{"id":697,"date":"2013-09-19T13:02:08","date_gmt":"2013-09-19T13:02:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/beta.dminlgp.com\/?p=697"},"modified":"2014-10-28T17:20:34","modified_gmt":"2014-10-28T17:20:34","slug":"a-great-church","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/a-great-church\/","title":{"rendered":"A Great Church?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Good to Great<\/em> examines what makes the difference between a good company and a great company. While I do think the church is not first and foremost a business, I do think there are many points that Collins touches on that can greatly help churches not necessarily be great but be faithful. For we are not called to be great we are called to faithfulness.<\/p>\n

Here are my major take-a-ways from Good to Great<\/em><\/p>\n

–\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Confront the Brutal Facts: The US Church is no longer at the center of culture. There isn\u2019t a sense of \u2018oughtness\u2019 with regards to church attendance.\u00a0 We shouldn\u2019t do church the same way as our grandparents or parents did. With the rapid acceleration of technology, transportation and communication what worked 5 years ago might not even work today!\u00a0 When we realize that change has happened, is happening and will happen again then we\u2019re free to be faithful to what God is calling us to today. Our goal shouldn\u2019t be to perpetuate an institution (though God might want that), but to be sensitive to the wind of the Spirit and be caught up into where the Spirit is blowing.<\/p>\n

–\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Get the Right People on the Bus: Collins advocates, that it doesn\u2019t matter where you\u2019re going if you don\u2019t have the right people. You can have, all the vision and potential in the world, and if the right people aren\u2019t involved you won\u2019t get there. He advocates getting the right people first and then and only then do you search for a vision. For churches this can be a bit complicated, especially when some of the \u2018wrong people\u2019 might also be church members with deep connections to others in the church. Unlike a business whose goal is often the financial bottom line, the bottom line for churches is people. We want to be places of grace, redemption and second, third and forth chances. Connections between the people of a church and the staff are often deep and meaningful.\u00a0 Firing someone isn\u2019t as clean and neat as it is in the business world.<\/p>\n

–\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Hedgehog: Collins challenges businesses to figure out what\u2019s at their core and then to focus absolutely on it.\u00a0 So many churches try to do a 1,000 things and therefore don\u2019t do any of them well. Churches need to learn this lesson from Collins. They need to find the particular thing that God has called that church to do and to focus its entire system on it.\u00a0 It\u2019s better to do two or three things really well and make a difference than do a 1,000 things poorly and make no impact all.<\/p>\n

–\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Technology: Collins argues that technology isn\u2019t a silver bullet that makes a good company great. Great companies use carefully selected technology and take their time ensuring that they\u2019ll be successful.\u00a0 I liken this to churches that think all they need is a cool hash tag or Facebook page to bring in \u2018young people.\u2019 Yes, those things can be used and are important! But if there\u2019s no substance or purpose or direction then technology can blind you to the real issues and problems that you have (like lack of those important things).<\/p>\n

We need great churches, but we don\u2019t need churches that seek greatness. We need churches that seek faithfulness. Following the advice from Collins can help a church be faithful, which means they\u2019ve got a better chance of being a great church.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Good to Great examines what makes the difference between a good company and a great company. While I do think the church is not first and foremost a business, I do think there are many points that Collins touches on that can greatly help churches not necessarily be great but be faithful. For we are […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[267,2],"class_list":["post-697","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-collins","tag-dminlgp","cohort-lgp3"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/697","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=697"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/697\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2893,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/697\/revisions\/2893"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=697"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=697"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=697"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}