BLOG

The Church in the West is forced to ask questions like "What does it mean to be a minority group?" "How do we interact with a society that doesn't trust us?" Suddenly, the Anabaptist tradition seems relevant and vibrant. Answers are coming from leaders such as Stuart Murray, a member of a neo-Anabaptist network in the UK. They base their burgeoning movement in seven core convictions.

1. Jesus is the central reference for our understanding of church, and our engagement with society.

2. The Bible should be read together as a community, with an understanding that Jesus is the center of scripture.

3. Western Christendom culture has marginalized Jesus, leaving churches ill equipped for mission in a post-Christendom culture.

4. Associating the church with status, wealth, and force is inappropriate for followers of Jesus and damages our witness.

5. Churches are communities of discipleship and mission.

6. Spirituality and economics are connected.

7. Peace is at the heart of the gospel.

(Paraphrased from The Naked Anabaptist.)

With its commitments to discipleship, peace and living as a contrast community, this once obscure tradition seems positioned to redefine the Christian faith. If taken seriously, the decades to come could see a revival in traditional Anabaptist denominations, and a variety of strange and exciting new forms of church.

What influences have the Anabaptist tradition had on you and what things do you see emerging from new voice in that tradition?

Chris Morton is a Fuller Seminary Student, blogger and social media strategist. He writes on growth and mission at ChrisMorton.info.

The Church in the West is changing, and in the midst of that change, the 500 year old misunderstood tradition known as Anabaptism is gaining new traction. Who are these people, and why are they suddenly making their presence known?

To many, they are either a charming fringe group in riding in horse and buggy, or an odd footnote in the story of Luther's reformation. However, more and more, influential scholars like Scot McKnight, independant non-denominational churches like Woodland Hills, and other church leaders are identifying themselves as neo-Anabaptists.

I became familiar with the Anabaptists through the writings of Stanley Hauerwas, whose influential work owed much to the influence of Mennonite scholar John Howard Yoder. Hauerwas introduced me to the concept of Church as a Contrast Society. Around the same time I was reading this, the American Government was gearing up for wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Using words like "crusades" made it clear that many saw these wars as a religious cause. In contrast, Hauerwas (here with Willimon) articulated a very Anabaptist role for the church:

"The most creative social strategy we have to offer is the church. Here we show the world a manner of life the world can never achieve through social coercion or governmental action. We serve the world by showing it something that it is not, namely, a place where God is forming a family out of strangers."

Anabaptism emerged at the same time as modern Christendom. Emerging nationstates partnered with leaders like Luther and Calvin to create a new mixture of Church and State. One of the signs of this was their use of infant baptism, as entrance both into a religion and citizenry. The Anabaptist believed that following Christ was an individual adult choice, which could not be forced by the state. Re-baptism as an adult, was both an act of heresy to the church and treason to the state.

Since the beginning, Anabaptism has always proclaimed the church as an alternative to Christendom. Many now believe that we Western Culture is entering a new Post-Christendom era. The ties between church and state are fading. Cultural institutions who supported "Christian Values" and a general sense of Biblical literacy seem to be a thing of the past. A growing bulk of society is either skeptical or antagonsitic toward religion.

In Part II of this post, we will discover what is coming from emerging leaders in a Neo-Anabaptist network and get to that list of 7 core convictions.

Chris Morton is a Fuller Seminary Student, blogger and social media strategist. He writes on growth and mission at ChrisMorton.info.

Two Ways Leaders Can Begin to Reverse the "Silver Bullet" Syndrome

By Bill Fox
reposted with permission

While we can sympathize with leaders who may be dealing in complex domains ands may not have the insight and bandwidth to forge a successful approach or who are sold a "bill of goods", below are two insights that can help.

First, leaders can start by beginning to ask better questions. Ask great questions and you will yield the best answers. When we are captivated and hypnotized by the buzz of the latest industry "silver bullet", more often than not the great questions don't get answered, let alone asked.

Over the past 18 months, I had the opportunity to interview 26 top experts in the field of process and performance improvement. Interestingly, the number one main theme that I have identified across these interviews is that these experts ask great questions - yielding better answers and better outcomes.

What are those questions? I'm in the process of compiling a complete listing of all the stated and implied questions from the interviews that I will be publishing in a future blog post. In the meantime, here are several five minute interviews with great questions:

• Understand What Your Challenge Is and Where You Want to Go
• Three Key Questions to Ask at the Start of Any Process Improvement Initiative
• The Amazing Power of Asking Questions and Following the Energy

Focus on Values, Principles and Practices
A second approach can be found in a ground breaking book, High Performance Operations, where the author, Hillel Glazer, performs a bit of alchemy in describing how organizations can blend compliance into the value stream to lower costs, increase profits, and gain competitive advantage.

Hillel asserts that often times the "silver bullet" approach instills a focus on implementing the "silver bullet" itself rather than a focus on achieving the desired effects or outcomes. So what's the downside of that? It's probably a lot worse than you think. Think about it – focusing on a packaged solution usually results in just that and not the intended benefits.

