Values-Driven Leadership: Discovering and Developing Your Core Values for Ministry

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INTRODUCTION

S ome fifty years ago a small core of committed Christians planted Hope Community Church in Little Hope, Texas, a rural town due west of a large burgeoning city in north-central Texas. Over time the city doubled in size and intruded into what was once the quiet community of Little Hope. The growth caught the locals by surprise, as evidenced by a staccato mix of one-acre farms and older, in-need-of-repair houses located practically next door to fresh new tract homes with landscaped yards and freshly manicured Bermuda-grass lawns.

The aging local historian, a lifelong member of the church and the proprietor of a local feed store, was quick to share with anyone willing to listen how the church had seen better days. The founding pastor, Brother Fred, led the new, robust congregation, consisting mostly of farmers, ranchers, and local small-business types and their families, to a membership of 250 people. Initially some of the folks wanted to name the church after the town—Little Hope Community Church—but the wise, respected, older pastor managed to talk them out of it. Then he retired, and over the next ten to fifteen years five pastors came and went while the church membership plummeted to eighty to one hundred faithful old-timers, mixed with a slim assortment of children and grandchildren. Brother Fred cast a long shadow that none of the following pastors seemed to escape.

David Johnson, with his wife and two small children, arrived on the scene as the sixth pastor. David grew up in the Northeast, where he obtained a degree in marketing from a prestigious Ivy League school. More important, during his third year, he came to faith in Christ through an active parachurch ministry on campus. His conversion turned his life upside down. David decided to pursue ministry and met his wife, Mary, who was also active in the campus ministry. On graduation, he enrolled at a seminary in preparation for church ministry. During the seminary years, David and Mary attended a new, contemporary, urban church that ministered to a predominantly professional and college community. The church had a national reputation for its creativity and innovation, and it attracted and reached numerous unchurched, lost people. Fresh out of seminary, David would cut his teeth on Hope Community Church. Though a bit naïve, he came with a vision—a Great Commission vision—to see lost people in the community embrace the Savior and grow to maturity in Christ.

With the intrusion of the city, new people moved to the Little Hope area and began to visit and eventually join the church. Some were Christians, but a significant number came to faith through the ministry of the church. In particular they were attracted to the unconventional ministry style of David Johnson. The membership began to swell, and soon the newcomers outnumbered the church’s old-timers, which caused quite a stir. To complicate matters, new people were unknowingly occupying spaces in pews traditionally reserved for those who had contributed the funds to purchase the pews.

More important, the younger newcomers were also pressing for a more contemporary style of worship and better educational facilities for their kids. Tempers flared when a group of young mothers asked the board to renovate the nursery. As one elderly board member shared with another patriarch, Our nursery was good enough for our kids; it should be good enough for theirs! The old guard found little consolation from Brother David, who sided with the new people. Though he had not discussed it with the board, all this was a part of his vision for Hope Community Church.

Pastor David lasted another year before the church asked him to leave. It was not a pleasant experience. If it were not for the fact that he had such a strong vision, he would have dropped out of the ministry and pursued a career in the marketplace. The church suffered as well. Within a year most of the new people had left, and the attendance had plummeted back to eighty to one hundred people. Most of the newcomers transferred to several recently planted new paradigm churches in the area. Within another five to ten years Hope Community Church would be no more.

What went wrong? Numerous things, and we could place much blame on both sides. However, a primary missing ingredient in the candidating recipe was a discussion of core ministry values.

What David Johnson and other leaders like him must realize is that joining a ministry, any ministry, has much in common with taking a wife—it’s a marriage. A wise potential husband discovers his fiancée’s values before saying, I do. He realizes that their values will shape and drive their marriage. If they begin the relationship with few common values, they are destined for much heartache and suffering and the likelihood of the painful dissolution of their relationship. Had David taken the time before the candidating process to identify and articulate his core ministry values, and had the church done the same, all would have realized during the candidating engagement that without certain major adjustments the intended marriage was going to end in a painful divorce.

