The Great Commission Task Force gave its preliminary report to the Executive Committee of the Southern Baptist Convention last night. To listen to the rearrangements proposed, you would have to consider that they did choose to deconstruct… I wonder if they deconstructed everything.
This is not an endorsement or even a commentary of whether or not I agree with their report. It’s not a response in any way. But it is a recognition that in moving the SBC from one thing to another, the group responsible for the initial direction has had to go through some similar processes as Pastors and lay leaders do when transitioning a church.
You do have to deconstruct – that is break down the elements that make the whole, understand how they work and why, comprehend the intended result and the actual result. Then, knowing where you need to go, you can map out a change.
*Please note that deconstruction is not destruction. I had one person message me with that misunderstanding and, of course, the two things are quite different.
The question I posed the other day was when transitioning, do you have to deconstruct EVERYTHING… or could you just process through the major systems?
While I asked for opinions, the only ones I received were in email form and twitter direct messages. On the other hand, it was read at a much higher rate than any of my other posts in the year.
Nevertheless, even if everyone else is shy, I promised my answer and so I’ll give it now: Yes. You must deconstruct everything.
Truly, there will be things that you will not think to evaluate, but that you really should. Simply put, the better you understand it all, the easier it will be. While solid deconstruction and the understanding it produces does not guarantee success or even ease and failure to accomplish the process of deconstruction does not promise failure in the transition, the fruit of your efforts is greater and sweeter to all when a sweeping inventory is undertaken.
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DeAnn
on Feb 23rd, 2010
@ 4:58 pm:
Art
just thinking about what this really means……”breaking down the elements that making the whole, understand how they work and why, comprehend the intended result and the actual result. Then, knowing where you need to go, you can map out a change….” Does that mean look at every activity that SDBC holds and participates in and attempting to understand why it is done and compare the intended results vs actual results…. ie . wed night dinners, monthly bday dinners, home groups, SS, Sun eve worship, etc???
art rogers
on Feb 23rd, 2010
@ 7:52 pm:
Great application. Yes.
Remember this is about understanding things, not taking them apart literally.
Having said that, yes, to successfully transition, it is helpful to evaluate and understand all these things. What are they intended to do? What do they actually do? What do we want to accomplish? Do these things accomplish them? Can we alter them to accomplish what we want? What would that take? How do the people feel about it? What would it take to get them to change? What’s the best way to communicate it?
Of course, all this is easy to type from the couch tonight, but it’s a lot harder to do in real life.
Besides that, no matter what leadership does in terms of deconstruction and leadership, that’s no guarantee that the people will follow. Sometimes you can do it all right and it’s still not enough.
Dj
on Feb 24th, 2010
@ 5:38 pm:
You’re dead on. Jesus was the greatest leader this world has ever seen, and yet so many failed to follow. Even more, much of how he led actually turned people away from where he was leading. . . from where he was going. It’s true. Not everyone will follow, especially when your destination is to die to self.