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Question 3: Values
What Are the Guiding Principles We Live By?
It seemed that Jeremy and the team were starting to get it. As we developed their mission statement that answered the “what” question, and we developed their strategy that answered the “how” question, I could see their excitement was beginning to grow. One of the team members spoke up and said, “This process is sort of weird.”
I laughed a bit and asked, “Why do you say ‘weird’?”
She responded, “Well, when you think about it, developing the mission statement and the strategy that supports the mission is hard work and takes time, but when it’s all done it’s really fairly simple.”
I jumped in quickly. “You’re exactly right.”
She continued, “I could explain our mission and strategy to someone in just a few seconds, although it took hours to develop. For the first time since I have been on the team, we have created a very clear mission of what we do and a simple strategy of how we do it. This is the most excitement I have felt about our future in a long time.”
I looked over at Jeremy and asked, “How do you feel?”
He looked at me with relief in his eyes and said, “Hopeful. I know we have a long way to go and more questions to answer but just getting the mission and strategy clear gives me a sense of confidence that I haven’t had in quite some time. I grew up thinking that being a pastor was just preaching, teaching, and the occasional hospital visit. But there’s so much more to experiencing sustainable and consistent growth.” Admitting that his view was beginning to change, Jeremy continued, “Most of my life I thought that if you created strategy then you weren’t relying on God. I was so wrong. Chris, you were right when you shared about the God factor and the leader factor. We need God to do his part, but he needs us to do ours. We have to learn to be stronger and more strategic leaders. This will help us advance his kingdom even more, and isn’t that what it’s all about?”
I could see that God was working on Jeremy’s heart and breaking years of former thinking. I looked at him and said, “Yes, Jeremy, advancing his kingdom is what it’s all about.” We finished up the day with a sense of victory and scheduled our next meeting time where we would begin to work on the third question in our list of seven.
When we gathered back together on our previously scheduled date, the atmosphere in the room was more electric than I had ever felt from this team. They were hopeful, hungry, and ready to dive in to the next portion in our journey. They were a team who had started believing for the first time that their future could be brighter than their past. I walked over to the whiteboard and pointed out the third question that we must answer.
I told the team, “We have answered the first two questions, the “what” and the “how,” and now it’s time to move to our third question.” I pointed once again to the board and said, “Values. What are the guiding principles we live by?”
You see, in the life of a church and even in the life of the staff, the stated values become the principles that identify us. It’s our DNA, the very building blocks of our ministry. Think of it like the frame of a house. When building, you create a solid foundation (mission) and then put up the frame to create the basic outline of the house. Other details will be filled in around the frame, but the frame forms the basic structure of the house and informs everything else that happens in the construction process. It defines the shape of the house. Building your ministry on the right principles will keep the shape intact, no matter what else changes.
A few years back, I served on the board for Convoy of Hope, one of the greatest ministries in our nation that serves the poor and suffering. I will never forget the discussion at one of our board meetings and the display of integrity I witnessed when it comes to values. It was a topic about which, like with any board, there were some varying opinions. As the discussion got a little more intense, the founder and president, Hal Donaldson, stepped in like the great leader he is and said, “If we do this it will potentially threaten the values we live by.” He pointed over to a list of values that were strategically placed behind him and said, “That one right there—if we move toward this direction, then we are not living out the values that we committed to live by.” In one quick moment he realigned the team and reminded them of the values that guide the great ministry of Convoy of Hope.
You see, that’s what values do. They quickly align your heart, spirit, and focus when inevitably you or the team begin to drift. They serve as a sail to the boat you are on, directing you and keeping you on course. Values have a way of helping to shape your culture, as long as you live by them. If you don’t live by them and choose to compromise them, you will eventually find yourself drifting away from everything you once said was important and you will discover that the effectiveness of your ministry is threatened. That’s why values are so important. They are the line in the sand that creates the boundaries and beliefs of your church.
Let me give you a few more points on the importance of values:
Values Communicate What’s Important
I have a friend who created values for his family. They included: put God first, show love to each other, believe the best about each other, be quick to forgive, spend time with each other, etc. Can you see how, in stating the values, he was communicating what is important? In his family these are the things that are important, and no matter what happens they will live by these principles. That’s what values do. They communicate what is important to the ministry that God has called you to lead. They let the church and the team you lead know the guiding principles and core beliefs. They communicate the heart and DNA of the leader and the ministry.
