions include:
- Bible Teaching in a Missional Church
- City Renewal
- Community Life
- Everyday Mission
- Fostering a Missional Culture
- Planting Missional Churches
- Transitioning to Missional Church
- World Mission
- and many others to chose from!
Resource Sharing
Upload and share resources. The community site has an open source policy toward exchanging files. Grab the resources you see on this website and many others and edit them for your local needs. Request the resources you need to fulfill the mission. Join and download files such as:
- Contextualization Assessment Starter
- Understanding and Studying the City
- Intergrating community and mission into your normal routine
- Mission through community
- Questions to help you understand your neighbourhood
- The difference between gospel communities and house groups
- Missional Community Leader Role Description
- Small Groups. From Participant to Leadership
- Missional Community Formation
- and many others.
Prayer & Needs
Share prayer requests and pray for one another. Prayers that are posted can include the urgency, be tagged to include the people or primary areas that need prayer. People can respond with encouragement, scripture or even let the person know they prayed for them.
Post the needs you have for resources or help for others to jump in to assist you.
Keep aware of important Missional-minded Events
Stay aware of the important missional events throughout the year on one site. Be in the know of the large national conferences but also the local training events to equip your missional community leaders. Connect with others in your city to reach the city with the gospel.
All this and much more!
Join now by going to the GCM Collective community sign-up page.
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The Future Church influenced by Technology
Technology is a powerful agent that shapes those who use it in ways that are often unintended. For example, Air Conditioning has been credited with being one of the most culture-altering technologies because people tend to stay inside more- isolated from the community around them. As the Church we can see this unintended technological consequences as well. Consider the printing press, something we celebrate as believers who are now better able to study God’s Word. One of the unintended consequences of the printing press is the growth of individual interpretation over a communal interpretation. This has led to denominationalism and the elevation of personal interpretation. 
Add to this a Bible where the chapter and verse were printed, it influences a move from seeing the Bible in it’s whole as a story, to approaching it as a dictionary or encyclopedia of facts and trivia. (Concepts presented at my session at Echo: A Look into the Near & Distant Future of Online Ministry)
As we are in another significant technological revolution it is important to consider how technology may influence the church, and what unintended consequences could impact future generations. Here are three I’ve been thinking about:
1. Sickly Online Christianity – With the increased access online to preachers, teachers and resources many Christians may try to self-select their own content rather than participating in the life of a community. One unintended consequence is people will only seek out the things that interest them, therefore they will avoid the whole counsel of God’s Word.
2. Homogeneous Digitized Churches – With technology, more churches will find ways to automate and/or systematize their discipleship programs. These programs will tend to be one-size-fits-all with a small variation. These Christians may develop homogeneous traits thereby trending toward an inability to use the diversity of the body to ward of heresy and/or be equipped to be healthy replicating community.
3. Internet Generation: Bible Illiterate – Recently a speaker at a church conference said 85% of content will be video in 2015 (if I recall or some date thereafter). Video is a powerful tool that brings many benefits but an unintended consequences could be more Christians relying on and learning through this video teaching rather than studying God’s Word on their own, becoming increasingly Bible illiterate.
As someone who is involved in serving thousands of churches with websites, technology and media I don’t want to appear an alarmist as I’m thankful for many of the blessings the Internet and technology has brought to the greater Church. My desire is that more thoughtful theological consideration and prayer will continue to surround the websites, applications and technologies we endeavor toward as they do impact the user in ways we may not have considered or intend.
Drew Goodmanson
CEO of Monk Development creators of Ekklesia 360. Co-Founder of Kaleo Church where I served as Pastor for 8+ years and helped coach several church plants in San Diego. Co-Founder of the GCM Collective, President of the Board at the Center for Church Communication, Board Member of the Entrepreneurship Organization, Internet/Technology Advisory Chair at the Christian Leadership Alliance. Connect
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