Andy Stanley on Momentum (Session 2)

The Power of Momentum
Andy Stanley

1.  Programming was designed to answer a specific question or to address a specific need.

“How do we capture the heart of a teenager?”  Is that our question.  I’m not sure.

2.  Over time, programming becomes part of the organizational culture.

Don’t be that couch.
When an old couch was new, it was bought because it was stylish, fresh, beautiful, new.
It fit a specific place in the room.
It gains emotional attachment because of the stories tied to it.
The family becomes blind to it after time.
When visitors see it, it’s frightening.
The couch gets moved house to house to house due to the attachment.
It needs retired, but no one is willing to let go of it.

As culture changes, many of the questions remain the same but the answers don’t.

What parts of youth ministry don’t work, but we do them because of tradition/ease/emotions?

The clock is always ticking backwards on our programs.

3.  If we institutionalize our programs, the day will come when its no longer an answer.

II.  We must continue to be more committed to our mission than to our program or model.

A. Over time sustaining the model can become the mission.

B. Over time, the model can work against the mission.

III. Points of Discussion

A. What have we fallen in love with that is not as effective as it used to be?

B.  Where are we manufacturing energy?
     Where are you creating excitement about things you don’t really care about?
Where are you sending staff and you don’t want to go? 
If, as insiders, we are/have lost energy, it’s only time before others see it that way too.
If we got kicked out, and a new person came in, what would they do?  Why don’t we do that ourselves?
Don’t let the “how” talk us out of fixing things.

C.  What are our organizational assumptions?
Leaders must bring the underlying assumptions that drive company strategy into line with changes in the external environment.
If your assumptions are wrong, everything is wrong.
When we try to do what we used to do, only “better”, we end up in a ditch
The assumptions a team has held the longest or the most deeply are the most likely to be their undoing.
*Make a list of our assumptions*  Some should seem ridiculous
What do we assume about people and how to reach them?
What do we assume programmatically?
Which assumptions are false?
Which assumptions are true, but are not being truly leveraged?

The challenge is to send a clear vision to your church about the programming/strategy but not to hold it too tightly.
To reach people no one else is reaching we’ve got to do things no one else is doing, and not hold on to ineffective programs.