Values Influence Behavior
If you know me at all you have heard me say more than once, “Behaviors exist only in an environment that supports them.” Values have a way of shaping the behavior of the church and its leaders. For instance, one of the values at our church is that “we give up what we love for what we love even more.” This value has shaped the behavior of the ministry. It has created in many hearts a spirit of generosity. That’s what values do. They actually shape the behavior and desired outcome that you are wanting for the ministry. I go back to the principle that “language shapes behavior and behavior shapes culture.” It all starts with language. When you dial in the language (values) that best describes the characteristics you seek from the people involved in your ministry, then that language will begin to shape the behavior. That’s the point behind the statement I mentioned at the top of this paragraph: “Behaviors exist only in an environment that supports them.” If you want a certain behavior, then create the environment that you seek. This environment will be shaped by the values you set in place.
Please understand: in the absence of values your team and church will create their own. As a result, they will not be aligned; they will be based on individual preference, and they will shape a behavior that you will have to tolerate rather than celebrate. Take a look at Exodus 20 and the Ten Commandments. God gave these commandments to the people of Israel as guiding principles to live by, designed to shape their behaviors. Today it would seem like common logic not to kill (the sixth commandment). We have laws created to keep us from killing and consequences for those who don’t follow them. But in the time of these commandments, life wasn’t valued and so people killed more often. God laid down the commandments as a sort of value system, as if he was saying, “If you are going to be a part of my family, then this is how we behave.” Another way of saying this would be, “These are our values.” You see, that’s what values do for a group of people such as a church or staff: they tell you that “this is how we behave.”
Values Assist Us in What We Say Yes To and What We Say No To
There are so many times in ministry that decisions need to be made. How do we handle this conflict? What do we designate our budget to? Where do we cut back financially during hard times? Should we start this ministry? Should we stop that program? Not always, but many times the answers can be found inside of our values. We face a situation and we look to our values and in light of our values we can offer a clearer and more accurate response.
In 1982 seven people died after taking extra strength Tylenol that had been tainted with cyanide. Many believed that the company would never bounce back from that horrible tragedy. Most experts believed that the trust of the consumer would be forever shattered. However, in a bold and unheard-of move, chairman James Burke recalled thirty-one million bottles of extra strength Tylenol from the shelves of stores and offered a replacement of a safer tablet free of charge. At that point recalls were unheard of. The courageous move cost the company over $100 million. This integrity-filled action helped Tylenol to bounce back and become stronger than ever. In an interview, Burke was asked how he was able to make such a controversial decision, knowing it would cost the company millions of dollars.
Citing the company credo stating that Tylenol is responsible first to its customers, he said, “The credo made it very clear at that point exactly what we were all about. It gave me the ammunition I needed to persuade shareholders and others to spend $100 million on the recall.”1
That is what values do. They help you make choices in advance about what to say yes to and what to say no to. You don’t wait for the situation to dictate your response. You create values that will help you dictate the response long before the circumstance demands it.
Values Enhance Credibility
People want to know what you and your ministry stand for and believe. The higher the caliber of the individual, the more this becomes important, not only for those who call your church home but also with the kind of leaders you’ll attract and the level of staff you will hire. They will want to know what kind of culture you are trying to create. High-functioning people don’t lend you their credibility until they are confident in your credibility. They want to know what you believe, what your guiding principles are, and what is ultimately shaping the environment of your ministry. The last thing you want is to be sitting with a high-capacity leader or potential staff member and have them ask you about your values (and they will), and your response is either, “I don’t know, we haven’t developed them yet,” or some sort of pieced-together answer that you hope will blind them to your lack of clarity. In either case, you will most likely lose. Strong leaders and potentially strong staff members want to know if you know, with complete clarity, the values that are driving the organization you are asking them to commit to.
After I explained to Jeremy and the team the incredible benefits of having a clear set of values, one of the guys chimed in, “I never realized how important values are and how they help shape the culture and provide the guidelines for our church.”
Then a younger woman from the team, who seemed to rarely say anything, spoke up and said, “I honestly never saw the value of having values. I’ve worked at places that had a set of values that quite honestly no one even knew existed.” I kind of laughed and the woman who was speaking said, “What’s so funny?”
I said to her, “Excuse me, I wasn’t laughing at you. But there is something I think we can all find humor in.” The entire team looked at me with curiosity. I pulled out of my folder a welcome card that was found in the pocket behind every seat in their worship center. I said, “Do you guys recognize this?”
With uncertainty they all mumbled, “Yes . . . sort of.”
