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Phill Butler

Fear gives way to trust

Jul 27th, 2009
by Phill Butler.
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Love casts out fear

Love casts out fear

A classic physics classroom experiment has students tightly tie a balloon on one outlet of a two-outlet bottle and fill the bottle with water from the other airtight opening.  The result?  The balloon inflates with the air displaced by the water.  The Apostle says, “perfect love casts out fear.”  (I John 4:18).  So, when Jesus is truly present in our relationships, fear is displaced by trust and new confidence.  Fear often keeps Kingdom ministries and their personnel apart.  And when that happens, we simply know that God isn’t present.

Now Jesus says — “…Behold, I make all things new.”  (Rev 21:5)  Jesus’ promise in Revelation is a powerful vision of hope – of the future.  But an equally powerful real reason we follow Jesus is because He makes things new now! For individuals, families, communities – and for ministries.

Over the years I’ve seen God’s people working together in partnership and other forms of collaboration have some pretty radical new experiences – powered by the Spirit of Christ:

  • Broken relationships give way to reconciliation.
  • Fear gives way to trust.
  • Duplication and waste give way to coordination and efficiency.
  • Division among ministries gives way to unity and commitment to each other.
  • Separate, often less effective strategies, give way to a common vision and approach.
  • Isolation gives way to a sense of belonging.
  • Despair gives way to hope.

Seems like a pretty formidable list to me.

Often, where the challenge is the greatest, like reaching the completely unreached, the battle is more intense.  So, what gives with all the division and brokenness in the Body of Christ?  Satan, who introduced mistrust and division in the first place in Eden, still prowls the world intent on instilling fear and separation.  So, building or restoring trusting, open relationships unmarked by fear takes specific initiative; vision, commitment, and trust that God’s at the heart of the process.  It doesn’t “just happen.”  And, for our unreached peoples strategy to be blessed, He has to power everything anyway.  But, He often has to fill the vacuum of fear as a first order of business.

That part of partnership-building is essential, of course.  But also seems like an incredibly valuable goal.

What do you think?

Related content: Trust – A central element in partnership success, Building trust in partnering relations, Jesus said, “Behold, I make all things new”

Putting pursuit of the mission back at the center

Jul 27th, 2009
by Phill Butler.
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Partnership

Partnership

Here’s some tough talk:

“All nonprofit leaders – presidents and CEOs, board members, and funders (my emphasis) must let go of conventional wisdom and shift their focus from organization-level goals to network-level impacts.  Nonprofit leaders should put the pursuit of their missions - not the growth of their organizations – back at the center of all of their organizations’ activities.  They should identify their organizations’ unique competencies and actively seek partnerships with other organizations that will help them serve their missions more efficiently and effectively.  They should look to both complementary and competing organizations as potential partners.”

That’s from last year’s Spring Stanford Social Innovation Review.

I sure wish there was some of that kind of talk from a similarly authoritative source within the evangelical community.  Imagine what might happen if CEOs, trustees, and funders of global evangelical mission and evangelism actually came to grips with the implications of this! Imagine what might happen in strategies to reach unreached people if every ministry adopted this stance!

First, of course, there would have to be a huge shift in basic awareness – looking at the wider world and the big context of ministry rather than the myopic world of our ‘own thing.’

Then, we’d have to ask, “Where do we actually fit in?”  Or, “What’s our unique contribution?”

We might ask, “Is anyone else doing the same thing we are or close to it?”  (Never mind “Have we ever really researched this question and would we be ready to sit down and talk with those people?”)

Finally, we might then be forced to ask the ‘so what’ question; “What are the implications of these things?”

That’s what the Stanford Social Innovation Review is talking about:  Mission, not individual organizational performance.  Networks (and partnerships) become a natural byproduct of that kind of thinking.  Of all work, the demands of reaching the unreached call for this kind of collaboration. Frankly, it’s the Scripture base line for assessment.  But are we ready?

What do you think?

Related content: The Glue of Partnership

The power of the pack

Jul 27th, 2009
by Phill Butler.
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tour-de-france

tour-de-france

As I write this the fabled Tour de France is underway – the Tour this year (2009) consists of 21 stages with a total distance of 3,500km (2,174mi).  Ever watched the race?  It was first staged on July 1, 1903 and is an amazing event combining the absolute ultimate expression of BOTH individual performance and teamwork.  Sounds like the Body of Christ (Romans 12, I Corinthians, etc.) doesn’t it?  Each stage has a winner and, of course, there is an overall champion – at the end of those grueling 3,500 kilometers!  The length and challenge of the race sounds a lot like reaching an unreached people group.

But in watching the race you soon see that the heart of the Tour de France is the peloton.

