Unstuck: Mind the Gap
If you’ve been to London, you’re very likely familiar with “The Tube”. The Tube is what they call their subway system. Wherever you travel using the subway in London, you’re always told to “Mind the gap.” You hear that phrase on the loudspeakers. You see that phrase plastered throughout the subways. You won’t be in London very long before you’re aware of the warning to “Mind the gap.”
When you’re traveling in London, “the gap” refers to the space between the subway platform and the train. As you’re stepping out the train, there’s a caution to mind the gap between the train and the platform. It would be a bad day if you fell in the gap.
That word picture struck a chord with me, because I think there’s a gap that exists in churches today as well. In recent months, I’ve been warning church leaders to “Mind the gap.” There’s a gap between the vision and the people who are waiting to execute the vision. Unfortunately, leaders with big vision tend to ignore the gap. They buy into the myth that if people unify behind a clear vision, the ministry will succeed. Let me explain why that type of thinking may lead to you getting stuck.
Today it’s not uncommon for churches to have vision statements. Knowing the importance of unifying behind a clear vision, leaders have gone through many conversations and exercises to develop the church’s vision statement. Let’s look at an example. Let’s assume our church’s vision statement is to: “Love God. Love people. Change a community.” That’s a very compelling vision.
With their new vision statement completed, leaders will preach messages and create campaigns to gain support of the new vision. If the leader is effective in vision casting and has built trust, people will rally behind the vision and the leader. The vision statement may end up on the website, in the weekly bulletin on the walls of the church facilities. In fact, if the communications and vision casting strategy is executed effectively, it’s possible for everyone in the church to know and embrace the vision of the church.
That’s the problem. It’s possible for everyone to know the vision, and still not have any clue what they’re supposed to do to help make the vision become reality. The problem is that church leaders have failed to “mind the gap.” For churches, the gap is that space between vision and execution that generates results. The gap includes the specific strategies and systems that are established to accomplish the vision. Visually, it may look like this:
Vision + [Strategies & Systems] + Execution = Results
When there’s a strategies and systems gap, churches end up just “doing church” — they do what churches have always done. They may have a unique vision statement from the church down the street, but they end up employing the same methods as the church down the street. They do that because no one took the time to figure out what strategies and systems would be required to accomplish the vision. That’s how churches end up doing the same things churches have always done, but hoping for different results.
Here are some warning signs that your ministry may not be minding the gap:
- Since you haven’t clarified your strategies and systems, the loudest person decides what does or doesn’t happen in your church.
- You lose great staff and lay leaders to other churches or community organizations, because you’ve not empowered them with clear strategies and systems.
- Because there’s a gap, good people with good hearts will try to fill the gap. They’ll start to develop their own strategies and systems to accomplish your vision. Eventually you’ll have many people pulling in many directions, and that will create division and ultimately split churches.
- When you haven’t clarified strategies and systems, more meetings are required. Every time an issue pops up, you have to reinvent the wheel. People who crave power love this because there are more meetings to make decisions. People who crave ministry impact, leave the church.
- Your giving plateaus or declines. People will give to vision when they know specifically how the vision is going to be accomplished. People do not give to a vision statement.
Most important, if people are sitting on the sidelines and aren’t engaged in ministry, that’s a loud warning that you need to mind the gap. People may have bought fully into your vision. They may be willing to invest their time to execute the vision. They may just be completely clueless as to what they’re supposed to do.
In his book The E-Myth Revisited, Michael Gerber said it this way:
“What makes people work is an idea worth working for, along with a clear understanding of what needs to be done.”
You help people get a clear understanding of what needs to be done by minding the gap. You have to establish the specific strategy to accomplish the vision. And, you need to establish the systems for executing that strategy. The systems make it possible for you to empower leaders and mobilize people. Without systems, you have to stay involved in every task and every decision.
So I already know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking: “This is a great business philosophy, but it has no place in a church. It’s not biblical.” In addition to minding the gap, I guess I can also read minds. We’ll cover biblical examples of ministry strategies and systems in the next article.
