futuristguy@missionaltribe

Series Introduction and Overview

A recent guest post from Dr. Margaret Jones tackled some important issues for training leadership and addressing issues of spiritual abuse. I may eventually respond to each of the five “cluster questions” I posed there. However, I felt I should at least explore issues of systems and structures for mentoring next generations of DiscipLeaders. (DiscipLeaders is my own term, and I mean it to emphasize that ALL who follow Jesus Christ as disciples are automatically designed to be leaders through their life, their gift-based ministry, and their relationships.)

So, this series on Healthy Ministry Systems and Structures will run at least three posts.

1. This first post gives my background in organizational development and systems design.
2. The second post links to webpages on http://mobilyzr.com/, an important source for conducting an evaluation of systems integrity for your church, ministry, or agency. The delay between Parts 2 and 3 gives you a time gap to read and consider the material from the mobilyzr.com links, and conduct a basic evaluation on how well your organization seems to be doing for integrity of systems and structures, processes and procedures.
3. The third post offers specific suggestions for starting a ministry internship or mentor/apprentice system. It draws from three different plans I have designed for sustainable and duplicatable systems: one for experiences to hone interns’ ministry skills and character; one for mentoring next-generation artists, creators, and writers; and one on sustainable strategy and ministry skills for culture-readers, change agents, and futurists. (I’ll see if I can blend principles from all three into one coherent approach. But if it looks like it’s becoming too long, I’ll split it into several posts.)

I am raising these topics right after Dr. Jones’ guest post on spiritual abuse because:

I believe an organization that has not evaluated its system integrity and begun addressing deficiencies does not have the right stuff to be mentoring next generation leaders responsibly. An organization with low system integrity is at high risk of inflicting spiritual abuse on its leaders, members, and ministry interns.

I hope this series will give constructive frameworks for health ministry and mentoring systems. These are crucial to the survival of existing churches, ministries, and agencies, and expansion of the Kingdom! I will post the second part of the series immediately, and the third part as soon as I can, depending on time and energy coinciding.

My Background in Organizational Development and Systems Design

If spiritual gifts and ministries are where our “work” seems like play, then I must have a providential gifting package related to organizational development! I have vivid memories of my first major systems design job. My role related to conference organizing. It involved creating a system for scheduling 1,600 students into as many of their top choices as possible for 5 different workshops with a total of over 60 teachers, some of whom had limited time availability and others who let us choose their time slots. And then I had to train a team of schedulers in how to apply this system - thanks Al, Leslie, and Robyn! It could not be done by computer … because it was high school, in “old school” times, and we didn’t have access to computers in those pretechstoric time.

Yeah, that was my first big gig in systems design. I was 16 at the time. When I was 40, I designed what apparently was the first-ever U.S. seminary training on HIV/AIDS ministry offered for academic credit. It involved three weekend conferences, each on a different theme and with multiple main sessions and workshops. This series utilized the expertise of over 50 instructors who averaged something like 9 years of experience in ministry to people infected or affected by HIV. (Most of whom I knew personally from national-level work in this ministry arena myself since the late 1980s.) It also involved developing all the schedules and volunteer plans, plus creating over 200 pages of resources in three notebooks. That was in 1996 - 15 years into the HIV epidemic - and it was still a startling missing link in terms of church ministry during that era.

Maybe all that detail wasn’t necessary for most readers, but for those who do require documentable expertise, perhaps that shows enough “street cred” for me to write on this topic as a combination practitioner-theoretician-theologian.

I’m not sure I ever viewed projects like that one, or organizations in general, through a mechanistic framework. That’s because I believe a set of multiple factors shapes the outcomes, and if any of those elements change - especially the human element - then the intended outcomes cannot be guaranteed. No one taught me that, that’s just the way I always saw it. As I’ve come to understand since then, that perspective involves a framework that is more organic than mechanistic, and a methodology that is more interconnected complex systems than purely analytic. (My beginnings in organic systems and ecology go back even farther than my systems design experiences, but I’ll save the story of that passion, research, and practical experiences for another time.)

