Leadership
Student Ministry
Importance of the Principle
7:29 AM
I have been doing a lot more reading than normal lately. It’s a phase I guess. I have been reading through the book Orange again. Great book. If you do not have it, go and get it. The people at orange are revolutionizing how the church looks at the family and their role in the life of a child. How to combine and work with parents to accomplish the same goal. Seems so basic that it freaks me out how brilliant it is. Well all that said this time reading through it a few things have caught my attention that I did not notice last go around.
Rather than to resay something that has already been said really well I am just going to put a paragraph directly from the book that has ruined me over the past few days.
“Sometimes we push a specific practice for so long that it gets old and becomes less relevant. Then when it stops working as effectively as it once did, there is a tendency to abandon the principle. At other times we promote a practice so passionately that it drowns out the core principle.. This may result in a number of problems wherein some people wholeheartedly buy into the practice but never fully understand what is truly driving it.. Therefore they don’t have reference point to effectively evaluate how the practice should morph and change. Overselling the practice may also push good leaders to discard the key principle. If a leader has a practical or philosophical reason for not embracing a specific practice, it may result in the rejection of an important principle. That is why it is very critical to clarify the principles before you debate the practices.” Reggie Joiner Orange
This was one of those that stopped me cold. I had to ask myself if this was me? Do I get so intrigued by a new practice that I either don’t know my own principle or I am washing out the principle by getting people to buy into the practice? Almost like a new toy in some respects. Either way it has gripped on to me and I have not been able to stop thinking about it. It has challenged me to discover my principles and make sure that my team and I agree on them as a whole.
A lot of times we get the cart before the horse. We just see a cool way of doing things so we assume that it’s the new way to reach people or to bring success to our organization. So we move forward never fully understanding the principle behind what we are doing. Which is very dangerous. In some cases we do fully understand the principle, but we get so entangled with the new way to make it happen that our focus goes on that and not what part it plays in pushing forward the principle or the objective that it is there to help accomplish.
For example we do a lot of things to partner with parents at oneChurch. We have all thought it was a great idea to make that happen, but I did not do a good job of making sure that we all understood at the core why we do that. Why I fee it is so important. What is the big idea behind all these practices and creative ways of doing things? That can be frustrating to a team. We have now discussed that and the process of deciding how to make that happen has already changed drastically. The ideas are flowing so much easier. We are all in agreement on the Principle so the process of making that successful is not easy by any means but much more effective for sure. We all understand what direction we are going and everyone on the team can help give us the most effective way of getting there.
What are the principles of your organization? Does your team have a good grasp on them? Do you find it hard to implement new things? Could it be that your team doesn’t fully understand why you are doing what you are doing? Do they know your Principles?
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