Church Leadership Reading List: Poke the Box

An article by Matt    5 Comments

I am a fan of Seth Godin.

I greatly enjoy the way that he thinks and I believe he has a pretty good handle on the way that our culture is changing.  While Godin is not the first name that typically comes to mind when it comes to books on leading in the church, I am convinced that he has some great words that those of us in church leadership need to hear.   Poke the Box is the latest of Godin’s books, and it is a great tool to help us think through our current cultural context.

The common thread of Godin’s work, whether it be on his blog, in his books, or his speaking engagements is the idea that the factory is dead.  The place where we go to do mind-numbing, repetitive work is no longer a reality, and in order to truly do meaningful work we need to get outside of our factory mindset and embrace our creative, passionate side to do work that adds value to the world around us.  If we think about it, we have no choice but to realize that the factory, the assembly line, and the repetitive work where we do not have to truly engage is slowly becoming extinct in this country, as is the mindset of putting in your forty years and retiring with a pension.

Similarly, the church in this country is in the midst of a transition unlike any we have seen in recent history.  As society morphs from modernity into a postmodern culture, church leaders find themselves in a place where what has worked for fifty or more years is no longer doing so.  Church leaders are faced with two choices: adapt or fade off into irrelevance.

Three things that I took from Poke the Box:

• The easiest way for an organization to fail is to not develop your bench.  In every church there are people who we believe to be sent by God specifically to ensure that that particular church survives.  These are the people who rally the troops, lead Sunday School classes, develop small group curriculum, mow the lawn, and play in the worship band.  All while working a full time job and raising the perfect family.  How these people do it, no one knows.  While we need to be thankful for them and celebrate their work, we also need to realize that we can not allow them to do everything.  Besides the whole over-functioning thing,  what happens when they need to move away, or if they need to pull back for a season?  Over reliance on the “stars” of our team ultimately ends in disaster.  Do not let the fact that you have great people currently in place to be an excuse to not develop your bench.
• You will fail.  Failure happens.  As a leader you have stories about the time you played Chubby Jalapeno with your middle-schoolers, replacing innocent marshmallows with the hottest peppers you could find (not saying I had anything to do with that).  Events bomb, worship services flat-line, and sweeping initiatives don’t always work out the way we planned.  When failure comes you have two choices: learn from failure, or become gun-shy.  Throughout our country I am convinced we have far too many gun-shy pastors.  Pastors who had at one time lead with confidence, but had been beaten down by boards, staff members, or their supervisors because they took a risk and it didn’t work out as envisioned.  The church of recent history has a problem with risk, and is quick to punish those who risk for the sake of the gospel and fail.  We need to begin to embrace risk, understand that failure happens, and begin to innovate.
• You now have permission.  I give you permission to lead in innovative ways.  Far too often incredibly gifted potential church leaders hold back because they do not feel that they have permission to lead out of the vision that God has given them.  The church needs to get away from the tightly controlled institution that dictates what is and what is not the proper way to do ministry, and instead give a set of rough guidelines and release people with crazy ideas, far different from what we did years ago, to go and reach the new generations for Jesus.

Have you read Poke the Box?  If so, I would love to hear your thoughts on it.

Want to read Poke the Box?  Leave a comment on this post (make sure your put your email address in the form) and I will pick a reader at random to send my copy to.  Deadline for commenting is Noon eastern, May 25.

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