February 2009 Archives

I've just finished reading Pour Your Heart into it - by Howard Schultz, the guy who built Starbucks (and was most recently heard of being slammed by Peter Mandelson, for his comments on the British economy).Published more than ten years' ago, it was written as Starbucks was poised to spread across the Atlantic to complete its remarkable and meteoric rise from local specialist coffee store to mega-corporation with a coffee shop on every corner of the world, it seems...

I've found it a fascinating read, but rather bitter-sweet.

Given what Starbucks generally stands for in many people's minds today - phrases like: faceless corporation; greedy; low-paid workers; driving out independents... tend to come up in conversation about them - it's tragic to read Schultz's (presumably) heart-felt and passionate words about the vision and values he believes lie behind the company... or perhaps lay?

...the story of Starbucks is not just a record of growth and success. It's also about how a company can be built in a different way. It's about a company completely unlike the ones my father worked for. It's living proof that a company can lead with its heart and nurture its soul and still make money. It shows that a company can provide long-term value for shareholders without sacrificing its core belief in treating its employees with respect and dignity, both because we have a team of leaders who believe it's right and because it's the best way to do business. (p5)

It's rather sad to read such high-sounding ideals and hear them ring rather hollow.

To me it sounds a lot like the history of many churches down the years, especially those who get 'successful'.

The question is how to avoid the same pitfalls - is it simply impossible to grow and be successful without losing your soul?

Gordon MacDonald - a remarkable Christian writer and speaker - writing in the current edition of Leadership magazine:

Walking one day with a wise old man ...I asked what now seems to be a stupid question: "What should be my priority? My family or the Lord's work?"

It seemed an appropriate question then. I'd grown up in a Christian tradition that made it clear that the "Lord's work" always came first.
...
His answer? "Gordon, your family is the Lord's work."

MacDonald's contention is that our "Loved Ones" (whether spouse, kids, closest friends) form the most healthy base environment that stops us "thinking of ourselves more highly than we ought" - when you're with the people that treat you as you - and love you just the same come success or failure - then that's both healthy perspective and life-giving encouragement.

And no less true as a basic human need and safety-harness for those who run their own business, are trying for the top of their career ladder or stride the TV stage - if we can't love and be loved by our 'Loved Ones', what sort of success in the rest of life can we really be?

I'm sitting in Church House - not a surprising place to find a Vicar, I hear you say, but it's for a conference that, on the face of it, has nothing whatsoever to with my day (and night) job...

I've blogged a fair bit about it/him (i.e. about Seth Godin, the speaker/raconteur/guru) so I won't re-say it all (if you've forgotten, here's one for you), but since I'm literally sitting here listening, I thought I'd think out loud about what I'm hearing... and what it might have to say to All Souls, or any church for that matter.

The reason that there's any connection between 'his world' and mine is that he's a superb observer and analyist of human society and behaviour.

Here's a taster of what got talked about today - some big themes...

1. Permission Marketing - if you're trying to spread a message by simply flooding the market with posters, stickers, leaflets, then you're competing with millions of other messages that people are routinely filtering out of their lives everyday... there's little point, for example, All Souls simply adding to the flood of junk mail through people's doors by doing lots of leaflet drops. The key question to ask of a marketing call, leaflet, promotion is "will they miss it if I don't do it?"... if not, don't do it!

2. Story is everything - the alternative to mass marketing is to tell a story so compelling that people who hear it will tell other people in their turn. Isn't it a killer that despite the church of Jesus having (a) the most compelling [and true] story ever told and (b) millions of people in whose lives' the story is lived out every day - despite that, we think the only way the church can get "its message across" is mass advertising, huge stadium events and mailshots... rubbish - it's no more true now than it was in Acts.

3. Being the best is not enough - you may have a better product, but if people don't have a problem that they think needs solving by that better product, they're not going to seek you out. Are you spending the time trying to find customers for your products or products for your customers? For the church, this has to do with whether we've decided on our "product" - which is how we help people to hear, live out and spread the Good News of Jesus - or whether we start with our potential customers?

