101 Great Ideas for Growing Healthy Churches. John Nelson

to attend these sessions, listen carefully to the contributions, feedback and questions.

      The keynote listeners are asked to listen out for:

       Ideas, thoughts, and opinions

       Common themes and shared concerns

       Genuine differences

       Motivating values

       Concerns and worries

       Passion and feeling

       Visions and ideals

       All the forms of communication, both verbal and non-verbal

       Content, passion, and perspective.

      There are a number of important principles for the keynote listener:

      1 Try not to influence the conversations but remain in silent listening mode.

      2 Set your own thoughts and opinions aside and listen openly.

      3 Listen with curiosity and fascination, even when you hear ideas with which you may not personally agree.

      4 Enter the ‘grammar’ of the participants and hear the way they express their ideas. Hear their words and how they connect ideas and thought.

      5 See how participants relate to and interact with one another.

      6 Stay faithful to your role and remember that this is not a time for you to put forth your thoughts, but a moment in which you can concentrate on the ideas of others.

      Keynote listeners are then given the opportunity to reflect on what they have heard and to share their insights in a structured feedback session. This often works well as a conversation rather than someone simply talking from the front. The following are useful questions for this session:

       What surprised you in what you heard?

       What moved you?

       What most intrigued you?

       What were the hotspots?

       Did you have a sense of what was unsaid?

       Were there elephants in the room?

       What is different for you now after being a keynote listener?

       What would you like to learn more about?

       What would you say is the ‘voice’ of this community?

       What differences still divide this community based on what you heard?

       What is one piece of wisdom you gained today?

       What are the major themes you have heard?

       What new insights did you learn?

      The purpose of this exercise is to help change the culture of your church from top down to relational leadership, where leadership is about helping your community make sense of complexity, and suggest ways of moving forward together.

      For reflection and discussion

      If we have been listening …

      1 What are the children and young people saying?

      2 What are the families/singles in our church and community saying?

      3 What are the elderly in our church and community saying?

      4 If the way we do things in our church is the result of listening to others in our church and community, what have they been saying?

      Great Idea 6: Be Able to Say Sorry

      ANTON MÜLLER

      Whoever is forgiven much loves much

      Luke 7.47

      Top Tip: Love means always being able to say sorry.

      Business Perspective: Successful organizations understand that a creative and profitable organization accepts that mistakes will be part of its operational life. They understand that mistakes are based on the belief that if the organization had done something different it would have been more successful. This enables them to learn from the mistake, correct it, become more profitable, rather than waste energy on blame.

      When a business has been caught out it is likely that they will engage in a strategic apology which more often than not means ‘I’m sorry I was caught’, or ‘I’m sorry that you are offended’, rather than being sorry for the misdoing or for causing the offence.

      The reason for such strategic apologies is nearly always about saving face or saving one’s job. This, however, is not apology as Christians should understand it.

      Christian confession and apology can only take place in the context of forgiveness. When we apologize for something we are also asking for forgiveness. An apology that is not seeking forgiveness is not an apology, it is a political manoeuvre.

      Jesus apologizes for the human race when he says, ‘Father forgive them for they know not what they do.’ As a church we can apologize for the shortcomings of our race and we can seek God’s forgiveness for the whole of the human race. This is what Jesus does and we can do the same because by his death and resurrection we have been made like him.

      What are the leadership implications for the Church and for the world?

      There must be a culture of forgiveness in the organization that must come from the leadership of the organization. This is called a ‘no-blame culture’ and in such a culture all members of the organization are safe and free to apologize. Vital to this process is an acceptance of responsibility at all levels. Acceptance of responsibility also means an acceptance of consequence. A no-blame culture requires more of every member of the organization not less, hence the need for compassionate forgiveness. A no-blame culture is more creative and consequently more productive. It is not a free-for-all or a disregard for the vision of the organization. There is an acceptance that mistakes will be made on the way to success.

      A blame culture is often a risk-averse organization that stifles participation, creativity and productivity which is the engine of profitability.

      Consider the parable of the unforgiving servant. In this story the master, the leader of the business, sets the precedent for a culture of forgiveness but the ungrateful servant fails to live according to that precedent.

      God has set the business and organization of his Church within a culture of forgiveness. Confession and repentance can only take place within such a culture. Confession and repentance will not take place within a culture of judgement and condemnation. The world judges and condemns and litigation suits lurk behind every potential mishap. In such a world apology and forgiveness are dismissed as weakness while that world is becoming increasingly sick and disabled by judgement and condemnation.

      A culture of apology and forgiveness are the strengths of an organization, not its weakness. Those who have the courage to apologize, to forgive and to be forgiven show true strength and true leadership wherever they are in the organization. In biblical terms they are the ones who will be vindicated, healed and made whole.

      Too often it seems that the story of the prodigal son is one which the Church likes to tell but seldom wants to live. The older brother of that story is alive and well in many parts of the Church today, both lay and ordained, at all levels.

      The lesson of the prodigal son in the end is not a lesson about repentance, it is a lesson about unconditional love and acceptance ‘even while we are still far off’.

      For reflection and discussion

      1 What is the present culture of your church?

      2 How did your church respond to the last occasion where mistakes were made?

      3 When was the last time you accepted full responsibility for a mistake that you made and apologized?

      4 How will you create a no-blame culture in your church?