clarity evangelist

The New Clarity Evangelist Blog at WillMancini.com

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Early Christmas Present - My New Blog

Auxano's creative team gave me an early Christmas present: a new blog and switch-over from Typepad to Wordpress. Thanks to Cheryl Marting our chief connections officer and James Bethany our creative director. 

Those of you who have subscribed via e-mail, the feed will transfer.

Those of you connecting via RSS will need to switch over (My apology for the inconvenience.)  

Please check out WillMancini.com. I would love to hear your thoughts!

The Essential Lesson of Tribal Communication

Seth Godin writes with a dash of bravado and his overstatements are both playful and insightful. But on the topic of communication, he delivers what he calls "the essential lesson" and it's not exaggerated.

"The essential lesson is that every day it gets easier to tighten the relationship you have with the people who choose to follow you."

If you have even dipped your toes in the world of social media, you know that this is true. The question is what are you doing about it?

Consider some interesting facts from my last week regarding twitter alone:

• While at Chilis, my 16-year old son showed me people tweeting close by on Google maps from a new app.
• Todd Wilson of Exponential, personally invites speakers to tweet about the conference 7 months in advance with 70 pre-written promotional tweets.
• Last night I watched the pre-recorded service video of Matt Chandler because a friend tweeted it.  I saw this the same day his congregation did as I continue to praying for him.
• While at my home church yesterday, I tweeted two of my favorite quotes from the service.
• I talk to dozens of people every week who tweet about the book Church Unique.
• Twitter "lists" is a new function that is making it easier to meet and organize people to follow.
• After the Houston co::Lab on Friday, two participants initiated follow-up direct messages that I was able to reply at a convenient time.

The list could go on and twitter is only one of many tools to communicate. Last night, I played team SWAT on Halo (a popular online XBoX game by Microsoft) with 7 people at a time among the other 6,000 global game participants at that time. We could talk with one another while we played. I also enjoyed 30 Thanksgiving photos of my nephews and nieces sent to me via Shutterfly.

The point is that Godin's "essential lesson" is sitting there with crystal clarity begging leaders to act.  So the big question today is:

What are you doing to tighten your connection with people who follow you?

Limit Your Limitations - 3 Essentials for Creating a Movement

In this fourth post on Take Seth Godin to Church I want to focus on Tribal Movement.  Consider using the questions in these posts for staff or volunteer meetings in the month of December.  Use the Advent season to see Jesus as the coming founder of a redemptive tribe called The Church. The previous two posts dealt with tribal passion and tribal leadership. 

In Tribes, Godin references Senator Bill Bradley who unpacks the anatomy of a movement with three essentials:  

1. A narrative that tells a story about who we are and the future we are trying to build.
2. A connection between and among the leader and the tribe
3. Something to do- the fewer limits the better

Here are some questions for each essential:

Future-building Narratives

• Every church has a creation story. How clear and developed is yours?  Can your team cast a shared, compelling vision based on your creation story?
• What is your most important priority right now as a church? What are one or two signature stories that help people understand and own that priority? 
  

Note: Creation stories and signature stories are discussed further in Church Unique. 

Leader-Follower Connections

• Where are lines of communication being blocked right now? Who is suffering the most from broken lines of communication?
• Is our greater barrier right now about tools and supports systems or about our attitudes as leaders?  How would our volunteers answer this question?
• Are we leaning into social media, or creating excuses and making jokes about why we don't engage it more?

Doing Without Limits

• What limits have we created that are unnecessary for connecting and releasing our people?
• Where have limits have been imposed or created that where never intended? 
• Where does our desire for control, lead to limits that really aren't necessary? 

How Passionate is Your Tribe? - 5 Questions

Here are my three favorite Seth Godin quotes pertaining to tribal passion:

"Do you believe in what you do?  Every day?  It turns out that belief happens to be a brilliant strategy. Can you imagine Steve Jobs showing up for the paycheck? It’s nice to get paid, its essential to believe."

"Caring is the key emotion at the center of the tribe… Many organizations are unable to answer the question, “Who cares?" because in fact, no one really does.  If you don’t care - really and deeply care - then you can’t possibly lead."

"The organizations of the future are filled with smart, fast, flexible people on mission. The thing is, that requires leadership."

Because every leader in your church can be placed on a continuum of emotional ownership, consider these questions for team discussion:

1. Who are most passionate in our ministry? How did they get that way? How do we help more people catch the passion? 
2. What is keeping me from caring more?  When did I care about my mission the most?  Why then?
3. How can we make creating enthusiasm a part of our leadership development strategy?
4. What can I do today to encourage a leader down the continuum from common interest to passionate mission? How can I use Thanksgiving week to leverage this encouragement? 
5. Am I as a leader spending adequate time with other leaders so that passion can rub off?

The Payoff of Carving Out Time for Vision

I ran into this simple but powerful post of 27-year old Sean Chandler. He is a student pastor in Round Rock, Texas that has been thinking about vision lately.

Imagine waking up one day to do leadership training and realizing that, "I had not articulated any of the basic ideas that are in my head." (Don't be surprised Sean as most leaders don't.)