If that sounds verging on the heretical, let me make the age-old distinction - there's a fundamental difference between changing the Gospel (no point - it's true, because Jesus will always be who he always is and he's done what he's done) and changing how we live out the Good News in a way that connects with the real lives of people around us.

One good example is us looking at starting a second service - not just a duplicate morning one, but a mid-afternoon one for the many people for whom Sunday mornings just don't equal church and for whom it never will equal church.

4. ...but you need to be remarkable - that's the Purple Cow idea (his book of the same name) - no-one takes a second look at cows in a field, but if you saw an honest-to-goodness purple one, then you'd pull over and look, photograph and then call your friends. Church? I had an email just today from someone talking about how bowled over they were by their first experiences of All Souls - being by far the most friendly, child-welcoming church they'd come across and completlly beyond their expectation of church.

...some first thoughts.

One of the very hardest things, if you've been around churches all your life (as I have), is to see things once more with the eyes of a visitor or newcomer.

What are the first impressions of walking in? How does it feel?

A bit of genius observation from Dave Walker - he of Cartoon Church:

"I went to the Apple store in London.

The worship space was brightly lit, and row upon row of devotees stood at wooden benches gazing in adoration at white machines of varying shapes and sizes. A glass staircase lead upwards, where further rows of worshippers were doing much the same as those downstairs. People wearing bright shirts stood behind other desks, and names appeared on large screens. In the upper sanctuary a gathering of the faithful sat on wide comfortable pews and listened to a sermon.

I found the whole experience quite baffling. I could not see any orders of service anywhere, so it was rather difficult to know what I should be doing. Eventually I plucked up the courage to approach a sidesman, who explained what the worshippers were all doing and answered some of my questions about the basic tenets of the faith. He took me over to one of the white machines and explained some of the ways in which I too could become a follower should I choose. There would of course be very real costs involved.

Wary of making a commitment on my first visit I thanked the sideman and explained that I was in a bit of a hurry. To his credit he did not seem to mind.

I left clutching a parish magazine and thinking that returning on another occasion might not be entirely out of the question."

He's not the first person to spot the religion of Apple-worship.

But it also helps us ask what we should be asking about the experience of walking into church for the very first time...

• First impressions? ("The worship space was brighly lit." - if only!)
• What would a first-timer make of what it means to be "one of the faithful" in our church?
• What about our church would make "the whole experience quite baffling"?
• Could you or I "explain some of the way in which I too could become a follower"... and would we make clear "the very real costs involved"?
• ...and most importantly, what makes people feel "returning on another occasion might not be entirely out of the question"?

If you want another angle on the same (or similar) set of questions, there's the story of the ordination college that sends all its first-year vicars-in-training to each find a betting shop, go in (mostly for the first time!) and place a bet... and then reflect on their experiences!

Very simply, today, a wonderful thought-provoking quotation (thanks to Paul on the Prodigal Kiwi blog) from Ignatius of Loyola (founder of the Jesuits in the 1500's):

...insisting on God's presence in all things, denied a group of Jesuit students in his day, permission to prolong their morning meditation time. Instead he reminded them that rather than spending lengthy time in prayer:

"...they should strive to seek the presence of God in all things - for instance, in association with others, in walking, looking, tasting, hearing, thinking, indeed, in all that they do. It is certain", he said, "that the majesty of God's presence, activity, and essence" is in all of these things.

What have I missed today in my busy-ness (or even in my too-long-praying... if only!) of the majesty of God's presence, activity and essence in the world I've tramped through at high speed?

Do you remember the remarkable story of the team who last year gave a woman a new windpipe - and hence new life - using her own stem cells? Thirty-five years earlier, the lead scientist/surgeon, Professor Anthony Hollander, had written to Blue Peter, saying:

...he had a "strange" belief that he knew how to "make people or animals alive".

The letter, which by his own admission today was "eccentric", went on to ask the programme to help him acquire the necessary materials to carry out these life-saving tasks. The shopping list included a "model of a heart split in half" and "tools for cutting people open".

