So how clearly are you seeing things as a leader?

Really?

Truthfully, there are important things in leadership that all of us miss. One of the toughest challenge for those of us who lead is that every leader develops blind spots.

A blind spot is simply defined as an area where your view is obstructed.

You just don’t see things that are there. All of us miss things that are clear to any other person, but not to us.

It’s why you turn around first to check beside you when making a lane change.

It’s why you crane your neck at a stadium so you can see the field unobstructed.

It’s why you trimmed that tree near your front window so you can see the view.

You want to see clearly.

It’s not that most leaders want to create problems, it’s that they don’t see the problems they’re creating. We’re blind to them.

I know I am.

Here are some blind spots I’ve identified in me over the years:

My personal style (which tends to land more on the truth side than the grace side) can unintentionally hurt or alienate people.

Casual comments I make can be mistaken as ‘directives’ by people around me, leading them to act on things I was simply asking questions about. (I’m the senior leader in our church and my words weigh more than I’d like them to sometimes.)

While being selective is important, I can sometimes be too picky about who I choose to move into senior leadership – sometimes backlogging the development of other leaders.

My attention to detail on matters I’m passionate about can be so minute that it becomes discouraging to some.

How did I learn about all these things?

I would love to say I was perceptive enough to figure them out on my own, or that the insight came as a result of enlightened thinking.

But that’s not the case.

I learned about all of these because someone told me. I wasn’t clever enough to see them on my own.  That’s why they’re called blind spots.

The longer you lead, the more important it is to develop a reliable, honest, accurate feedback loop. (This post from Jeff Brodie is a must read for those of you trying to help a leader see a blind spot).

Here’s the tension: the longer you lead and the larger your organization becomes, the less people will be naturally willing to tell you things you might not like to hear.

How do you overcome that?

Here are 3 questions you can ask as a leader that give other people permission to help you see your blind spots:

1. What am I doing that’s not helping our mission? I try to ask this question regularly to the people around me. Even if the answer is “I can’t see anything right now”, making a habit of asking the question creates a culture of openness and mutual support. It also signals to the team that the leader doesn’t think he or she is infallible.

2.  What do I need to do to make sure you feel comfortable telling me what you see? This second question is so necessary because often leaders won’t want to answer the first question truthfully. They’re too afraid. It takes a lot of nerve for someone to give ‘honest’ feedback to a leader. When a leader is defensive, dismissive or even indifferent, the leader makes it so easy for the staff member to never speak up again. By asking this second question, you show them you want feedback and you realize you might not always be easy to approach. And if you are easy to approach, you’ll find out soon enough. Either way, this question builds trust.

3.  How can I help make it better? Your job as a leader isn’t just to know something is wrong, it’s to leverage your influence or power to help make it right. When your team member knows you really care about a good solution and are willing to do what you can to make it better, it goes a long way.

Questions like this can create an open honest culture.

They will make you a better leader, and help your organization push past leadership lids.

What questions have helped you overcome blindspots? What are some tension points you continue to face?

You’ve had it happen before, people tell you they are leaving your church because ‘they’re not growing’ or they’re looking for ‘deeper teaching.’

They claim they need a place where where they can grow and mature more spiritually.

While I totally understand that people leave churches for legitimate reasons (I have left a denomination at one point), over time I’ve begun to sense a trend. While everyone might have one or two life-time changes in them, the kind of ‘this isn’t doing it for me’ movement that characterizes church today alarms me.

I’ve noticed that the people who often claimed to be the most spiritually ‘mature’ (or at least on that quest) are often people who are

Somewhat judgmental

Generally disinterested in reaching their unchurched friends

Self-focused

Serially dissatisfied

Often unwilling to actually commit long-term to any local church

Question: are these really the characteristics of maturity?

Maybe what poses as ‘maturity’ isn’t always maturity.