Realistically, however, not many seminarians and practicing pastors have taken time to unearth and articulate their ministry values. And not many churches have busied themselves with the same. When I wrote the first edition of this book in 1996, only a few companies, which tend to be ten to twenty years ahead of the typical American church, had captured the importance of organizational core values. Tom Peters and Robert Waterman wrote, Surprisingly . . . only a few brave business writers have taken the plunge and written about values.[1] Much has changed in the corporate context. There is much more material available on values—especially since the fall of Enron in 2000. However, little information from a Christian perspective is available for pastors or churches on this concept that is so vital to a significant ministry in the twenty-first century.[2]

At a major event in the 1990s for church leaders throughout North America, Bill Hybels, founder and senior pastor of Willow Creek Community Church, and Ken Blanchard, an author, speaker, and international business consultant, stated that twenty-first-century leaders will not lead by the authority of their position but by an ability to articulate a vision and core values of their organization or congregation. In 1992 I wrote a pioneering work, Developing a Vision for Ministry in the 21st Century, to provide information to help Christian leaders with the vision concept.[3] Since so little was available in the 1990s, I wrote this book to introduce and help Christian leaders with the cutting-edge concept of organizational core values. While ministry vision has been a key concern for Christian organizations in the 1990s and beyond, ministry values will be a key issue for the twenty-first century.

Organizational values exist on two levels. One is the individual level. People in general and leaders in particular have a set of core ministry values that influences much if not all that they do. The other level is the corporate or congregational level. Every ministry organization, whether church or parachurch, has a set of core values that guides what the ministry seeks to accomplish. Also other ministries that come under the umbrella of the church or parachurch have their values sets.

An understanding of an individual’s or an organization’s precepts is a key to an extended, successful ministry. In church planting, the point pastor’s core values will become the organizational values of the future church. In church revitalization, the candidating pastor and the church need to understand not only the potential pastor’s values but those of the prospective church in determining a ministry match. Some smaller churches in North America that are struggling for survival have attempted church mergers. The success of such mergers depends to a great extent on values congruence. Few if any values sets match, and few if any mergers work. The same holds true for the hiring of staff and so on.

A ministry organization’s core values are at the center of its corporate culture. Every ministry, church, or parachurch has a culture, though it may not be aware of it. A church’s culture consists of such things as its traditions, heroes, expectations, norms, stories, rituals, symbols, rewards, and—most important—its values. In fact these cultural ingredients revolve around the core values. A congregational culture ties its people together and gives meaning and purpose to the ministry’s life. It provides a sense of identity and stability and sets boundaries. I summarize it as the way we do things around here. Increasingly, strong leaders are aware that organizations with a strong, positive, biblically based culture are consistently high-performing ministries.

A church’s core values are a vital part of its character, which is also determined by its mission, vision, and strategy. Because these characteristics hold the very identity of the church, some of us refer to them as the ministry’s DNA. Just as a person’s DNA contains the blueprint or the building blocks of the human cell, so the church’s DNA contains its blueprint. I will use the term DNA as a reference to these identity items throughout the book.

Several credos, or values statements, are provided as examples in the appendixes. Appendix A contains church credos, appendix B presents parachurch credos, and appendix C provides marketplace credos. You will be regularly pointed to all of them in general and to specific examples in particular. They will help you understand the concept of essential organizational or corporate values; aid you in discovering your own; and challenge you to develop, communicate, implement, and preserve your credo. Look over them now and periodically browse through them as you work your way through this book.

This book was written for ministry organizations in general and for churches in particular to help them realize the importance of their ministry core values, which are such a vital part of their culture. Every Christian organization, as well as its leadership, needs to bring out, dust off, discuss, refine, develop, display, and implement its predominant values if it desires to make significant spiritual impact in the twenty-first century. You will profit by reading through this book with other leaders and key decision makers in your ministry. As a team, work through the exercises at the end of each chapter.

This book consists of seven chapters arranged in a logical order. Chapter 1 answers the question, How important are core values to ministry? It presents ten reasons an organization’s key values are so essential to any ministry that desires to touch lives for the Savior.

Chapter 2 answers the question, What is a core value? Exactly what are we talking about? Once a ministry understands the importance of its predominant values, it is ready for a definition. This chapter will define a core value, explain its five key ingredients, and define the various kinds of organizational values, such as personal versus organizational, actual versus aspirational, conscious versus unconscious, and so on.

Chapter 3 focuses on the discovery of core values. For most, these values already exist. The chapter will guide pastors and key church decision makers through the values-discovery process to help them surface and articulate their personal ministry values as well as those of their ministries. It includes several techniques for identifying values and audits to aid them in evaluating the values. Since the values-discovery process reveals both helpful and harmful beliefs, the chapter concludes with a section on values resolution.

Chapter 4 helps Christian organizations in the development of core values. It will assign responsibility for the development process. Then it will take leaders through a four-step process for developing a values statement, or credo, tailor-made for their ministry. The chapter provides sample value statements from church and parachurch ministries for creative insight and comparison.