And so, I’ve come to see that “O” for Organic is about Optimizing the cOmbination of relevant elements for the best Output, while “M” for Mechanic is about Maximizing the aMounts of set inputs for the Most output. (I just made that up on the spot. Not perfect, but I still kind of like it!)

A Decade of Sustainable Systems Design Plans

Much of what shaped the ideas in the next posts on healthy systems and mentor/apprentice programs comes from three major projects I’ve developed over the past 12 years. Some of the ideas come from even earlier periods in my thinking, but the initial proposals date from 1997 through 2003 - with multiple revisions and upgrades to them in the years since.

The first source comes from 1997. I completed an extensive proposal for creating “MentorCenter Networks” to disciple next-generation artists, creators, and writers. It contained specific criteria, structures, and processes for selecting and developing mentors and interns. The design called for the first interns/trainees to become the next mentors in turn (if interested, capable, and qualified by sufficient spiritual maturity),and some of them could be trained and certified to transplant the entire system elsewhere. That gave the approach an edge for transforming what could otherwise be just a one-time, short-term series of meetings into an ongoing, long-term sustainable and duplicatable system.

The second source comes from reflection on my own Theological Field Education (TFE) internship at seminary in 2000-2001. I was supposed to serve in a church plant as a “concept and design guy,” which involved conceptualizing and designing all dimensions of what I was then calling a “post-postmodern-friendly church.” Today I’d probably describe the concept and design activities as something more along the lines of “organizational historian, cultural interpreter, learning styles consultant, and systems designer and developer.” The post-postmodern-friendly aspect I would now describe with equal verbosity as a “culture-current, futures-oriented, intercultural-context, multiplication-structured, organic-paradigm church.”

What these were called wasn’t as important as the fact that this experience turned out to be far more disappointing than engaging. At least my deconstructing it afterwards led to at least two things I consider very redemptive. One was an original system for integrating multiple cultures into an “intercultural connection zone” that was “welcoming and transforming” for all. Another was an extensive critique of the TFE system. That very disheartening experience also motivated me to apply for a job as the seminary’s TFE administrative assistant when the position came open in 2004.

Disclosure: Serving in that position gave me a direct opportunity to share suggestions for improving the quality and consistency of the TFE promotions and materials, processes and procedures, systems and structures. I shared with the Director some articles I had developed on internship systems, with the explicit agreement that “In sharing this material with the TFE program [...] I retain the right to use the same material in any training and mentoring programs I may eventually implement.” Hence what I’ll write from in Part 3 is material I am responsible for creating and stewarding, even if it was initially in response to my TFE experiences, and even though some of my ideas were adopted in the updates to their program.

The third source comes from an extensive proposal I created in 2003 for “Marin Century.” I live in Marin County, often acknowledged as one of the least churched counties in the U.S. In terms of discipleship, this locale needs more plowing, sowing, and watering than of reaping. And - just my opinion - that kind of preliminary work may need to be the priority for several more generations, as this setting really does seem to be a classic cross-cultural missions frontier situation.

The Marin Century proposal offered systems for developing a 100-year-plan for greater systems health, spiritual maturity, and transgenerational sustainability in Marin County churches and ministries. It suggested structures for equipping an initial intergenerational, interdenominational team of adult men and women to move toward spiritual maturity, and for training them in practical culturology, contextualization, and futurist skills. Their legacy of this long-term learning-and-serving community would be to:

• Apply those spiritual formation and ministry strategy skills in the current context.
• Pass them on through investing them in next generations of DiscipLeaders.
• Release those next generations to adapt the plans to their own emerging contexts as they discern it.

Thus, Marin Century would implant a multigenerational strategic plan and skills training system that could be implanted, and continually adapted and re-implanted.

Next post: Part 2 - Systems Integrity and Evaluations shares some opinions on why potential ministry internship sites should undergo evaluation. It also gives an overview and links to www.mobilyzr.com as an important source for conducting your own evaluation of systems integrity for your church, ministry, or agency; and introduces the complementary process of appreciative inquiry to identify an organization’s “redemptive purpose.”

This series is cross-posted at my main futuristguy blog.