Here are three points of confusion I’ve noticed in the maturity discussion in the church today:

Depth of knowledge is seen as the goal of maturity. It’s wonderful that people understand what they believe, but knowledge in and of itself is not a hallmark of Christian maturity. As Paul says, knowledge puffs up. Love, by contrast, builds up. And some of the most biblically literate people in Jesus day got by-passed as disciples.

Clarity is mistaken for superficiality. Sometimes I think people assume a teaching is ‘deep’ because they can’t understand it. They walk out of church and you ask them what they learned. They say “I”m not sure, but wow, it was deep.” How helpful is that?

Preachers need to be clear, but often, there’s a pressure on us ‘to go deeper’ by offering information that’s confusing or even irrelevant in the name of ‘being deep’. I always shoot for clear, even though that’s sometimes more work. It’s easier to be confusing than it is to be clear. And I still shoot for clear even though I know my inbox will get messages from people who can’t understand why we’re not ‘deeper’.  But if you want to reach unchurched people (here are 9 signs you are ready to reach unchurched people) and truly help even Christians mature, you need to be clear (Paul, by the way, seems to agree).

Many Christians also appreciate clarity because, unlike complexity, clarity is helpful. If you really want to grow, clarity is of tremendous value.

People think the church is responsible for their spiritual growth. People leave churches because they’re not growing. But whose responsibility is growth? Theirs. Yours. Mine. Why is that people who say they are most passionate about maturity blame others for their lack of maturity? I just don’t get that. Isn’t responsibility a sign of maturity?

For sure, the church can help. In the same way a gym can help you get fit, a friend can help you through a tough time. But you are responsible getting in shape, for getting better and even for your personal and spiritual growth.

So what are some marks of a different kind of  ’maturity’ in the church today?  Here are five I see:

A passion for application. Biblical knowledge is ultimately designed for application. The kind of maturity that I think honour God most deeply is knowledge applied in love. Our lives should be different. Our marriages should be different. Our parenting should be different. Our love for our neighbours and community should be different. Our confession and repentance should be deep and authentic. Our transparency should be authentic. And we should be radically committed to living out our faith.

Humility. True Christian maturity has always been marked by humility.

A servant’s heart. True maturity comes in many things (including faith) when your quest becomes about others, not yourself.  Mature Christians live for Christ and live for others.

A love for unchurched people. If you consider the Apostle Paul to be a mature Christian,  consider his obsession with unchurched people. Eventually it got him killed. Real maturity is not a life lived in pursuit of self or even the ‘found’ – it’s a life lived pursuing others and the lost.

A deep investment. I’m going to go out on a limb here, but I do think one of the marks of mature faith is a deep investment in the Kingdom of God. Sometimes I wonder if you checked the giving records of people who complain most about being fed, and you will see scant evidence of a sacrificial investment in the Kingdom of God. Conversely, you will see many people deeply committed to quietly serving others who have a deep investment in the Kingdom. Think about that for a while.

What are you learning about maturity?

What do you think the future of the church would look like if we pursued application, humility, service, love for the unchurched and a deep investment in the Kingdom?

Almost every church I know says they want to reach unchurched people. But few are actually doing it.

Part of the problem stems from the fact that many churches don’t really understand unchurched people (here’s a post on 15 characteristics of today’s unchurched person).

And part of the problem is that our model of church is designed to reach and help churched people, not unchurched people. Churches haven’t embraced change deeply enough.

So you can say you want to reach people all day long. You can teach about it every week. But if you haven’t designed your church around ministering to people who don’t go to church, you might as well be preaching that you want to lose weight while eating a triple cheeseburger.

Your model simply doesn’t match your mission.

So how do you know that your church is actually ready to reach unchurched people?

