I get the community-to-church exchange. Basically it’s “we ship you people and money”.

But here’s my question – what does the church ship back to the larger community? What is it that the church provides (or could provide) to that larger community?

Next week if you don’t provide such service, what happens?
She walks.
Enough walkers and you’re no longer in business.
That faithful customer isn’t so faithful anymore is she?
You can blame her, sure. Maybe she misunderstood you or your service. Maybe she got cynical and didn’t understand that you had such good intentions.
The scary thing is that none of that matters. She’s paying someone else for church now – not you.

You can come up with all kinds of reasons why she left – some of them might even make you feel better but there’s no changing your bottom line (without her).
In order for your economics to work, you need another paying customer. Any ideas?

None? Really.

Better pray for some manna then because if you won’t go out and find new customers then, by default, you’re waiting for them to fall out of the sky.

To be sure, the fundamental task of management remains the same: to make people capable of joint performance through common goals, common values, the right structure and the training and development they need to perform and to respond to change. – Peter Drucker

I’ve been a teacher for 17 years and I’ve never seen a good teacher that didn’t get this “joint-ness” of performance. Bad teachers typically either don’t like their subject or their students. (Some dislike both, but that’s another kettle of fish.) If you’re a leader – of a business, a school, a hospital, an NPO or a church, you’re a manager. In the words of Drucker you’re a manager – that is you’re responsible for making it (your organization and the people in it) capable of joint performance.
To Drucker this joint performance is accomplished through 4 things:

1. common goals
2. common values
3. the right structure

and

4. training and development of the people in the organization.

Take almost any organization and ask questions pertinent to these four. For example, think about your own organization and pretend that clip-board in hand, you ask something like the following:

1. What are the goals of this organization?
2. What values do you hold that enhance or refine your work here at this organization?
3. How is the current structure helping you in your work for this organization? What would you change structurally – if you had the power?
4. What sort of training and development is this organization providing for you? Is it making you a better employee? A better person? A better human? Do you like who this organization is training you to be?

My guess is that – as a leader imagining those questions and answers – your stomach started to hurt. Don’t stop yet, consider that data. Like the person feeling the lump in a place that it’s not supposed to be – stop. Think about how you can ask those questions of those in your organization. Because if you don’t – a la Drucker – your people will not have what “they need to perform and respond to change.”

My son Josh is a chef. He runs Skillet Street Food which operates out of a couple of Airstream Trailers. By combining Trailers with killer food he’s created something I call an urban campground experience for people all over Seattle.

Check this video out to see what I’m talking about.

Josh likes to mix flavors and create new food combinations. In the last couple of years he developed a product called Bacon Jam. BJ is spreadable bacon (not bacon-mayonnaise) but actual bacon. It lets you spread as much or as little bacon as you like on your BLT, Turkey and Bacon sandwich or Bacon Burger.

Some people call it caviar for rednecks others think it should come with a warning label from the Surgeon General but one thing they all agree on is that they want more! Sales have been off the charts this Christmas especially after Martha Stewart blogged about it.
The cool part is that you could be spreading Bacon Jam on whatever you like (or spooning it directly out of the jar ) before the end of the year.

Thanks to my insider connections, I’ve been authorized to make the following offer…

Give a gift of $50 or more to Off The Map between now and December 31st and we will send you a jar of Bacon Jam (as our way of saying thanks).

You can donate online here

Or mail your check to
Off The Map
PO Box 75094
Seattle, WA 98175

Be sure and send me your mailing address so we can rush your Bacon Jam to you.

Thanks from all your friends at Off The Map and Merry Christmas
Jim Henderson
jim@offthemap.com

The call came about 10 days ago

“Got any bait and switch stories Jim?”

A writer with TAL was on the phone calling me.

I’m a huge Ira Glass fan but I’m nothing compared to some of my 30 and under friends.

They said things like…

“I would quit my job and move to NY and work for Ira Glass.”
“Jim because you talked with Ira Glass you are officially permanently cool.”

For those of you who don’t know who Ira Glass is or what This American Life is, check out iTunes.

Ira Glass is the #1 show that is downloaded (400K per week) and over 1.7 million listen in on the radio.

He is by my way of thinking one of the most (if not the most) creative storytelling geniuses I have ever heard.

He and his team of creatives choose themes and then go about looking for small, human and unusual stories that illustrate those themes.

This week the theme is Bait and Switch and of course they thought about Christians.

So they found Off The Map because we are in the business of helping Christians learn how to not be jerks which means we hear a lot of jerky stories (some of which are bait and switch).

So last weekend I found myself sitting in the studios of KUOW / NPR Seattle (94.9 FM), headphones firmly situated, with Ira Glass in the middle of my head talking with me. The conversation continued for an hour and fifteen minutes. It was somewhat surreal. Glass has a very unique voice and is gifted with copious amounts of curiosity.

