This blog is a book excerpt acquired from the publisher of The Externally Focused Quest, due out in April, 2010.
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No good tree bears bad fruit, nor does a bad tree bear good fruit. - Luke 6:43

How does a church in an aisle slide over to a window seat? How does a church consistently engage in strength training rather than bodybuilding? How does a church become the kind of church that the community would not just miss, were it to leave, but would fight to have it stay? How does a church become both internally strong and externally focused? How does a church become the best church for the community?

The answers to these questions are found not in programs but in paradigms. A program has a beginning and an end. A paradigm is a pattern or model from which many programs and initiatives will flow, but they will emerge from your strengths, from your capacities and calling. It is, then, about creating structures and systems that enhance, strengthen, and sustain externally focused ministry. This may be the most important part of our book, The Externally Focused Quest.

Leadership is not just about finding leaders but also about creating good systems. An average leader in a good system will produce more than a great leader in an average system. Most churches say that service, mercy, and love for those outside the church are important aspects of the Christian life. But this is not about what people say but about what people do. You must create structures that operationalize your values; otherwise, they are not really values — they are merely sentiments. For many Christ followers, service and ministry are sentiments but not values. How can we make externally focused ministry a part of who we are, part of our DNA?

Creating Structures for What We Value

Externally focused churches create systems that continually reinforce their values. To align our beliefs with our behaviors, we create structures for everything that we value in church. For example, if your church values the teaching and exposition of God’s Word, you would never have a service where the Word of God is not opened and read. Because you value prayer, you would never have a service where you would not pray. If you value the sacraments of baptism and the Lord’s Supper, these are also regularly scheduled on your church calendar.

Why do we structure these elements into the life of our church? At least partly because these are the very things that define us as a church, and to stop doing these things means that we stop being the church that God wants us to be. So if we didn’t open God s Word, we’d cease to be the church. If we stopped praying, we wouldn’t be the church. So we create systems and structures to help us live out our values and beliefs — and that’s a good thing.

If we want the people we lead to “get into the game,” we must create structures for them to engage. Systems and mechanisms are the link between our values and our behaviors. The right mechanisms cause good things to happen even when we are not paying attention to them.

For example, if you have a system set up to pay your bills through some type of automatic transfer, think about how that simplifies your life (assuming that there is money in your account, of course). Somewhere around 2:00 a.m., while you are enjoying a good night’s sleep, money is withdrawn from your checking account and your bill is marked “paid in full.” The mechanism caused good things to happen even when you
weren’t paying attention.

In the book of Acts, for example, the Greek widows were being overlooked in the distribution of the groceries. This was a problem that was not going to go away. The early church leaders chose not to address this on a behavioral level (“You women should stop complaining; maybe a little fasting would do you good”) but rather on the systems level.

They instituted a mechanism — the diaconate — that would look out for the physical needs of the church, not just for that day, but for nearly two thousand years now. Good things have been happening even when no one was paying attention to them.

 
Excerpted from The Externally Focused Quest by Eric Swanson and Rick Rusaw. Copyright © 2010. Reprinted with permission of the publisher, John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

Available April 2010