For those of you who have experienced “the gap”, what are some other warnings signs for us to consider? You can join the conversation by sharing your comment.
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Other articles in this series:
The gap is rarely identified in the church. People know it exists but no one wants to talk about it. Once we have enough people and enough money we cease being hungry and cease fixing problems. Be honest, Jesus had a more compeling vision for his disciples to follow. If something needed to be adjusted, realigned He spoke to it. Andy Stanley says: “What is on the wall, is not as important as what happens down the hall.” Your bullet points here are masterful. Let’s be honest about the condition of the church. evaluate, discuss, correct back to mission / vision and get after it.
I’d say another warning sign is that attendance plateaus and/or even begins to decrease. We see it all the time. You have a church that’s 110 years old, you’d think with all that time, the church would be booming and impacting the community, but so often, they are little more than a building that a community drives by and rarely notices unless it has some cool bit of architecture. in essence, the church has moved from a state of impacting the community to merely trying to retain it’s current members and hope the children born into that congregation don’t leave.
However, take a church that has a clear vision, a clear plan for how to execute that vision, then people who actually execute it, and you’ll see a church go from impacting the skyline of a community to impacting the community itself.
Thanks for a great post, Tony! Is this the first one about being stuck, or have I missed some? I know this is on target because it hit me right btween the eyes. I am reading Gerber’s book very slowly. You have reminded me of a primary focus I need to have as I prepare to move to a new place in a few months. Keep up the great help!
See the link at the bottom of the post, for the first article in this series.
I’d be wary of the people who are comfortable in an ‘all vision, no action’ kind of place…
If I may, ‘The Gap’ is the biggest reason that TheCommon.org was created–empowering people to share in the vision of the church in tangible ways. It’s the project-based model you mentioned a few weeks back. While a strategy is still needed (and always is), it’s a great system to fill in that gap.
Not sure if this is true but in churches I have attended the longer a senior pastor is at the same church the more people think and act like he does. Great in the short term but a disaster in the long run. No one covers his weaknesses because they have left or been converted to his one sided style of leadership. So the gap happens when he thinks everyone’s on board. Then he makes a bold faith move only to realize their devotion was about an inch deep. Also believe the bigger the church the harder gap management will become. Big problem. Thanks for addressing it!
This is a great warning. I think a lot of churches go through the grueling process of building vision statements and core values and when they finish they just want to be done for a while and get on with church. As if those statements are the end product. Ouch. All they did was define the future they are targeting.
You mentioned the next step that many churches take before the ‘gap’ described above. That’s when the church leaders work towards alignment with all the ministries and buy-in for the whole congregation. It seems to me that, unfortunately, this ends up being the bottleneck for a lot of Christian leaders too. Or worse, they try to build systems and strategies around their vision without rolling the vision out to the congregation. That is a recipe for disaster.
I just read “The e-myth revisited” last year. Very motivating in the area of systems!
I love the formula…. Vision + [Strategies & Systems] + Execution = Results, what makes me stare off in the distance and think is that people do not necessarily fit a system. So creating a system made of people to bring people through a system which is to connect them to Jesus and people where everyone is different, this requires leaders who have the gift, and training to recognize where people are in their faith individually to prevent people falling though the cracks.
So the question I have is what are the characteristics of person who can recognize where a person is in their spiritual walk and guide them to a place where they are engaging in their faith and reaching out to others.
Or do you develop a culture of discipleship, everyone no matter where they are in their walk can disciple a little would that count as a strategy, system and execution? And the staff is there to encourage and keep the focus and maintain fellowship one?
I guess no matter the person, step one is getting them engaged in the vision. Step two is lay out the basics of the Church, this is where you have church membership classes. But what make a class go beyond just being a class? Anyone out there lay out your system. What does it look like at your church and what kind of people do you you have manning these steps?
Develop a culture of discipleship. I think that’s the key.