As I learn more and more about excellence through my church research and ministry research, one question that keeps coming up is “What is the relationship between excellence and perfection?”

I believe that  kingdom excellence is not contingent on achieving perfection; however, perfection does play a significant role in excellence. You can be excellence without being perfect.

What I’ve come to realize is that the kingdom perspective of perfection is that although perfection can never be attained by our human effort, it must be our goal nonetheless.

By striving for a God’s standard of perfection that is never within our reach we must acknowledge our utter reliance on God. Furthermore, we are able to see the expanse that separates our best effort from God’s perfection and it is then that we begin to recognize the enormity of what Jesus Christ has done for us by achieving perfection in our place. We see that God is both just and merciful. We are set free from ourselves because we do not hold on as tightly to our own success or failure.

It is only when we are freed from the illusion that we can achieve perfection we receive the power to try.

Kingdom excellence means hungering for perfection. Kingdom excellence means constantly striving for perfection in a way that reflects the truth that it is Jesus, not me, who has attained it. Kingdom excellence is trying my best and when I get knocked down, kingdom excellence is the power to get up and try again.

I am grateful for C.S. Lewis for his understanding of this and his unique ability to explain it to me:

We may, indeed, be sure that perfect chastity — like perfect charity — will not be attained by any merely human efforts. You must ask for God’s help. Even when you have done so, it may seem to you for a long time that no help, or less help than you need, is being given. Never mind. After each failure, ask forgiveness, pick yourself up, and try again. Very often What God first helps us towards is not the virtue itself but just this power of always trying again. For however important chastity (or courage, or truthfulness, or any other virtue) may be, this process trains us in habits of the soul which are more important still. It cures our illusions about ourselves and teaches us to depend on God. We learn, on the one hand, that we cannot trust ourselves even in our best moments, and on the other, that we need not despair even in our worst, for our failures are forgiven. The only fatal thing is to sit down content with anything less than perfection.

– C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity

“God’s networked kingdom finds expression as people cluster together, centered in Christ, living in the way of Jesus.” –Dwight Friesen

[<Disclosure> I received this book to review through my participation in The Ooze's Viral Blogger program. I have not been compensated financially in any way for reading or reviewing this book. </Disclosure>]

Thy Kingdom Connected is written by Dwight Friesen, associate professor of practical theology at Mars Hill Graduate School in Seattle. In it Friesen uses Network Theory to describe various theological implications, perspectives and applications pertaining to the kingdom of God. Friesen’s goal in writing the book is to shine light upon the inter-connectivity of creation and prepare readers for “living into the image of God” and “incarnating the mission of God.”

I Like This Book, But…

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“Most people spend their lives trying to make their heart’s fondest dreams come true… We never imagine that getting our heart’s deepest desires might be the worst thing that can ever happen to us.” –Timothy Keller

I have a fondness for Tim Keller primarily because he was the first preacher that I ever heard preach the Gospel. Granted, that is an exaggeration. What I really mean is Tim Keller was preaching when Jesus Christ opened my eyes, ears, and heart to the truth of the Gospel. My wife (girlfriend at the time) had started attending Redeemer Presbyterian Church in Manhattan because she was familiar with his preaching. I had grown up going to church but had fallen away through college and my early 20’s. It was a period when God persistently and forcefully reclaimed his rightful place as Lord of me, unraveling years and years of my own effort to replace him (primarily done out of spite after my mother passed away). So I consider myself quite fortunate that I got to hear Keller preach every Sunday during the crescendo of God’s redemptive work in my life. Anyway, I digress.

Keller has tremendous insight into the truths of the Kingdom of God and Jesus’s redemptive work in the world. And he has a remarkable ability to speak those truths in a away that clears away a lot of the clutter (be it our own baggage or the religiosity of many parts of the church) creating a clear path from your eyes (for his books) or your ears (for his preaching) into your brain and deep into your heart.

Counterfeit Gods is no different. In it Keller tackles the subject of idolatry – the tendency of the human heart to “take good things… and turn them into ultimate things.” (continue reading…)

I haven’t fully gotten into the blogging groove yet. I’ve been at it for just over a year now but I’m only recently starting to feel like I’m picking up momentum. But I enjoy blogging and I’m especially enjoying all the new people I’ve met and interacted with this year. I know that my blog doesn’t have much to do with these relationships forming but it’s part of it none the less.
Well someone forgot to send me the memo letting me know that bloggers have to do two things at the end of the year.