Quoting from the book, Hillel states (in the context of best practices) where he believes leaders really need to focus:

"Organizations must focus on the purposes and outcomes the practices are designed to elicit. The reason the practices are in the body of work is why the practices are there, not the performance of the practices themselves."

What do you think? What are your ideas for solving the "silver bullet" problem?

Bill Fox is a plane-flying project management and performance improvement consultant. Frustrated with the way most organizations attempt to improve their operations, Bill created the 5 Minutes to Process Improvement Success interview series, a work designed to uncover and leverage the best performance improvement strategies and tactics of top consultants from around the world. Bill combines his over 25 years of performance improvement work with his passion for flying and aerial photography to help organizations gain a higher perspective for advancing their organizations to higher levels of performance. Connect with Bill on his website, LinkedIn or Twitter @Bi11Fox.

By Bill Fox
reposted with permission

Over the past 20+ years I have witnessed a repeated and troubling pattern that occurs far too frequently. The recurring pattern I'm referring to is when organizations choose to settle for a "silver bullet" solution. With the hope of quickly getting rid of a problem, many organizations are blindly adopting a "cookie-cutter" approach without asking the hard questions first.

Given all the uncertainty in today's economy, can organizations afford to continue on this track?

I have witnessed countless scenarios like this, and I bet you have too -

• Enterprise wide resource systems are rolled out with a lot of fanfare and management promises that it will transform the way the organization does business. A year later everyone is still waiting for the transformation and the search for the guilty begins.
• Process improvement initiatives such as Agile, CMMI, Lean, Project Quality Offices and any number of other improvement initiatives are started and stopped often in one failed initiative after another.
• You can add your own example here. I'm sure that there have been many times where you have seen your organization or another organization in your industry opt for the "cookie-cutter" approach!

Unfortunately, organizations rarely gain any traction or produce any real business value when they look for the "silver bullet". Implementing these failed initiatives that aren't right for a particular organization's needs means that thousands of dollars are needlessly wasted on training, software, computer hardware, consultants, etc. Organizations lose even more money from the effects of loss of productivity and employee morale.

Come back May 8 to read the second part of this post!
"Two Ways Leaders Can Begin to Reverse the "Silver Bullet" Syndrome"

Bill Fox is a plane-flying project management and performance improvement consultant. Frustrated with the way most organizations attempt to improve their operations, Bill created the 5 Minutes to Process Improvement Success interview series, a work designed to uncover and leverage the best performance improvement strategies and tactics of top consultants from around the world. Bill combines his over 25 years of performance improvement work with his passion for flying and aerial photography to help organizations gain a higher perspective for advancing their organizations to higher levels of performance. Connect with Bill on his website, LinkedIn or Twitter @Bi11Fox.

Continued from Monday

by Brad Lomenick
re-posted with permission

5. At the end of the day, no one really enjoys self-assessment. But you can be CONFIDENT that those around you on your team, your friends, your peers and your family are way more aware of you and your style and the things you can improve on. As a leader, you have to be willing to swallow your pride and look yourself in the mirror and correctly assess who you are. A more self-aware leader becomes a way more Confident and followable leader.

6. No one wants to work FOR or AROUND a leader who doesn't understand who they really are. Many times these leaders lack a clear sense of reality. My friend Ken Coleman calls this REALITY DEPRIVATION SYNDROME (RDS). Unfortunately, many leaders live in this world, and end up making decisions based on their false intuitions and assumptions because they don't have a clear sense of who they are and how they are viewed by their peers and what reality really looks like.

7. Know very clearly your areas of strength and areas of weakness. The more personality tests and self-assessment tests you can take, the better. Strengthsfinder, Myers-Briggs, Right Path Assessment, Personality tests, etc. All of these are helpful in giving you a perspective of the type of person you are, and the areas you need to be more aware of that can become problem areas.

8. Once you understand who you are, create a game plan for constant improvement. For example, one of my tendencies is to use cynicism as a source of gaining power and making others feel weak. I am VERY aware of this tendency I have, and have tried to create some barriers in my life that will harness this. Another example for me is that I will end up doing everything myself, instead of naturally delegating or allowing others on our team to take on responsibility. Because of this, I've had to be very intentional about making sure I don't micromanage. Another tendency I have is to be way more intense than I need to be. Because of this, I've tried to give my team permission to tell me when I'm in the "intense" zone. It's still something I find myself doing, but am very self-aware of this and work constantly to improve.

Brad a passionate follower of Christ, and have the privilege of leading and directing a movement of young leaders called Catalyst. Follow Brad on his facebook page or follow on Twitter.

He writes about leadership, the next generation, creativity, innovation, social media, teamwork, personal growth, generational issues, execution, and a few other topics. Brad's new book is The Catalyst Leader learn more at http://catalystleader.com.