Today I am continuing my series of posts sharing what I learned about momentum from the Catalyst One-Day event taught by Craig Groeschel and Andy Stanley.
Craig taught a session titled “Busting Barriers with Mindset Changes” which gave some good insight about the thinking we have as leaders have and how our thinking can prevent momentum from being created.
Busting Barriers with Mindset Changes
Craig Groeschel
Organizations like to settle into what is comfortable.
Craig shared that it is a natural tendency for organizations to settle into what is comfortable. People like to have predictability, security, and certainty so once things start going well it is the natural tendency for people to start to find ways to settle into what is happening.
What got us here won’t get us to where God wants us to be.
Often what we do in ministry today leads us to where we end up tomorrow. So if we want to end up in different places tomorrow we need to do different things today.
5 Barrier Breaking Mindset Changes
- Think differently about church culture.
- Think different about programming: More is not always better. Craig went on to talk about his church and how they had so many different programs and services that is began to wear his people out and prevent them from doing things with excellence. Craig and his team began limiting the programs they ran so they could focus on only a few and dedicate all their money and people to doing those programs in the best way possible. The end result was that they now do more with less. He shared, “you don’t have to do more to reach more people” but instead you can “reach more people by doing less.”
- Think different about the mission.
- Think differently about people leaving the church: Craig shared that pastors and leaders often have the desire to keep as many people in their church and to do whatever they can to prevent them from leaving. However, he challenged the audience to realize that you can grow when people leave. Yes, it might be painful to see people leave and have the number of people attending and offering dollars slightly decrease, but he encouraged us to “love the long-term gain [of allowing people to leave the church] enough to take the short term pain.” He also encouraged us that one of the best things we can do for our church culture is to encourage people to leave on good terms.
- Think differently about limitations: This was a big one for me. Craig shared that often leaders have a saying they recite when their lack of people and financial resources prevent them from doing what they dream. That saying is, “we can’t because we don’t have ______.” However, Craig challenged us to believe and say, “we can because we don’t have ______.” He shared that the limitations a leader has are often the source of the breakthroughs that they might experience. He stated, “God guides by what he does not provide.” In other words, Craig strongly encouraged us not to allow the things we supposedly don’t have to prevent us doing the work God has placed in our heart.
In closing Craig’s session, “Busting Barriers with Mindset Changes” he gave us two assignments:
- Find someone who is a few steps ahead of you and find out how they think: Don’t worry about what they “do” but try to get “inside” of that person. How do they think? What questions do they ask? What leads them to do what they do? Why do they do what they do? Those are the types of things you should be looking to learn from other people who are farther along in life than you are because you might not be able to model and copy what they do, but you can model and copy how they think.
- Identify one wrong mindset and ask God to correct it: The most important element in this statement is asking “God to correct it.” If we seek God in prayer, time of reflection, and listen God will show us His will for what we are to do to correct it. Or, the simple task of talking with God about what we need to correct sometimes allows Him to correct it without much effort.
Question: How do you believe we can “bust barriers” with “mindset changes”?