Here’s what Wikipedia says about the peloton:

The peloton (from French, literally meaning little ball or platoon and also related to the English word pellet), field, bunch or pack is the large main group in a road bicycle race.  Riders in a group save energy by riding close (drafting or slipstreaming) near (particularly behind) other riders. The reduction in drag is dramatic; in the middle of a well-developed group it can be as much as 40% (my emphasis).

Ernst Shakleton’s ill-fated Antarctic expedition of 1914-1917 has become a classic case study in leadership.  Trapped in the ice and facing certain annihilation, Shakleton focused on keeping his men together – often with what seemed to be almost unreasonable discipline.  Focused on the common good, the group survived.  Not a single man was lost in the face of humanly impossible odds!  And, in spite of the impossible, Shakleton has become a symbol of the remarkable capacity of people when they work together.

Seems to me it sounds a lot like the partnership paradigm.  The fact is that we were designed by God to live and work in community.  Thatis, until Adam and Eve made their fateful decisions.

Imagine a 40% increase in effectiveness in what you do – in the outcomes you see.  If the peloton in the Tour de France can achieve that, can’t we at least aspire to that dream? And what might be the impact on our unreached people strategies?

What do you think?

Related content:  Vertical Horizons

The common good is everyone’s good

Jul 27th, 2009
by Phill Butler.
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ambulanceNobody really likes paying taxes. But we sure like and have come to count on many of the services that our taxes provide. I was reminded of this while recently on an early morning trip to the airport for a flight overseas.

I heard an ambulance siren coming up behind the rear of my car.  Along with other drivers I pulled over and said a prayer for whoever was inside the ambulance.  But moments later I got to thinking:

Whoever picked up the phone early that morning and called emergency services for that ambulance could never have expected it to happen without people paying taxes.  Imagine a city with no integrated system of streets, lights, phone system, public water supply, sewers and police. fire protection, or emergency services.

Visionary, community-minded individuals have always understood that a city could never function without those services.  So they set about helping make it happen.  They understand that the common good is everyone’s good and that someone has to work to put those systems in place.  None of our lives would function with the ease and effectiveness they do without those people and with their vision combined with dogged commitment to that infrastructure that serves everyone.

Without that vision it would be pretty hard to build hospitals where people could be healed, schools where children could learn, businesses where people could be productively, creatively employed, or construct performing arts centers and art galleries where music, drama, and other esthetic delights were displayed.  In short, it’d be pretty hard to call it a city.  It is cooperation in building the infrastructure, the underlying systems that allows a thousand individual and collaborative dreams to be realized.

Imagine a city where you had competing, un-coordinated water systems, fire departments, and street planners! Imagine an unreached people initiative in wich none of the evangelism agencies talked or communicated with each other!

Partnerships, networks, and other forms of strategic alliance often are the ‘systems’ that allow us to work together; to have the communications, understanding, access, and, based on mutual awareness and appreciation, join hands to do specific, highly strategic Kingdom initiatives.  To dream dreams and realize what could never be realized if just worked in isolation.

You might see your ministry’s investment of time or other resources in collaborative efforts sort of like paying “taxes.”  That’s a pretty pejorative view.  Alternatively, it seems that our co-investments in the systems and infrastructure of partnerships and collaborative efforts are one of the highest, in the long run, most effective, essential investments we can make in reaching the unreached.

What do you think?

Related content:  Paving the Streets and Lighting the Lights

Why get involved in partnerships?

Jul 27th, 2009
by Phill Butler.
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Changed Priorities sign

Changed Priorities sign

Recently thinking about resources for unreached people initiatives  I was impressed reading recent comments by Jerry Hirsch, Chairman of the Lodestar Foundation, sponsors of the annual $250,000 “Collaboration Prize” for non-profit agencies in the U.S. covering everything from the arts to social services.

The economic crisis has decreased charitable giving and that has dramatically increased interest in collaborations and mergers among nonprofits, particularly with respect to eliminating duplication and sharing resources.  Though such strategies can be an imperative during this economic crisis, collaborations and mergers are best practices that should be considered even in the best of economic times.

Among 600+ applications for the prize last year, the five most often cited reasons for the organization to get involved in partnerships, alliances, or other forms of collaboration were –

  1. Improve quality of services/programs
  2. Maximize financial resources
  3. Expand range of services/programs
  4. Serve more clients/audiences
  5. Improve program outcomes

First, is your ministry addressing unreached people thinking about these issues – making them a priority?

Then, wouldn’t it be nice if donors/funders in the Christian – particularly the evangelical – sector saw the importance of collaboration and understood its implications as well as Jerry Hirsch?

My sense is that all of us focused on some form of specifically Christian ministry or service would do our own ministries a big service and the cause of Christ a really big service if we shared that message with all of our donors.  In the long run, the impact could be huge.

In short, if the “world” sees it and is even ready to reward it financially, shouldn’t we who say that passages like John 17:21-23 and Psalm 133 reflect our core values, be both talking and living the message?

What do you think?

Related Content: Why Work Together?