Preaching: Once they had that wakeup call, what kinds of things did they do that helped them to breakout.

Rainer: Going back to Collins book, here’s what I was expecting — and then I’m going tell you what I found. I was expecting that I would find his concept of “first who, then what.” That concept means if you get the right people on the bus in the right seat, then you can worry about organizational and structural changes. I was looking for that and had a bias towards that because that was in Collins research as well. But we found that it was not “first who then what” — it was what I call the “who-what simultrack.” Once this wake up call took place, the leadership began to make who decisions — who should be on board, who should be on what seat — and structural or what decisions simultaneously. And I began to question the why behind that.

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Collins said Fortune 500 companies do “first who then what.” Why do churches have to be burdened with who changes and what changes at the same time? It came down to a very simple reality: a Fortune 500 company has a very strong infrastructure, even if it’s not the right infrastructure. A Fortune 500 company did not get to be where they are without some type of firm, strong, clean infrastructure. Churches don’t have that infrastructure. We don’t have the physical facilities that the Fortune 500 Company would have. We don’t have the organizational schematic that a Fortune 500 company would have, and even more than any of those we don’t have an idea of process. Some churches do but the vast majority do not have an idea of process — of what we’re trying to do to take someone from becoming a believer in Christ to becoming someone who is a more mature follower of Christ. So all of those are infrastructure issues: process, facilities, and organization. The churches did not have that. It wasn’t just a given.

In Fortune 500 companies they could work on the who and then start refining the process. For the most part churches do not have that infrastructure that is necessary to take first steps, though they begin to work on the people situation. Do we have the right people on staff? Do we have the right people in the right place on staff? Are the key lay leaders using their gifts and their sense of calling to the fullest? Do we not only have the right people but do we have them in the right places – or, to use Collins words, do we have them in the right seat?

Simultaneous to that they started looking at basic structural questions. If we reach people, do we have a facility that can accommodate them and that is friendly toward them? Do we have an organization? Do we have a process that can take these people from becoming a new follower of Christ to a more mature follower of Christ? Do we have these systems in place? In many of thses churches it almost became — as one described it — a helter-skelter process. It seemed like we were doing 20 things at one time because they had to in order to take the next step. And here’s the kicker in all this: the churches have these three elements to take place: leadership transformation, a wake up call, and then a restructuring of the who and what before the breakout even took place. So all this was taking place and they not even seeing a numerical result right away.