Sayings

BY EDDIE LOWEN

Build the culture you want with the phrases you repeat

Chicago Cubs manager Joe Maddon put some thought into his team’s 2015 season motto. He unveiled it at spring training: “Embrace the target.” The sports psychology behind the motto was sound, but it didn’t catch on. Some players began using their own motto: “We are good.” They were, but not quite good enough to reach or win the World Series in 2015.

As the Cubs entered the 2016 season, Maddon joked that the team motto would be “Try not to suck” (note: though definitely slang, the word is not vulgar in this context). The more relaxed motto stuck. On November 2 the Cubs won the World Series for the first time since 1908.

When axioms and sayings stick, they make an impact. The right words, metaphors, and sayings not only reflect culture, they create it. I’ve written before about my resistance to formalizing the mission statement of the church I serve beyond the words of Jesus in the Great Commission. But once we decided on “We exist to connect everyone to Jesus and his mission,” it was transformative. Nearly everyone in our church knows the phrase by heart. It is heard in small groups and café conversations and in response to critics of larger churches.

I’d like to share some of the sayings that have stuck in the church I help lead. I hope they will encourage you to develop some sayings that help in your ministry or leadership context.

Speak up—as long as you say it to the right person, at the right time, in the right way.

Healthy teams frown on pessimism and sarcastic criticism, as they should. Every few months, I learn of another church leadership team where a staff member, or the spouse of a staff member, or a volunteer leader and his or her spouse is trafficking in division or negativity.

Not long ago, I asked a church leader why a member of the church staff was being allowed to undermine another leader with impunity. The person replied, “We don’t like it, but what can we do about it?”

My response was a bit indignant. I said, “You can be faithful to the New Testament.” Every church should adopt the perspective and the prescription the New Testament offers regarding divisive rhetoric in the church. I’d summarize the apostle Paul’s approach like this: ain’t happening Titus 3:10 sums it up. Check it out.

We have a saying that captures this. We’ve shared it with many other church leaders and have been told it has gone a long way toward producing leadership health.

• We spend some time explaining what it means to approach the right person (usually your supervisor, whether you’re paid or volunteer), not as a last resort, not after voicing concern or “prayer requests” to others, but as an initial response.

• The right time, we explain, is often not in a meeting, or on Sunday morning, or just before the weekend, and certainly not before some prayer and reflection.

But as bad as dysfunction and division are, leaders must have a device by which they can raise concerns and ask penetrating questions to those who have more authority. To go a step further, I believe church leaders have the solemn obligation (to the health of the church) to share concerns they are unable to resolve on their own.

That’s not an invitation to employ stall tactics or to become the designated obstacle to progress. But it is a call to the kind of openness and healthy dialogue that isn’t based on avoidance. This type of environment produces genuine unity, one of the few must-haves for every healthy church.

• We teach that the right way to express a concern is nearly always in the form of a question, asked with respect and kindness, and followed by a lot of listening.

There are people who have the capacity and integrity to communicate this way, but who’ve never been taught how. So, we teach people how—and how important it is to us. If we learn they cannot or will not, we allow them to step back or seek another environment. We simply won’t settle on this—and we are constantly being made glad that we hold this bar high.

Visibility x Voice = Influence

A few years ago, I realized that the people the church sees and those from whom