Every child who wrote got a personal reply - and thankfully, he was no exception. The reply gave him just enough encouragement not to give up his dream... and more than thirty years of investing his life in the pursuit of his dream, he's beginning to see the fruit of it.

There are special individuals, I guess, whose lives we look on with some wonder and awe, who just seem to know what they're meant to do with their days and never waver.

Most of us feel rather that we have fallen in to what we're doing - some of us even that what we are doing is a proof of our failure to find that 'call'.

But the sermon I preached on Sunday, from Jesus' Parable of the Talents (in Matthew 25) puts a lie to that sense that unless we have a clear "one call" purpose, we're no use to God.

The key contrast between the first two servants - who are called "good and faithful" - and the third wasn't so much their investment strategy as their relationship with the Master. Did they see their 'talent' (or gold) as a gift to be invested for a return, or a burden they'd rather not be responsibile for? Did they trust the Master enough to take a risk, or sulkily complain that he'd probably be too hard on them if they even tried?

If my life is a gift - if each hour, day, week, month, year is a gift - then the question of where and how I invest it for a "good return" hinges on whether I recognise it as such (a gift), not whether I turn out to be a great surgeon or philanthropist. God has no hierarchy of professions, but a family of children who look to him as their gift-giving Father and live accordingly - whether that be in unemployment, parenting, banking, teaching, friendship, fund-raising, writing...

What return will the investment of my day bring today... and for whom?

Finally!!!!

Took a stack of fiddling (all to do with read-write-execute permissions as far as I can tell, for those of you interested in such things), but we're in business...

Then again, you might not have anything to comment?

However, if you do, simply click the title for an entry, or the "...comments" link next to the time/date of entry and you'll have the form appear... at last!

:o)

R

There's a shudder of horror that comes from making connections between "marketing" and "church" - "selling religion" sounds about as far from Jesus as it's possible to get...

Depends, of course, what you mean by "marketing".

Seth Godin's (see my earlier post on his forthcoming London gig) latest blog piece contrasts the "big show" (in this case, by big advertisers for the Superbowl) with what he would see as true marketing - most fundamentally the ability to tell a story that has its own legs...

Marketing is telling a story that sticks, that spreads and that changes the way people act. The story you tell is far more important than the way you tell it. Don't worry so much about being cool, and worry a lot more about resonating your story with my worldview. If you don't have a story, then a great show isn't going to help much.

And there's the point,of course - communicating Jesus isn't about putting on the best show in town, with the best band, facilities, wizzy videos, but telling our story - the one about the God who changes lives...

...and if you call that marketing, that's fine by me.

Thanks to Maggi Dawn's blog, I'm once again reminded how little G.K.Chesterton I know - and nudged (again) to go read him and drink deep.

She posts (in the context of yet another day with snow in Cambridge) a wonderful quotation which captures the infant joy in repetition that we've long-since lost - as any parent who's played "garages" or "tea party" twenty times in a single morning will testify.

I love the sense Chesterton picks up of God the creator's intimate involvement in each day - we don't believe in a Deist, distant, "wind it up and stand back 'til it's all over" creator, but in a God who's attention is focused on that which he has made, is making and continues to remake - and will one day make utterly new.

Because children have abounding vitality, because they are in spirit fierce and free, therefore they want things repeated and unchanged. They always say, "Do it again"; and the grown-up person does it again until he is nearly dead. For grown-up people are not strong enough to exult in monotony.

But perhaps God is strong enough to exult in monotony.

It is possible that God says every morning, "Do it again" to the sun; and every evening, "Do it again" to the moon. It may not be automatic necessity that makes all daisies alike; it may be that God makes every daisy separately, but has never got tired of making them.

It may be that He has the eternal appetite of infancy; for we have sinned and grown old, and our Father is younger than we.

We think of "growing up" as a completely and unarguably good thing - what if we find that, in our sin, growing up loses us something so precious, Jesus' calls us to rediscover it - is there something of that in Matthew 18?

It's been striking how news reports about the 'snow days' we've just (for the most part) enjoyed have talked about the 'cost to the economy' (though their estimates vary wildly from £1.2 to £3billion!) of so many people taking time off work.