Regular readers will recall that I’m a big fan of Patrick Lencioni’s The 5 Dysfunctions of a Team. It’s a great book and a particularly useful study for elders and ministers–especially for elders with ministers.
I’m on vacation at the beach, and among my readings has been Lencioni’s Silos, Politics and Turf Wars. It’s another great book and should be required reading for leaders of churches large enough to have two or more ministers on staff.
Like 5 Dysfunctions, the book is written in parable format, being built on stories about several clients of a business consultant, including a church.
“Silos” is a term well known in business but perhaps less well known in church circles. It refers to the tendencies of staff members to be overly concerned with their own area at the expense of the institution at a whole. In the church context, it would usually be a reference to the tendency of a minister to be more concerned with his own ministry than the ministry of the church as a whole.
Now, it’s hardly obvious why this can be such a serious problem. But I’ve seen it up close, and it is. Consider a youth minister who is busy building the best youth ministry in the city without concern for the ministry of the church as a whole. (This has nothing to do with our current youth ministers!) He schedules youth events against adult events, because his events are important and the adults are just upholding stale traditions. He provides his kids with great worship experiences while teaching them to disrespect the services of the entire church. And he recruits volunteers away from other areas, where their services are desperately needed.
Such a minister is guilty of being in a “silo,” effectively building his own congregation within a congregation, even dividing children against parents. But it’s not entirely his fault. It IS his fault, just not entirely.
Lencioni makes clear that such problems arise from the leadership, and so the leadership has to solve the problem. The solution he recommends is thinking of the church as though it were in crisis. Take some time to get away from the daily obligations of church work and ask: what is the most important thing we need to accomplish in the near future to get over the crisis? He calls this a “thematic goal.”
For example, perhaps the most important thing is to increase evangelism or ministry to the poor or to raise up new leadership or to develop community within the church. Whatever it is, it needs to be just one thing and not the sort of thing that churches have to do all the time. Therefore, it can’t simply be “reach the lost.” All churches always need to reach the lost. However, it may be “establish training program for evangelism” or “create an evangelistic mindset within all the members.” These are short-term, achievable goals.
Next, the leadership must establish sub-goals, called “defining objectives.” If the thematic goal is to create an evangelistic mindset, then the defining objectives might be to develop a sermon series to reinforce this concept, to establish classes on how to be evangelistic, to provide literature on how to do evangelism, and to work within the education, small group, college, teen, and children’s ministries to build an evangelism emphasis.
Well, now we’ve hit turf-war territory. What if the youth minister says he’s already planned for next year to be focused on life-changing worship? And the campus minister wants to focus on basic Bible instruction? And small groups wants to build community? Now, it’s a leadership problem.
If the elders came up with the goal without the participation of the ministry leaders, then they may well have picked the wrong goal. Even if it’s the right goal, the leaders have no buy in as this was imposed on them by a distant leadership.
But if the elders and leaders genuinely came to the goal together, then they have to effectuate the goal together. Those that refuse may need to be replaced. Otherwise, the church’s direction and mission will be held hostage to the whims of each minister rather than to the needs of the church as a whole.
After all, the last thing we need is for our children to feel as though they’ve changed congregations–even denominations!–as they move from the children’s ministry, to the teen ministry, to the college ministry, and then to the adult ministry. It hardly good ministry to build up the teen ministry and then have them leave the church when they join the campus ministry because it requires a different commitment and understanding of what church is all about.
Of course, methods change, but if the teens are taught the importance of community service and the campus ministry is exclusively about evangelism, teens who graduate high school will find a campus ministry that helps them serve as they’ve been taught to serve.
Now, the leadership must also define “standard operating objectives,” being objectives that apply all the time. The church always wants to seek and save the lost, always wants to help the needy, and always needs to live within the means God provides. We can never let a short term goal cause us to forget these and many other continuing, God-given goals.
Lencioni then recommends that each leader be given responsibility for accomplishing the defining objectives and that these be discussed at every staff meeting and evaluated. To avoid getting lost in the details, he suggests a three-tier evaluation: red, yellow, and green. And all staff members get to participate in the evaluation.
Finally, all territoriality must be eliminated. No one can talk about “my ministry” or “my people.” They are all “our ministries” and “our people.” The staff is not gathered to lobby for its ministries’ separate needs, but to think of themselves as “ministers” only, not youth and campus ministers. They are all to be equally concerned about the entire congregation–indeed, God’s kingdom in general–and yet bring their own expertise and experience to the table.
Now, this requires a strong hand by the chief of staff and the elders. Considerable discipline is required. And the battle never ends. The ministers may all rally behind a thematic goal and do great for a while, but fall entirely off the wagon when budgeting time comes or when they are asked to make sacrifices for the greater good.
Obviously, no eldership or chief of staff should be quick to terminate those who refuse to get on board. Patience and gentleness are commands of Jesus. But so is unity, respect for leadership, and being true to God’s call. The staff has to understand that working as a team to accomplish the decided goal is not optional.
We church people have a bad habit of finding a theme so large that it’s nearly impossible and so completely unaccountable. “Let’s convert every soul in our town!” or “Let’s eliminate poverty!” sound great, indicate a good heart, but are nearly useless as organizational goals as no one expects us to actually accomplish them. Neither do they suggest any steps toward accomplishing the goals.
On the other hand, if the goal is to get more than half the members involved in meaningful, weekly service to others, then we would have a theme that could be accomplished in the foreseeable future and that would lend itself to a genuine, workable plan.
Now, all this means that the church leadership will need to spend time setting a theme and objectives fulfilling the theme, and will have to do so repeatedly. After all, once a theme has been accomplished, it’s time to set a new theme. And if the church fails to accomplish its thematic goal, rather than giving up entirely, it’s time to set a more attainable part of the goal or perhaps a different goal.
As I type, I struggle with what the thematic goal of my own church should be. I can think of several possibilities. We are working to make our church more missional, but this is too vague. We are working to improve our campus ministry and are considering allocating additional resources to it. But this is not church-wide, although it impacts the church in several ways. We are also working to have our small groups be more involved in helping the community.
Perhaps the defining theme should be to get most of our members involved in service to the church or to the community, while minimizing the services to the church in order to create more resources for the community. But that’s hard to say or to remember.
Maybe then our goal should be to direct all our ministry toward serving the community. This means that the teen program must find a way to get kids involved in community service. The same goes for campus and adults, of course. Community service thus is no longer one ministry among many, but becomes the defining theme of all ministries.
Of course, “community service” includes teaching the gospel. What greater service could be rendered? We teach the gospel to those who are working alongside us and to those whom we are ministering to.
And this means that, as we focus on the college ministry, the ministry we build must be a missional ministry that serves the community. The budget must reflect this emphasis, as must the preaching and the classes and the small groups. It has to be so emphasized that every member knows it. Not a committee meeting or elders meeting should go by without some reference to the goal, not only because it’s an institutional discipline, but because the entire church has bought into the program.