1. Write a really awesome retrospective post.
2. Write a post highlighting your top content from the past year.

Check and check. (continue reading…)

As part of the Excellence in Online Ministry research project, I have gotten to speak with a number of thought leaders in the area of online ministry. Recently I spoke with DJ Turner, Director of Communications for Denver Seminary and she shared with me about their challenges and success in leveraging the web to serve their broad audience. DJ provided tremendous insight into how strategically approaching your online activities can help a ministry to be excellent. Here are some highlights from our conversation:

In your experience, how does research contribute to online excellence?
I think research is very important for ministries to be excellent online. I wish I had more time for it because it’s so important. If you don’t know where your audience is, you can’t achieve excellence. Having an understanding of where audience is is very important. You also have to understand how they interact with the different sorts of things that are online and what their goals are. Say we have 900 students who are fans of our Facebook page, but only 200 want to interact with us on it; it isn’t realistic for us to push the other 700 of them to engage more online. In this way, the understanding we develop through research helps us to set realistic goals.

What about the use of analytics?
Where research helps us establish our goals, analytics helps us to determine how we are doing in achieving those goals. In addition, there is research that comes from analytics. If our analytics shows that we have 50 hits a month from South Africa, that tells us maybe there is something going on there we need to pay attention to.

What other factors contribute to excellence?
This may fall under research, but you have to have an awareness of what your peers are doing. Not for comparison, but so you can gauge and have the opportunity to dialog with them and explore other things and stretch your horizons. There are a lot things that can be learned from that.

If we’re continually sharpening each other… but not for comparison, balanced by knowledge of who your audience is and what your mission is – I think that can contribute a great deal to being excellent.

I also think that learning an important part of excellence. If you’re not aware of what’s developing, you’ll find that you’re left behind because your audience will have moved on. Research is not something you do one time, but has to be an ongoing process. Being able to learn and grow and understand and be aware of what’s going on is important so that our priorities shift appropriately.

Online excellence is a process, not something you achieve in a one-time “oh we’ve arrived” sort of thing.

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You can read more of the interview with DJ Turner of Denver Seminary on the State of Ministry Online website.

You can learn more about Denver Seminary and the great work they are doing advancing the kingdom here.

And you should definitely check out DJ Turner, she’s doing great things in online ministry. Find her on Twitter here.

In order to be effective, good strategy must be simple.

Simple to understand.

Simple to communicate.

Simple to execute.

As strategists, our job is to achieve simplicity while not sacrificing the quality in our content or purpose. We are the ones who lead people to the simplicity that exists on the far side of complexity.

Today’s Management Tip of the Day from the Harvard Business Review presents three C’s to help you and your organization eliminate complexity and achieve simplicity:

1. Collaboration. Silos are the enemy of simplicity. Work across the organization to identify where the complexity is and together improve the way business is done.
2. Coordination. Smooth coordination is critical to finding simple solutions to the problems you’re trying to solve.
3. Communication. Once you’ve gotten rid of complexity, you can be sure it will try to find its way back in. Open and regular communication will allow you to identify it before it takes hold.

One thing they point out is that simple doesn’t necessarily mean easy. Our goal as kingdom strategists is to find creative and effective ways to share Christ and advance the kingdom. It is our duty to remove as much friction from the process as possible because we do not want to create any unnecessary obstacles for the people we are serving. We have an obligation make whatever we do as simple as possible, even it doing so makes our situation harder.

You can read the full article here.

Image: http://lawsofsimplicity.com/wp-content/uploads/2007/06/switch_lg.jpg

Yesterday, I received an email from leader in the mission field with some feedback about the value of trying to define a standard of excellence for ministries’ online activities. What he described was a reluctance among mission (and probably all non-profit) organizations to embrace standards because doing so would mean committing to doing what it takes to live up to those standards. As he put it:

We have not had much traction in finding groups looking to set more standards that they would then have to adopt/invest effort to measure up to.  It is a particularly challenging time for mission organizations trying to do as much as they can, as well as they can with shrinking resources.

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Update: The project has officially been named the Excellence in Online Ministry project. You can follow the progress of the research at the State of Ministry Online website. The results will be presented later this year at the Christian Leadership Alliance’s Ministry Internet and Technology Summit and later at the NRB’s Advanced Research Symposium.

If you are part of a ministry I encourage you to participate in our research by taking the following survey. Click here to launch the “Excellence in Online Ministry” Ministry Leader Survey.