I said, “It’s the welcome card that is placed in the pocket behind every seat in your worship center. On the front is a greeting that welcomes people, but on the back is information. One piece of that information is the five values for the church. Did any of you even know this was here?” At first there was a slight sense of embarrassment that quickly turned into an outburst of laughter. They couldn’t believe that not one person, not even the lead pastor, knew there was a set of values printed on the welcome cards. (I loved that they were able to laugh at themselves.)
I told them that this was unfortunately very normal, that quite often there is a set of values either formed years ago by the prior pastor or by the current pastor but which have long been forgotten. Value statements for the sake of having them do nothing. If they are not lived out in the ministry and are not serving as guidelines, then they become a series of words that have absolutely no impact. I went on to tell the team that it was fairly obvious that the values printed on the welcome card had no effect on the overall ministry, and with that understanding we might as well start from scratch and create values that fall in line with the mission and strategy we had already created. We should create values that truly reflect the heart of God and the heart God has for this church. They all quickly agreed. So I took them through the system to help discover the values that best reflected their ministry. Let me take you through that system now that will help you create your own set of values so that you can answer question number three of the seven unavoidable questions every leader must answer, “What are the guiding principles we live by?” There are two phases you’ll need to navigate.
Discovery Phase
Take a moment to rate the different values below on a scale from 1 to 5. (One being the lowest value and 5 being the highest.) Try to give as few 5s as possible. Don’t take too long with it, just go with your gut reaction.
___ outreach
___ giving
___ worship
___ Bible-centered teaching
___ integrity
___ authenticity
___ leadership
___ apprenticing
___ children’s ministry
___ missions
___ serving
___ community groups
___ fellowship
___ diversity
___ ownership
___ membership
___ creativity
___ stewardship
___ excellence
___ social justice
___ church growth
___ loyalty
___ optimism
___ healthy staff environment
___ discipleship
___ cultural relevancy
___ prayer
Look through the list and try to identify the top four or five values that seem to stand out the most. Discuss them among your team and ask the question, “Why?” Why is this important to us? How will this play out in our church? How will this play out among our staff/leadership team? How will this affect what we do? How will this help determine the decisions we make? Do these values reflect the heart of God and the heart of the pastor?
Development Phase
Once you have discovered what it is that resonates in your heart, you now have to prayerfully decide what values you and your team will live by.
Before you begin to wordsmith your values, keep the following guidelines in mind. Try to limit your number of values to somewhere between four and eight. This will allow you to be more focused on what is important. Also it is imperative that you come to grips with the idea that not everything can be a value, even though it’s a valuable thing. If you honestly think about it, everything listed in the Discovery Phase is important. How can you say Bible-centered teaching is more important than prayer? Or that church health is less important than integrity? But like I have said earlier in this book, if everything is important then nothing is important.
Once you have narrowed down the general idea of your values, it is time to wordsmith in a way that works for your culture and reflects your DNA. I have seen this done in two primary ways:
First, you can make the values simple and straightforward. For instance, let’s say you chose prayer as a value. You might wordsmith it so that this value is called “connecting with God.” Or maybe you placed outreach as a value, so you might say, “reaching our community” or “loving people.” You are simply taking the one word and stretching it a little to give greater clarity and understanding.
Second, you can take a value and make a statement that allows it to become more memorable and “sticky.” At South Hills we chose this strategy. We took our one-word values and created statements that could be easily remembered (sticky) and were reflective of our heart. For instance, we knew that “ownership” was a value of ours, so we created this statement: “It’s not our rental, it’s our ’66 Mustang.” People laugh when they hear it, but they remember it. They know that the people of South Hills treat their church like it’s a ’66 Mustang. We care for it, protect it, and if we see something that needs to be done to it, we fix it. That’s our way of saying, “Be an owner.” Another example of a value is “giving.” We took that single word and created a phrase that states, “We give up what we love for what we love even more.” It expresses the importance of giving by making the statement that, above anything else, we give because we love God more than anything we could have or own.
Discover the word or phrase that describes the values that reflect the heart of God and the heart of the pastor. Now it’s not necessarily important that you match each value with a Scripture verse. Some churches like to do this, but it’s not a necessity. What is important is that the values have a scriptural basis so that you know that you are building on biblical principles and not just good ideas. But once again the key to all of this is creating a set of values that answers the question, “What are the guiding principles we live by?” and then most importantly, living by them. Do not let these principles end up on the back of a welcome card and then, over time, forget them. Teach these principles often to your staff and leaders. Make a teaching series about these principles, and teach it at your weekend services. (Not just once, but on a yearly basis.) Look to them often so that they don’t become a distant memory. Let them become the guiding principles that help to lead your church to continual and sustainable growth.