- Momentum = Forward motion fueled by a series of wins.
- You love your problems when you have momentum.
- Ministries that lack momentum are a drag.
- We all know what momentum is not by definition but by experience.
- In the marketplace when a company lacks momentum hey do something about immediately.
- The church can go generations without changing anything.
- Churches can tend to be anti-leadership culture.
- The mission for most churches is “pay the bills.”
- If we pay the bills, why do we need to change?
- Momentum is disruptive.
- For some church people, if momentum showed up it would scare people to death.
- Momentum is all about moving forward and leaders like thing to move forward.
- You either have it or you don’t.
- When we come across churches with momentum in our community, it’s our natural tendency to say, “If I had _________, I would have momentum too.”
- We tend to excuse momentum of other organizations.
- If you have momentum right now and don’t understand what to do with it, you are one decision away from killing your organization.
- If you lack momentum, you’ll expend a lot of energy trying to gain it because you don’t have the principles of how to gain and sustain momentum.
- We have a bad habit to say “well God’s just blessing…”
- Be careful.
- What exactly is God blessing?
Three Components of Sustained Momentum
- New
- Improved
- Improving
1 – New
- New triggers momentum.
- ANythign new, by definition, generates some kind of momentum.
- The momentum can be positive or negative.
- Negative Events – Negative Momentum [9/11]
- Negative Events – Positive Momentum [Rescue]
- A senior pastor leaving can great both.
- Negative circumstances are the fertile soil for a burst of positive momentum.
- Positive Event – Postivie Momentum = New Sports Franchise.
Organizational Momentum is often triggers by one of three things:
- New leadership
- New direction
- New product [program]
Implication: When evaluating an organization or program or program that lacks momentum, ask “Do we need a new leader, a new direction, or a new product? Or do we need some combination of the three?
Momentum is never triggered by tweaking something old. It is triggered by introducing something new.
- We spend too much time in meetings trying to tweak something old.
Warning: New does not guarantee sustained momentum. But new is an essential trigger for momentum.
2 - Improved
- The new must be a noticeable improvement over the old.
- When evaluating a new option, ask, “Is it a significant improvement over wheat we had before?”
- If you can’t afford an improvement, let go of what’s not effective to make space for something new.
- In business it’s easy to make these decisions because things rise and fall on money.
- Churches can sustain themselves financially for generations without making change.
- Find a way to fund it by unfunding something else.
Warning: Even a significant improvement has a shelf life.
3 – Improving
- Momentum is sustained through continuous improvement. [Example: household products that continue to improve]
- Continuous improvement requires systematic evaluation. [Evaluation has to be built into the rhythm of the organization.]
- Continuous improvement requires unfiltered evaluation. [Feelings will be hurt. Sacrifice the one for the many.]
- Continuous improvement requires that nothing and nobody be off limits. [If you are not evaluating the areas where you are experiencing momentum, the clock of your success is ticking down.]
- Everything you do and everything your church does is being evaluated every week. Are you learning from other people’s evaluation of you? Why not build a feedback system?
Applying “New and Improved” to the World of Ministry
- New Personnel
- New Programming
- New Season [Shut programs down for a season so they can relaunch]
- New Series
- New Look
- New Venues
Improving
- Look for ways to upgrade your presentations.
- Visit other organizations.
- Attend other churches.
Momentum Stoppers
- Disengaged leader.
- Overactive management. [ Momentum always creates an element of chaos, managers like to minimize it. Managers manage, leaders create momentum]
- Complacency. [Nothing works forever.]
- You rarely regain momentum by simply doing what you did to create it in the first place.
- Understanding momentum is sometimes more important than knowing your history.
- Complexity [New organizations are always simple.]
- A breech of trust.
Q&A
- Gather feedback from multiple sources.
- Check out Zoomerang.
- Evaluation has to be environement-specific.
- Clarify the win for everything you do.
- You can’t evaluate effectively if no one knows what a “win” is.
- The goal is never to be fair, the goal is to do the right thing.
- We don’t add programming, we add steps.
- When considering something new, ask “Is it an easy, obvious step toward community?”