A church or a parachurch organization can develop and own a perfect set of unique core values for its ministry. However, if it cannot or does not communicate them in some clear way to its constituency, it cannot expect the people to know what they are, which means the organization is not likely to survive, especially in times of turbulence.

Chapter 5 discusses seventeen creative and innovative as well as traditional ways of casting core values so that people will understand and grasp them.

Chapter 6 answers the question, How does a ministry implement its aspirational values either in a new or in an established context? This chapter equips leaders to implement the new values.

Chapter 7 focuses on the protection and preservation of organizational values. As the winds of change blow hard against the ministry sail, all but its values are subject to change. This chapter teaches leaders and their organizations preventative and corrective measures that preserve key values in a time of extraordinary change.

I have included discussion questions at the end of most of the chapters in all my books. I include them as an option for those individuals who find them helpful and to facilitate discussion for those who might be reading the book as a group. I believe that if you want to get the most that this book has to offer, the discussion questions are mandatory. I have designed them to help you apply the principles to your life and ministry.

Why have I written a second edition of this book? Since writing the first edition in 1996, I have continued to learn much about values through my consulting and training ministry (The Malphurs Group) and further research. In my consulting and training ministry my learning has been primarily from a church perspective. I have also learned from discoveries made in the world of corporate research, which raises a question. Is it okay for Christians to learn from sources that may not be Christian? One source of divine revelation is what theologians call general revelation. It is God’s truth found in nature, history, and other sources (Ps. 19:1–6; Acts 4:15–17; 17:22–31; Rom. 1:20–21). General revelation is based on God’s common grace (Matt. 5:45), and it provides man with God’s general truth, since he is the source of all truth.

Though all of the Bible is true, not all truth is found in the Bible. We may find truth in other disciplines because all truth comes ultimately from God. For example, the fields of astronomy, physics, medicine,engineering, music, and many others are based on God’s general revelation.Consequently we can build buildings, find cures for diseases, send people to the moon, and do many other things based on God’s truth as it operates in our universe. The specific application here is to the field of corporate leadership. And I would apply it to the research and development of leadership theories throughout history. I believe that we would be wise to study leadership research and its various theories to discern nuggets of God’s truth about leadership from his general revelation. Even secular researchers can stumble on to God’s general revelation, because all truth is God’s truth.

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YOU CAN’T LIVE WITHOUT THEM

THE IMPORTANCE OF CORE VALUES

V alues are a vital part of any ministry’s culture—the very threads that make up its organizational fabric. Lyle Schaller writes: The most important single element of any corporate, congregational, or denominational culture, however, is the value system. [1] Had Pastor David Johnson or Hope Community Church understood this, David might not have become the pastor, and the church, though struggling, might still be in existence today. While they differed in many areas, most significantly, their views of ministry rested on different foundational beliefs. It was only a matter of time before the winds of turbulence would test and eventually collapse the organizational structure. Any church or ministry organization that overlooks the importance of core beliefs does so to its detriment. Why are values so important? They affect a ministry in numerous ways. There are ten essential reasons that core values are so important to Christian ministry:

Values determine ministry distinctives.

Values dictate personal involvement.

Values communicate what is important.

Values embrace positive change.

Values influence overall behavior.

Values inspire people to action.

Values enhance credible leadership.

Values shape ministry character.

Values contribute to ministry success.

Values affect strategic planning.

Values Determine Ministry Distinctives

God has not cut all churches or all parachurch ministries from the same bolt of cloth. Your church or ministry is different from all others. This is good because it takes all kinds of ministries to reach all kinds of people. What makes all ministries different is their organizational cultures. And as Schaller notes above, the most important ingredient in any cultural recipe is the values system.

A ministry based on clearly articulated core values drives a fixed stake in the ground that says to all, This is what we stand for; this is what we are all about; this is who we are; this is what we can do for you. Thus values are defining. They give each organization its unique identity in the ministry world. This was true in the first century. The church at Jerusalem did not use a cookie-cutter approach when it planted numerous churches throughout Asia Minor. While these new churches all agreed on the primacy and authority of the Scriptures, they emphasized different values. The church at Corinth greatly valued the ministry of spiritual gifts. The churches in Galatia wrongly valued the observance of the Mosaic law, while the church at Ephesus valued and held to strong doctrinal teaching. What was true in the first century remains true in the twenty-first century.

All churches that exist in any community are distinctive in their ministries. Some are very traditional in their worship style, while others are more contemporary. Some focus primarily on counseling; others focus more on teaching the Bible, on evangelism,