The Patient Acquisition of Culture
Our weekly schedules are often centered on weekly outcomes. In my world, people say Sunday's always coming. It's a reminder that no matter how many meetings, counseling sessions, emails, or soccer practices, there's always a sermon to write, songs to practice, and volunteers to schedule and prepare. Sunday is on the far right in my calendar, regularly reminding me that my whole week is geared toward producing on the seventh day.
At the same time, since the late twentieth century, leadership teams have been compelled to develop cogent and galvanizing vision and mission statements. One informal study in early 2020 found that 75% of churches in America have a vision statement. Inspired by authors like Peter Drucker, "the father of modern management," and pastors like Rick Warren and Bill Hybels, churches began to adopt strategic planning models, believing that clarity of a preferred future and a means to achieve it were essential for effective ministry.
The enduring tension between the immediate and the aspirational has caused many of us to wonder: how do we do our jobs this week and ensure that what Simon Sinek calls our "Why" remains central? That’s a lot. Of course, there are many great ways to remain faithful to both. But I'd like to share two things I've picked up along the way that have helped me and our organizations.
One is something to cultivate.
The other is something to resist.
The first thing we’ve learned is to nurture culture every chance we get. Organizational psychologist Edgar Schein believes, “The only thing of real importance that leaders do is to create and manage culture.” Culture is about making sense of the world around us. It's about how we see and shape people. It’s how we tell the story of our communities. You see, it's one thing to have a sermon to write and a compelling twenty-year outlook, but what's your posture along the way? How do you embody grace and truth over the long haul? How do you face conflict, care for the traumatized, and receive theological curiosity? Those aren't tasks on a calendar. Nor are they about a preferred future. It's culture. Culture is the thing that informs how I respond when someone critiques the Sunday sermon or isn't capturing our vision.
As we nurture culture, we need to be patient. Cultivation means resisting hurry. That's because “Hurry is violence on the soul.” Of all the metaphors the Scriptures could have utilized for character formation and spiritual maturity, it's almost always horticulture. It’s gardening. Something that can't be rushed. Just before Jesus preaches his most famous and perhaps most important sermon, which we now know as the Sermon on the Mount, he prayed through the night, selected a feral leadership team, and spent time with sick and traumatized people. He wasn't in a hurry. In fact, he’d been waiting thirty years in relative obscurity before his ministry even went public.
The patience of sowing culture has been one of the hardest disciplines I’ve ever learned. I’m still learning. This was especially true in my early years of starting a new church. When I was in seminary, I read stories of churches growing by the thousands in a matter of months and turning cities upside down with generosity and salvation. Naturally, that's how I expected my church plant to work, too: preach brilliant sermons, cast an audacious "God-sized" vision, and watch the crowds come rolling in. Suffice it to say, our story was different. But, if I'm honest, I still believe that's how God's blessing rolls.
Eugene Peterson's life and work have routinely offered me and many others an alternate narrative amidst the malaise of ministry hustle. His writings have deeply shaped how I’ve come to understand the slow, patient work of cultivating healthy culture.
“There is a great market for religious experience in our world; there is little enthusiasm for the patient acquisition of virtue, little inclination to sign up for a long apprenticeship in what earlier generations of Christians called holiness.”
To be sure, Sunday's coming. And we shouldn't grow weary of asking the Lord to give us a long-term vision that's in line with his coming kingdom. But I think the way we embrace the tension, the way we nurture culture between the already and the not yet, is this patient acquisition of virtue. Or, as Peteron’s title suggests, a long obedience in the same direction.
“Sunday is on the far right” Marva Dawn has been deeply instrumental in my formation around Sabbath and my orientation to Sabbath. See her book Keeping the Sabbath Wholly.
"One informal study in early" ChurchTechToday. “How to Write a Church Mission, Vision, and Values Statement.” January 21, 2020.
https://churchtechtoday.com/how-to-write-a-church-mission-vision-and-values-statement/"Inspired by authors like Peter" Peter Drucker, Managing the Nonprofit Organization: Principles and Practices (New York: HarperBusiness, 1990).
"What Simon Sinek calls our" Simon Sinek, Start with Why: How Great Leaders Inspire Everyone to Take Action (New York: Portfolio, 2009).
"Organizational psychologist Edgar Schein believes" Edgar H. Schein, Organizational Culture and Leadership, 5th ed. (Hoboken, NJ: Wiley, 2016).
“Culture is about making sense” Andy Crouch, Culture Making: Recovering Our Creative Calling (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2008), 23.
"That's because 'Hurry is violence'" John Mark Comer, The Ruthless Elimination of Hurry (Colorado Springs: WaterBrook, 2019), 41.
“Just before Jesus preaches his most” See Luke 6:12-19.
“There is a great market” Eugene H. Peterson, A Long Obedience in the Same Direction: Discipleship in an Instant Society (Downers Grove, IL: IVP, 1980), 16.
