I know I’m skating on thin ice with this one.  But it should be a fun and I hope rewarding discussion.

Let me preface it all by saying Canada is my home.  I love our country.  I’m called here.  I’m staying here and I love that I get to do what I do.

But I frequently speak and work with leaders in the US, and one of the questions I get all the time is ‘what’s the difference in leadership between Canada and the US?”

For what it’s worth, here’s what I think.

In the US, leaders sit around a table with a new idea and discuss 21 ways to make it happen.

In Canada, leaders sit around a table and think of 21 reasons why the idea can’t happen or shouldn’t happen.

Now there’s a bit of hyperbole in there.  But you see the point.

I’m not trying to be unpatriotic but I am frustrated by the seeming lack of progress in the church we see in our country.  I am frustrated by the constant stories I hear from church leaders about why they can’t make a difference and why their church can’t grow.  I’m baffled by the relative peace some people seem to feel with a status quo that’s far from desirable.

At Connexus, where I serve, our team works hard every day to try to create a culture where great things can happen.  I love the heart and attitude of our team.  Next week on the blog I’ll share some ways we try to shape that culture.

In the meantime, what do you think?  Do you agree?  We have readers from both sides of the border on this blog.  What do you see?  What frustrates you in your culture (Canadian or American)?

It’s so easy to become culturally irrelevant.  I don’t even need to try.  One day you’re doing some awesome worship music, playing Modest Mouse and serving bold coffee, and the next minute it sounds like polka music to the next generation of kids.  It happens so fast.

At Connexus Church, we do a weekly service programming meeting where we plan out our weekend services.  We have a reputation for being ‘edgy’ as a church.  That’s good in our books, because if you’re really trying to reach people who don’t go to church, using the culture to reach the culture can still be a very effective strategy. And using the culture (in music, messages, media and more) can help people engage what you’re saying and apply the message to life far more easily.

Recently it occurred to me that we really haven’t done much to specifically engage culture in the last month or two. We’ve done some songs right off the radio, but beyond that, not much.  That freaked me out.  How could we forget?  It’s such a big part of who we are and what we do.

So I took out my computer and wrote down seven question I want us to start asking regularly as a team:

1. In what ways have we engaged our culture in the last 30 days?
2. What’s current in our culture?
3. What’s everyone talking about?
4. What’s our target (in our case, a 30ish married couple with kids) talking about?  How would we know?
5. What’s funny?
6. What’s viral?
7. What’s enduring (not trendy) that people still pay attention to?

I think of these questions as a way to ensure that we don’t think we’re engaging the culture around us when, frankly, we’re not.  One hour of swirling around in these questions led to some great creative ideas for the coming months (which I probably shouldn’t let out of the bag).

If you’re in leadership, what do you do to stay current?  What do you think of the questions?  Got any better ones?