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I am currently sitting in on a session by one of my favorite bloggers / authors: Mark Batterson. This is actually the 2nd breakout session of his that I’ve attended. Here’s a picture of the one yesterday. Fellow blogger Ben Arment actually snapped the photo: look forward 4 rows and you’ll actually see me (and my computer bag).

I’ll post some notes from the current session later, but in the mean time, here are some highlights from Mark’s talk yesterday on: Maximizing Environments

“Below the level of consciousness the human mind is always processing environments.”

• Leaders know how to send subliminal and intangible messages.
• Leaders create culture.
• Leaders are environmental engineers!

7 Keys to creating the right church culture

1.) Be Yourself – Culture starts with knowing who you are and who you aren’t.

• A lot of our church cultures are unhealthy because we are unhealthy.
• Life is too short and leadership is too challenging to be two people: The person you are, and the person people want you to be.
• “You can please all of the people some of the time, some of the people all the time, but you can’t please all of the people all of the time” – Abraham Lincoln
• You have to choose what kind of people you are going to offend. *Hint* – Jesus offended the religious people.

2.) Stay Positive

• Sharing wins creates an energy and momentum that reduces the size of the looming problems / issues we are facing.
• Church should be the most enjoyable hour of the week (people should feel better when they leave)
• Ministry should be fun (Who you do ministry with determines how fun your ministry will be)
• Pray & Play retreat with staff & leaders (create a fun team culture).

3.) Establish Boundaries

• Family must come first… at the end of the day, a church can find another pastor, but your kids can not get another father.
• Mark gives NCC one evening per week. Evenings are for family…. he’ll make an exception once per week.

4.) Little things are Big things

• When Rudy Guliani was elected mayor of NYC, he went after the petty crimes: jaywalking, graffiti, fare jumpers, etc…. The result was that serious felonious crime was decreased drastically.
• Broken windows create subliminal messages (Broken windows are little things that reflect on big things about your church culture)

• ⁃ Misspelled words on worship slides
• ⁃ Unevenly folded bulletins
• ⁃ Typos, dirty floors, messy stage, etc…

• 1% of what you do makes 99% of the difference

5.) Think like a guest

• Unintentional blindness: When we become so absorbed in our culture, we develop blind-spots. These blind-spots cause us to miss out on things that we are doing poorly.
• Do reconnaissance missions: Get out of your culture a few times a year… go to other churches and absorb their culture to expose your blind spots.
• **Book Recommendation** – The Art of Shopping by Paco Underhill
• Paul said that he would become all things to all people, in order that he might reach some.

6.) Exceed Expectations

• Good is not “Good Enough”
• When NCC started Ebeneezer’s, they knew that needed to be to pass the “Starbucks Litmus Test”. The #1 goal was for people to say “WOW” when they walked through the doors.

7.) Cast Vision Like Crazy

• Most church problems are not Sin problem. Most church problems are Vision problems.
• If the mission and vision are big and important enough, you will not have the time or energy to dip down to the level that will bring you down.
• If you aren’t careful you can begin doing ministry from memory… because you are good at it. We stop doing ministry from creativity, and start doing it from memory. We stop creating the future, and start repeating the past.

Best Practices:

⁃ Invest in your leaders
⁃ Take your leaders on a vision casting retreat once per year
⁃ Church planter in Residence
⁃ At NCC they always have a church planter on staff doing a utility role… they have them do a little bit of everything for 18 months – 2 years… Then they send them out and support them for 1-2 years.
⁃ This ensures that a culture of church planting is always around NCC!