Driving the Chevy Impala

I read this fascinating article recently from Forbes about how General Motors destroyed its Saturn division. Among other things, David Hanna, the author of the article, suggested:

"Saturn, a GM company that had great promise in the early 1990s, ultimately failed because senior GM leaders couldn't see the benefits of new ways of doing things and a new kind of organizational culture."

We're all familiar with the demise of GM, so this is a very vivid image of what can happen when an organization becomes so stuck in its traditional approach of doing things that the world passes it by. Ultimately, when organizations stick to "the way we do it," the safe approach of avoiding innovation and change becomes the riskiest approach.

Hanna goes on to explain:

"There were just two underlying forces behind Saturn's demise: GM's insistence on managing all its divisions centrally with a tight fist, and the demand by leadership at both GM and the UAW that Saturn get in line with traditional ways of doing things."

That highlights one of the biggest challenges in leadership. Leaders have to choose between control and innovation. You can't have both. You can define the desired outcomes. You can create the boundaries, but you can't expect your team to be creative, innovative or artistic if you try to control every element of the execution. If you must have full control, you just need to know that you are also choosing to shut down new ideas and innovations in your organization.

Unfortunately, the Church is notorious for religiously keeping things the way they've always been but hoping we'll somehow achieve different results. Avoiding new approaches. Top-down, centralized leadership. Preserving the traditional ways of doing things. Sound familiar?

It's a great reminder that our past successes can be one of the greatest contributing factors to our future demise. GM used to have a winning formula. It worked in previous generations. It doesn't work now.

I used to drive a powder blue Chevy Impala just like the one pictured above. Thirty years ago that was a great ride. In essence, GM still wants to make cars like it was 1979 and expect to get the same results. By sticking with that approach, they've gone from 45% of the market share 30 years ago to under 20% today.

It's easy to look at churches that might still be "driving the Chevy Impala" and easily draw conclusions for why they are in decline. Before you do that, though, I think it's good to remember that GM was once a very successful company. When you experience success, it's tough to let go. You want to control the formula because it works. You are reticent to try new approaches. The only problem is that eventually the world around us is going to change. When that happens...

You, too, will be driving the Chevy Impala.

8 Comments »

1. I think you make a mistake when you begin with the concept that church and business are alike in most ways.  They are not.  Our product is not alike and our intent is not to grab a share of the market by changing our wardrobe or logo, or how we contract with our suppliers. 
   First the question is when is innovation in church required.  When it is requested from our audience?  Is the congregation the customer?  How do you measure success?  Your answers can’t be trite little business cliches.  They must be grounded in the whole of Jesus.  If you say that Jesus was avant garde then yes he was not corrupt and didn’t seek the earthly trapping of success.  But, he was not out to change the church in order to draw more and younger people into it’s fold.  He is as age unconcious as he is race unconcious.  New was not what he sought.  Different was his focus.  But not different to masses, different to God.  I listen to the young leaders claim insight because their minds are not twarted with tradition.  So foolish.  It is a circular argument that is self fulfilling.  Don’t seek to be new.  Seek to be different.  Seek to be like Jesus.  He knew who his customer was.  Only one.  His father.
   Sometimes when I listen to catalyst podcast I feel dirty.  Not because of sexual content but because of the pride of youth that prevails.  Though not of the “greatest generation”, I’d put them up against anything you are doing.  These were men who knew their purpose and performed it without need of ovation or cover pages.  They laid the freedom around you so you could later question their traditions and effectiveness..
   Please seek a humble heart.  Don’t segragate yourselves from anyone who knows a successful way of worshipping and serving God.  Youth and cool is fine but so fleeting.  And my generation, that started this whole re-evaluation thing, knows just how quickly you’ll find yourself approaching the blessed world of grandparent.  I love it.  What a blessing to have been married to the same women for 38 years and to have raised 3 daughters that never wandered from the Lord.  You only hope you can look back one day and see that kind of blessing.  I hope it for you also.  But, remember, tradition served many of us very well.  We sang the old hymns, our pastors wore their best on Sunday morning, so did we.  We reverance the room in which we weekly met the Lord for corporate worship.  We knew it wasn’t in the paneling, but it was the place where our hearts paused and we knew God. 
   I love innovation and I love new, but I also love the old, the seasoned, the trusted.
   Take care fellow believer.

   Comment by Dale Thompson - Jul 15, 2010 @ 06:47 AM

2. @Dale -
   To address your first point: I am surprised that you thought Tony was saying “church and business are alike in most ways”.  I re-read the post just to see if I had missed something, but I couldn’t find where he implied that. I understood his intention very differently: He was taking a piece of truth highlighted in a business journal and showing us how it was true not just in businesses, but also in any organization, any group of people united over time toward a common goal.