But why not? Sean writes:

"Its far easier too...

• do business as usual
• focus on weekly tasks
• bog down in details
• keep a system with no direction or accountability...

...than it is carve out time in your schedule to develop a vision, cast the vision, and apply that vision to every single ministry, program, responsibility, and volunteer in your organization.

Well, it's easier in the short run. In the long wrong it leads to more work, discouragement, confusion, volunteer problems, and lack of results.

Vision requires intentionality, but the payoff is efficiency, momentum, inspiration, etc.

Great thoughts Sean- every word you chose packs a punch. Read his full post here.

Leading with a Mission Statement that Isn't Dumb

How many dumb mission statements do you hear like: Our challenge is to assertively network economically sound methods of empowerment so that we may continually negotiate performance-based infrastructures.

If you have been around church at all, you know that we are good at specializing in these "corporate hallmark cards" and "Air Supply-like rhythms." 

Yesterday, I spoke to church consultants from across the country at a summit in New Orleans with the Society of Church Consulting. I challenged them to consider a new approach to vision and strategic planning as outlined in Church Unique. Many resonated with my challenge. 

Ironically, while I was speaking, this article was sent before I got my hard copy of Fast Company. It is simply one of the best articles on writing a mission statement I have ever read.

The article entitled, How to Write a Mission Statement that Isn't Dumb is featured in Fast Company by Nancy Lublin, CEO of DoSomething.org

40 Top Thoughts on Clarity at 40

A few days before my 40th birthday I was thinking about a quote that has guiding my life for the last 25 years.  I read somewhere that I can't remember the idea that in the first half of your life, the opportunity of every situation is found more in what you learn than in what you give.

Hmmmm...what does that mean now that the first half of my life is over?  For some reason, I take comfort (maybe too much comfort) in the fact that I still get to learn more than I give. It throws me back to understanding my life as a stewardship. 

The next thought that crossed my mind, was "What are the other ideas that have guided my life and work the most." In 90 minutes I had written about 70. I was surprised that I could list that many, so I boiled it down to 40 and thought it might be fun to tweet them throughout the day. I figure the rest of the twitterville could put up with my extra tweets for one day! You can see the tweets and people's ERS (emotional resonance spectrum) by searching #40at40.  

Also thanks to Brock Sawyer for typing them up on his blog here.

Here are the top six:

1. Clarity isn’t everything but it changes everything.
2. Jesus was totally clear about his origin, his mission, and his destiny.
3. In the first half of your life, the opportunity of every situation is found more in what you learn than in what you give.
4. The rest of your life will be in the future, so prepare for it now. 
5. The most important question I have ever discovered is, “What is God up to?”
6. Imagination if more important than knowledge – Einstein

The rest of the list contains my personal, family and Auxano mission; the quote that lead me to write Church Unique and some of my favorite one-liners as a church consultant. Have fun and let me know your favs!

Great Prelaunch Vision Video on Local Predicament

Uncovering your Kingdom Concept is practice along the Vision Pathway to answer the question, "What can your church do better than 10,000 others." In defining this reality for each church we look closely at Place (Local Predicament), People (Collective Potential) and Passion (Apostolic Esprit). 

Jack Thomas is a church planter launching in urban Pittsburgh in May of 2010.  I not only love his cultural exegesis, but the succinct and quality way he is communicating his Local Predicament via video.

LifeStone Community Focus Video from Jack Thomas on Vimeo.

10 Profound Lessons from the Catalyst Godfather

I was glad to see Chuck Swindoll get the legacy award at Catalyst today.  He just got off the stage and truly engaged the young audience. It was fun to watch the crowd "surprised" by the wisdom and humor of this ministry giant.  It really exposes our taste for trend. We have little patience and appetite for seasoned ministry perspective at our conference pep-rallies.  

Chuck is a giant, and I have been close enough to him to validate that he lives the top ten lessons that he shares. I first met Chuck while at Dallas Seminary, and had the privilege as a young consultant to be his vision navigator during his fourth year at Stonebriar Community Church.  Stonebriar, planted in Frisco in far North Dallas, had 700 people at its first public worship and grew by 1000 people each year for the first four years. As I mentioned in Church Unique, Chuck's big idea is "joy."  His mission is to encourage all people to pursue a lifelong, joyous relationship with Jesus Christ.  

My favorite learning experience with Chuck was a small think tank with Greg Mott at Houston's First Baptist. I remember thinking: here is a 70 year-old church planter meeting with a 30 year old senior pastor of a 70- year old church. Chuck's humility and his command of Scripture is always amazing.  In fact he is one of the most humble and teachable pastors I have ever worked with.  That's why I especially appreciate his 10 lessons from 50 years of ministry:

1. It’s lonely to lead
2. It’s dangerous to succeed
3. It’s hardest at home
4. It’s essential to be real
5. It’s painful to obey
6. Brokenness and failure are necessary
7. Attitude overshadows actions
8. Integrity eclipses image
9. God’s way is always better than my way
10. Christlikeness begins and ends with humility