So, I shared some bait and switch stories I’d gleaned through my interviews with The Lost and Outsiders like these…

“I slipped and got high with a guy I was trying to witness to, only to have him call me a hypocrite.”

“I dressed as a woman with balloons for breasts for some awful street drama. God forgive me for scaring so many people.”

I told Ira that when I was in my evangelism heyday, Bait and Switch techniques were for sissies. Instead, we went straight at people cold turkey. No Bait and Switch for us – it was All Switch and no Bait.

After sharing the alternate approaches to evangelism we’ve now developed Ira said, “That sounds like All Bait – No Switch.” I liked that.

Well in order to hear what we ended up talking about you’ll have to listen tonight – on the radio in Seattle 7PM 94.9 FM, or live streamed over the internet here at 5PM Pacific. For other times, check your local NPR station. Or you can join the other 400,000 people who will download it and listen on their iPhone.

Hey and don’t forget to get your tickets to Off The Map. Its right around the corner.

I’m tired of meetings that suck

Here’s 5 reasons why Jesus would never have done this

1. Jesus was interested in the people
2. Jesus was interested in the conversation
3. Jesus was interested in learning from others
4. Jesus expected that people were thinking (already)
5. Jesus always offered the chance for dialogue

As we help leaders design meetings, over and over again we see that the way in which we meet is (at least) as important as what the meeting is about. Peter Block says this about meetings:

Each gathering needs to become an example of the future we want to create.

Bringing it back to Jesus, I would argue that every single time he “gathered” with others, he was focused on moving toward an alternate future. In almost every meeting I’m in these days, I find the meeting deadening and even abjectly wrong in how it doesn’t move us toward a better future.

In that vein, we’re designing meetings within the Maps and Mirrors conference that move people (us and you) to a better future. Specifically, our Leadership Idea Party on Friday afternoon will provide you both an experience in dynamic meeting design (what we call idea-parties) and an explanation of how you can design and lead meetings yourself. Meetings that will be more human, more energizing, and move you closer to the future you and your organization are trying to bring about.

I’m tired of meetings that suck because, by our meetings, we’re living into and creating our future.

The White church is slowly being pushed toward the margins of a culture it once dominated.

• Cell phone towers are replacing church steeples as key geographic (and cultural) markers
• For all its political effort, the religious right has come up largely empty handed
• The fastest growing faith segment in America is the “nones” those who claim no religion

The Good News: The Black church has been operating from the margins from its inception

• They’ve never had power or influence over the majority culture
• They’ve always had to do more with less
• They have experience with being ignored
• They’ve developed practical gospel that brings heaven to humans (as well as humans to heaven)
• They produced the most significant Christian leader of the 20th Century Martin Luther King Jr.

The Bad News: We’ve rarely asked them for help

• We have largely ignored their accomplishments
• We have been suspicious of their version of the gospel

The Best News: If we ask, they’re willing to help us

• Create a more practical gospel
• Become more about others and less about ourselves

The Missional movement is calling the church to serve the culture, to bring the kingdom of heaven to earth. This movement was forced in part by the increased awareness people have of suffering all around them. Not just “over there” but right next door. What used to be derisively called the Social Gospel has become business as usual for even the most conservative evangelical churches.

This impulse and theological tradition is found in its purest form in the Black Church who due to being marginalized discovered that the social gospel and getting people to heaven are not mutually exclusive. They also discovered that political action can be exercised for people who are truly disadvantaged not just inconvenienced.

Today, due to a general disillusionment with much of the traditional church, more young people are voting with their feet and saying if you aren’t serving your community you aren’t going to see me in church.

This is why Off The Map has invited several leaders of the African American church to talk with us about what we can learn from their experience. We want to know what would happen if we merged on the margins. We also want to say thank you and to honor their contribution to the work of the Kingdom.

As a way of saying thank you we will be honoring the work and contribution of Dr Samuel B McKinney who has devoted his life to serving others. The Samuel B McKinney Service Above Self Award will be given each year to the individual or group who exemplifies these missional values.

It was only a little over 500 years ago that the most popular maps showed an earth that ended at the Equator. The Equator was a boundary no one crossed and lived to tell about. We know that isn’t true now and wasn’t true then but it “felt” true to them.

Here’s the lesson: Maps make people feel and if we want people to change we need to give them alternate feelings – a new map. Only then will they walk out the door and see that the world is much bigger, more interesting and more receptive than they had come to believe.

As Brian McLaren says “If you have a new world you need a new map – you have a new world”

The program will be streamed live over the Internet at 7pm Central/5pm Pacific on my local public radio station (look for the ‘listen now’ button at the top of the page)

If you miss it live or don’t receive the program in your area, the podcast will be available in the This American Life archives in a couple of days.