It’s #96 in Simply Strategic Volunteers: Add fun people to the team. In that chapter I suggest that your attitude is your decision, and as a leader the attitudes of those on your team are also your decision. There are many reasons why a positive culture are important to any organization, but one of the primary benefits is that it helps to attract more positive people.

Steve Pavlina’s post on determining your “optimism ratio” addresses this very topic. I love this quote in particular:

You’ll often see a pattern where like attracts like. Pessimistic news sources will attract pessimistic readers, partly because those are the best targets for advertising — negative people are more like to believe that buying products will change their emotional state. A pessimistic company will attract and breed pessimistic employees — the high-energy positive people will go where their enthusiasm is welcome.

The lesson here is obvious for churches. If you want to create a contagious environment that’s attractive to people outside your church, you have to build a team of cool, positive people. You gotta’ have fun, and it’s your job to make sure your team embraces that value.