Thanks, Kevin

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Earlier this year I had a number of conversations with Drew Goodmanson of Monk Development about how the Internet is changing the face of the church and ministry. Through our discussions it became apparent that we both recognize the power of the Internet to advance the Kingdom of God. But we also both believe that Christians need to develop strategic approaches for doing so and not get caught up in the ways that the rest of the world is engaging online.

As we discussed different ways to collaborate and help churches and ministries develop web strategies I got an idea that wouldn’t go away. “What if there was a model for ministries engaging online that took exception to the givens of worldly-wisdom? What would that look like?” The answer that I kept coming back to was:

Kingdom Excellence

It was like that thought popped into my head and suddenly by brain exploded with all these ideas about what Kingdom Excellence is, why it’s important, what it looks like, how to define it, how to assess performance against it… It became very clear (in my mind). But unfortunately (or fortunately), by it’s very nature, a definition of Excellence can not be defined by a single point of view. Rather, it is a standard that transcends any individual’s or group’s values, experience, beliefs. So in order that this idea of Kingdom Excellence not be limited by my personal limitations and weaknesses, I have been working with Drew for the past nine or so months to turn this idea into a reality.

And so I am pleased to announce the Online Kingdom Excellence Project, a collaborative research effort to define an approach to Internet strategy and activities for ministries that is centered on Kingdom principles, based on excellence, and aimed at long-term success through Kingdom advancement and benefits to the organization and to society.

The project will consist of three (3) phases:
Phase I - Concept Development: working with leading organizations and thought leaders in the areas of ministry and Internet strategy, we will identify guiding principles, core beliefs, and a strategic framework for evaluating online excellence. We will approach excellence from many different angles including theology, practical experience, best practices, intuition and insight, previous research to identify what constitutes Online Kingdom Excellence.

Phase II - Ministry Evaluation: based on the framework developed in Phase I, we will utilize a variety of research and analytic methodologies to evaluate a broad sample of ministries. We will look at the perceptions, practices and performance of these organizations in order to better understand what impact Online Kingdom Excellence can have for organizations.

Phase III - Publication: in order to help advance the mission of ministries, we plan to use an opportunity available to promote and share the outcomes from this research. The primary opportunity we currently have is to present the findings at the Christian Leadership Alliances 2010 conference which will be held in San Diego, CA in April.

This project is being led by myself, Drew Goodmanson (CEO of Monk Development and cofounder/pastor of Kaleo Church) and Dave Bourgeois, PhD (Associate Professor of Information Systems, Biola University). So far we have had a tremendous response from people about this project and are in talks to collaborate and partner with a number of well respected Christian organizations and leaders. I’m excited to promote these groups as they join the project so look for further announcements.

The primary home for information about this project will be a new site: The State Of Ministry www.stateofministryonline.com. I’ll be posting throughout the project both here and there. So head on over, bookmark it, add it to your RSS reader and stay tuned as we work together to define what Online Kingdom Excellence is.

If you’re interested in more information about the project or if you are with a ministry organization and would like to participate, please email me at research@unconventionalmethod.com.

I’m a collector. I collect ideas.

I love to surround myself with ideas, insights, facts, any bit of knowledge. Because of this, I read a lot. I also buy a lot of books, though I don’t always red them. I just like to have them with me. When my wife and I got married, we combined each of our book collections, the culmination of fifty years combined between us of surrounding ourselves with books. We then packed all those books into boxes to move them across the country.

There were over 35 boxes. (continue reading…)

“We often speak about wanting to be light in the darkness. America… has plenty of darkness, although it masquerades as light. Are we really providing illumination? Could we do a better job of being love in the midst of ambivalence, hostility, and fear, or of delivering wisdom in the middle of a confusing and distracted culture?” –George Barna

I am not sure what George Barna set out to achieve by writing “The Seven Faith Tribes” given that the book is a combination multiple themes: a segmentation analysis of the American population based on spiritual beliefs and behaviors, social commentary on the decline of American culture, a call for Christians to live differently by embracing love and service to others, and laying a foundation for a vision of how society can be restored. My challenge with this book was that Barna addresses each of these themes with a different tone (stark and alarmist when decrying the decline of America’s culture, analytical and moderated when discussing statistical differences between the faith tribes) and their juxtaposition made the book feel inconsistent.

But, Barna does tie the points together and reflecting on the book I do feel that the message of this book is good and important, even if that wasn’t always clear during the process of reading it. (continue reading…)