   I firmly believe that all truth is God’s truth.  Whatever the source of that truth is, if it is true, God owns it.  If anyone makes an insightful observation about our culture, people in general, or the world God made, then we are foolish not to examine ourselves to see how it applies to us. In scripture, God spoke to people through animals, pagan rulers, and Gentile poets.  We are not wise to assume that he could not or would not speak to us through a business journal.

   Second, while I heartily agree with you that some people/churches/publications seem to have a foolish addiction to novelty for novelty’s sake, from your comments it sounds like you are painting an entire movement (Catalyst) or even an entire generation (young leaders) with a broad brush as being prideful tradition-chuckers who hate on the wonderful way older generations worshiped. That is simply unfair and untrue.  Just because we are challenging the present-day effectiveness of traditional methodology in our contexts doesn’t mean that we think it wasn’t effective then—-or that we don’t respect it.

   The truth is that the very generation that “laid the freedom around [us] so [we] could later question their traditions” were successful and effective precisely because they did what we are now doing: questioning things and laying the groundwork for someone else to question us.  That is one of the beautiful things about being part of the Body of Christ, guided by the Holy Spirit: It spans every tradition and culture, and it is constantly, relentlessly changing.  Martin Luther was declared an outlaw and a heretic. Isaac Watts was lambasted for writing hymns—-for singing the “words of man” instead of God.  Your generation didn’t start this re-evaluation thing.  It has been going on for as long as Christianity has existed, and before that it was happening in Judaism.

   It is remarkable how similar the criticisms are that have been leveled at innovators for centuries.  And for goodness’ sake, I’m not saying that Tony Morgan is the next Martin Luther or that we shouldn’t question him.  I’m just saying that someone fought for the freedom to be able to sing “the old hymns” instead of psalms.  Someone else fought for the freedom to wear “their best on Sunday morning” instead of having to wear the liturgical robes prescribed by their predecessors… and they were accused of being prideful, attention-grubbing young people who pursued cool, new things and disrespected tradition.  Please, critique to your heart’s content—-that is what we are all doing—-but let’s all interact with the ideas that are being presented instead of making accusations of pride and novelty-chasing—-the same accusations leveled for centuries.

   Comment by Tristan Mason - Jul 16, 2010 @ 09:31 AM

3. This is a good reminder and challenge…I do sometimes think it’s easier to realize things need to change…to be more innovative….for me the harder thing to do is to know what to do when you find yourself there….and then to do it…I’d like to hear Tony address the issue from the next step view point…if I were at GM how would we move to capture 40+% share of the market now…having dropped to 20%. That’s where we need all need help to figure it out…thanks for the thoughts…

   Comment by Gary - Jul 16, 2010 @ 10:20 AM

4. To understand the difference between what I see in some of today’s young church leadership (to narrow the brush) and what I see in Martin Luther and Jesus was that “as Jesus said, for my sake men shall revile you”.  When you find Martin Luther soaking in repose, you find a man living in an old convent with little or no acceptance.  An outcast for the sake of the change.  John Bunyan, the same.  Writing in a prison.  Any of this seem familiar.  Doubt it.
   The movement I speak of is no where near this “for my sake…” response.  I can hear it and see it.  You ride a wave of popularity.  People want to be like your leaders.  You are cool.  And I marvel at how some are able to maintain meekness, such as Rick Warren.  I think in many ways Rick has been blessed in that through his wife’s cancer he was able to put it all into perspective.  Rick and I are about the same age, by the way. 
   My warning does not come from a love for the old songs, I enjoy much of the music of today.  Currently, I am studying blues guitar.  I am a musician and artist and a student of leadership.  John Maxwell fills my library as well as Dave Ramsey and many others that speak at the Catalyst leadership meetings.  I have offered to pay my son-in-laws way to catalyst this year.  I can’t go because I am working in Africa.
   I write all of this because you would be mistaken to cast me off as one who hates change, innovation, youth, new music, new places, or new challenges, etc. 
   My warning is not against innovation or change.  I’ve always embraced change.  I love change.  My worst environment is repetition and boredom.  My warning is about the pride.  My pastor, back home in the US, is 33 and one of the most Godly men I have ever met.  He demonstrates no pride.  His love for God shames me by comparison.  I have offered to send him to catalysts telecast.
   Take any movement and if they justify their cry by focusing on the failure of the previous leadership then they fail to justify their leadership at all.  Real leadership is not reactive.  It would work in a world void of any previous form of leadership.  I see and hear the pride.  Run from it.  It will destroy all that you seek to do good.  Into every movement of God, Satan tries to shoot an arrow of disease.  Later, leaders fall as the disease slowly destroys from within.  Pride comes before any fall.  I recently heard from one young pastor the large number of young innovation church leaders falling away due to alcoholism, drugs and sexual sins.  God help them.  Pride comes before a fall.  Seek humility and thankfulness for those who blaze the way for you.  Don’t be reactive.  When you become popular and you play from that knowledge, you can pretty much retrace your steps and find where you laid down your mission.  Right where you pick up pride.
   Me too.
   Unlike GM I would have hoped the best for the defunct Saturn.  But, at the same time I would hope that Saturn would seek newness and freshness without comparison and without pride.  I would have shut Saturn down if they ever ran a add that said “Come buy from us.  We are not at all like the old slow tired company that spawned us.  We’re younger and better”.  That would have been prideful.