Here are 9 signs your church is ready to embrace unchurched people:

1. Your main services engage teenagers. I’ve talked with many church leaders who want to reach unchurched people who can’t understand why unchurched people don’t like their church. They would be stumped until I asked them one last question: do the teens in your church love your services and want to invite their friends? As soon as I asked that question, the leader’s expression would inevitably change. He or she would look down at the floor and say ‘no’. Here’s what I believe: if teens find your main services (yes, the ones you run on Sunday mornings) boring, irrelevant, and disengaging, so will unchurched people. As a rule, if you can design services that engage teenagers, you’ve designed a church service that engages unchurched people.

2. People who attend your church actually know unchurched people. Many Christians say they want to reach unchurched people, but they don’t actually know any unchurched people well enough to invite them. One of the reasons we run almost no church programs at Connexus where I serve (other than small groups and few other steps toward discipleship) is that we want our families to get to know unchurched people. We want them to play community sports, get involved at their kids school and have time for dinner parties and more. You can’t do that if you’re at church 6 nights a week. We don’t do many ministries because our people are our ministry.

3. Your attenders are prepared to be non-judgmental. Unchurched people do not come ‘pre-converted’. They will have lifestyle issues that might take years to change (and let’s be honest, don’t you?). Cleaning up your behaviour is not a pre-condition for salvation, at least not in Christianity. What God has done for us in Jesus saves us; not what we have done for God. Is your congregation really ready to love unchurched people, not just judge them? (I wrote about why Christians should let non-Christians off the moral hook here.) One of Jesus’ genius approaches was to love people into life change. If your people can do that, you’re ready to reach unchurched people.

4. You’re good with questions. This one’s still hard for me. I like to think that every question has an answer. I think one of the reasons unchurched people flee churches is they feel shut down when every question they ask has a snappy or even quick answer. They will find answers, but you need to give them time. Embracing the questions of unchurched people is a form of embracing them.

5. You’re honest about your struggles. Unchurched people get suspicious when church leaders and Christians want to appear to have it ‘all together’. Let’s face it, you don’t. And they know it. When you are honest about your struggles, it draws unchurched people closer. I make it a point to tell unchurched people all the time that our church isn’t perfect, that we will probably let them down, but that one of the marks of a Christian community is that we can deal with our problems face to face and honestly, and that I hope we will be able to work it through. There is a strange attraction in that.

6. You have easy, obvious, strategic and helpful steps for new people. I am still such a fan of thinking steps, not programs (Here’s an older but awesome (free) Andy Stanley podcast of all Seven Practices of Effective Ministry). One sure sign that you are ready to handle an influx of unchurched people is that your church has a clear, easily accessible path way to move someone from their first visit right through to integration with existing Christians in small groups or other core ministries. Most churches simply have randomly assembled programs that lead nowhere in particular.

7. You’ve dumped all assumptions. It’s so easy to assume that unchurched people ‘must know’ at least the basics of the Christian faith. Lose that thinking. How much do you (really ) know about Hinduism or Taoism? That’s about how much many unchurched people (really) know about Christianity. Don’t fight it. Embrace it. Make it easy for everyone to access what you are talking about whenever you are talking about it.

8. Your ‘outreach’ isn’t just a program. Many Christians think having a ‘service’ for unchurched people or a program designed for unchurched people is enough. It’s not. When you behave like reaching unchurched people can be done through a program or an alternate service, you’re building a giant brick wall for unchurched people to walk into. You might as well tell them “This program is for you, but our church is for us. Sorry.”

9. You are flexible and adaptable. In the future, you will not ‘arrive’. I think the approach to unchurched people and the strategy behind the mission of the church needs to be flexible and adaptable. Don’t design a ‘now we are done’ model to reaching unchurched people. You might never be done. Churches that are adaptable and flexible in their strategy (not in their mission or vision) will have the best chance of continually reaching unchurched people. “How quickly can your church change?” will become a defining characteristic of future churches. (If you want to read more about change, I wrote Leading Change Without Losing It last year. Additionally, John Kotter’s Leading Change is a must-read classic.)

Those are 9 signs I see that your church is ready to reach unchurched people.

What do you see?