We Need Healthy Heretics (pt.2)
In the last post we looked at how Healthy Heretics are critical to our Teams, Ministries, and Churches. (Great thoughts still brewing). In this post we’ll explore how a TEAM can embrace and even become more Heretical…in a healthy way.
- A Team Without Any Heretics will stay stuck doing what they’ve always done, missing key opportunities to improve, innovate and succeed at the Mission God has given them.
- A Team with Too Many Heretics will challenge everything while accomplishing very little.
Here are a few ideas for how Your Team can lead in a Healthy Heretical Way
- Create a list of the Top Ten ASSUMPTIONS you are currently operating on
- Write out how you have REACTED and RESPONDED to these Assumptions
- Determine whether or not these Assumptions are even TRUE anymore (or ever!)
- Ask the TOUGH Questions -
- What are we doing that doesn’t directly accomplish our Mission and why are we still doing it?
- How do we measure and determine if what we are doing is working?
- Are we measuring the right thing? Are we measuring it the right way?
- What are we doing that nobody else is doing to reach people that nobody else is reaching? (Craig Groeschel)
- What do we need to stop doing so that we can do the thing(s) that only WE can do?
Once you’ve completely questioned and challenged everything you do, go out and get yourself a nice Iced Mocha. Breath. Pray. And begin dreaming and exploring how you need to Stop doing what you no longer need to be doing, Fix what needs to be fixed, and Innovate and Create new Mission Minded opportunities and experiences.
- Don’t just jump to the New (that’s too easy, and potentially too harmful)
- Don’t base decisions on hunches, assumptions, or that “one email you got” or that “one blog you read”.
- Work Collaboratively. Believe it or not, you are not the only person who know what’s wrong or what’s next.
- BETA Change. Some New Ideas need to be lead full force, most need to be experimented, tweaked, and tried again.
The team that I’m currently a part of is 2 rounds deep into Beta Testing a Whole New Way of helping people connect in our ministry called Micro Events, as well as Beta testing a significant addition to another part of our ministry (shhh…top secret stuff). We could have just Plowed Through with our new ideas (a speed that Heretics operate at), but we probably would have done more damage than good and would be right back in the same spot a year from now.
- While EVERY TEAM needs a few Healthy Heretics,
- ANY TEAM can begin to lead this type of Healthy Change.
How about you and your team? How are you breaking through your assumptions and leading Healthy Heretical Change?
- (In the next post in this series we’ll explore Biblical Examples of Heretics
- and why Jesus may be the Healthiest Heretic of them all)