   Comment by Dale - Jul 16, 2010 @ 10:50 AM

5. I was radically saved in 1985 by a program that reached who I was as a 15 year old teen.  I was an athlete and had no interest in Jesus or church or the people who talked about either.  I was saved because FCA (Fellowship of Christian Athletes) was evangelistic at my high school.  It was different from any Jesus or church experience I had ever had.  I wasn’t searching for anything, I didn’t feel that I had any void in my life that I couldn’t fill myself and yet I was ripped from the life I was drowning in (though I didn’t realize it at the time) because of an innovative non-traditional model of evangelism.  Hallelujah! I have worked in full-time ministry since 1995.  Many of those years were in frustration with systems that made my programs just that programs.  Last year I stumbled upon “The Nines” at leadnet.org while following a thread from kidology.org and had to weep in relief.  I wasn’t crazy after all - there are others!  What my heart pounded to do was not something I thought that I could do at my church.  Slowly, I started to speak about addressing our culture, about changing from what was -  to what is - to what could be.  We are now purchasing a building in an area that we never considered, started multi-site college campuses this past January and are in the process of restructuring our staff, services - just about everything.  What is the result of all this?  Church attendees passionate about reaching their community and people who are turning from religion to relationship!  I can’t claim that I am the only catalyst at our church who helped trigger change, but I know that I was ready to LEAP out of the Impala and feel like my life could be effective and relevant and revolutionary!! Thank you for the blog!

   Comment by Shelley - Jul 17, 2010 @ 03:57 PM

6. Thanks to all who have responded.  I alway grow when I put myself in an environment like this blog.  I hope each of you joy.  I pray you succeed where God has planted you.
   The traditional church was where I found Jesus at the age of 7 (in that Impala).  My Mother and Daddy taught Sunday School.  All of us children were active in choir and the other opportunities afforded.  My Daddy was the traditional deacon and sometimes I would weap when I saw him help serve the ordinance of the Lord’s Supper.  All of us children went on to serve in the ministry.
   The type and form of worship isn’t important.  I agree that the traditional church didn’t express all of Jesus.  The intimacy was often overshadowed and the church failed to address many of the social concerns of the day (i.e., racism, teen pregnacy, rebellion) with the heart of Jesus.  Often, the church was part of the problem by it’s cold legalistic answers to hurting hearts.  Young ladies sought alley way abortions, some deacons served commuion and then went home and donned their sheets to pursue racism.  But Jesus was there and I found him.  There were blessed moments of worship, often express in the hymn lyrics provided by Martin Luther and Fanny Crosby.
   Again, thank you for your insights and testimonies. 
   I’ll bow out of this discussion.

   Comment by Dale - Jul 18, 2010 @ 04:12 AM

7. What if…. the old structure is not going to be able to contain the people that are going to come to into the Kingdom of God? What if….. millions of people are fixing to invade the church because God moved in their lives…What if the homosexuals, the prostitutes, the prierced and tatooed are so touched and changed by God and the Holy Spirit…. all they want to do is worship HIM. What if….. the way church was done in the past cannot contain the revival, the power and the Glory of God ??? WHAT IF….. God chooses to change the entire structure of the church in such a way that it would not be recognized….... Its good to remember the past…. we meet in large buildings once a week because a man (Emperor Constantine) stuctured it that way… check you church history…... What if God is going to direct the new structure in a way that we (in our generation) have never seen, heard, or experienced….... What If….......... God is not limited by our past, our future and “our” creativity…............ He alone is the master creator, inovator…..He is God.
   ... traditional??? contemprary??? That is man made definitions of what we like/ feel comfortable with…........ What about If God is about to blow our minds and ideas and comfort zones with how HE wants to do/ lead His church….. What if….........
   This sold out- Jesus consumed- Redeemed and Blood bought Daughter of the King is ready for the new….......... Bring it on Jesus….....

   Comment by liesha - Jul 22, 2010 @ 06:13 PM

8. What if, we keep it about Him who is worshipped and not about about style or the worshipper.  What if we agree that the only boundaries we impose are those God opposes.  And, that was my point.  “Pride cometh before a fall”.  Do whatever style God leads you to ....through the scriptures, through the Holy Spirit.  Filter your inclinations through the scriptures.  Remove the dross and go forward.  Scriptural “What Ifs” accepted here.

   Comment by Dale - Jul 22, 2010 @ 11:45 PM

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