Dr. Mark Rutland Leadership Session

What I'd like to do is always a little bit scary. What I'd like to do is share this, what I'm going to, and then see if you have questions that you want to ask.

More confident speakers than. I call those sessions Q and A. Question and answer, But I only promise to respond. I don't promise to have any answers. So I call it a Q and R. I reserve the right to say, beats the heck out of me.

When I was young, I felt obligated to answer things. Getting old is liberating.

If you have something to write with, I hope that you. Maybe you can borrow from a neighbor or something. I hope you'll have something to write with because it will be important. I didn't prepare a slide or anything like that, but I'm gonna give you a list in a moment.

I have a good friend who came out of a Hawks basketball game in Atlanta one night, and he was just coming down in the. In the parking deck. He was approached by a very aggressive panhandler. And my friend thought he was being mugged, but it turned out he wasn't being mugged. The guy was just begging.

And he kind of rushed out of the dark and said, hey, man, give me $10. And so my friend said to him, look, he said, I happen to be an expert in my field, and my field happens to be marketing, and you're going at this all wrong. He said, you come like this, you step out of the dark, you frightened me, and frightened people make bad customers. He said, let me help you. He said, get over in the light, clear away some of the stuff.

Get rid of all these beer bottles and these joints and everything, and clear away the setting and get in the light where people can see you. He said, the second thing is, don't just demand $10. Give me a succinct statement of your need. Tell me why you need it. And the third thing is, don't ask for the whole thing.

$10 is what you need. Just ask people if they'll make a dent in it here. He said, ask them to give you 50 cents or a quarter. He said, anybody who'll give you 50 cents, you'll have your money in no time. You keep doing this, you're going to be out here all night.

He said, that beggar drew his overcoat about him and drew himself to his full height and said, now, look, fella, you don't have to give me the money if you don't want to, but don't tell me how to run.

So I just want to say at the outset, I am not here to tell anybody how to run their business. What I want to do is challenge you with three islands, if you will. Reefs, barriers where organizations can run aground and things can stall out. These barriers or islands happen in. I'm going to give you a six step descending ladder.

It's what I call. I designed it so there's no. I can call it anything I want to. I call it the mission function vertical axis. So I'm going to give you six stages going down.

I want you to write these in order. So the first word is mission. You're going to write these vertically, straight under each other. Mission. Underneath that you'll write vision.

Underneath that you write strategy. Underneath that, tactics. I'll go back through these again. Underneath that you write purpose. And then you write function.

Mission, Vision, strategy, tactics, Purpose, function.

Now, if you add a column of figures up or down, you should get the same number. So I believe that I ought to be able to go to your company or your business or your church or your organization, see how the lowest level functionary, the volunteer that works in your parking lot ministry, I ought to be able to see how they do what they do and tell you something about the mission of your organization. By the same token, I ought to be able to read the mission statement and tell you something about how people that do stuff. The lowest level functionaries, I'm not talking about vice presidents, your lowest level functionaries ought to be able to tell you something about the culture of how they operate.

The challenge is that as you move down from mission to function, there are three couplets. Do you see that? There's six, but they're divided into pairs. Mission and vision, strategy and tactics, purpose and function. When those two get twisted or inverted or misidentified, that's where things run aground.

So I want us just to work our way right down this list. And then we're going to talk about how the confusion at these three couplets causes damage in an organization. And this is true, by the way, I want to say this. This is true whether you run a plumbing company or a megachurch, a small church or a restaurant. This is true.

This doesn't vary depending on the organization. So let's say first of all, mission. I am not opposed to your organization having a mission statement. I'm in favor of mission statements. We had one at both of the universities where I was the president.

We had one at. I pastored a megachurch in Orlando. I pastored smaller churches. I was the associate pastor at a megachurch. In Atlanta, every one of those organizations had a mission statement.

I'm not opposed to a mission statement. What I want to say to you is that people misunderstand the purpose of mission statements. Now, what I'm going to say to you about mission and vision, I want you to know that I know it's controversial. If you go to a hundred leadership conferences, many of them are going to say that I have these two backwards in the rapture. They'll find out that I was right.

So mission is a comprehensive overview statement that expresses non negotiable values. It's a police statement, if you will. Not the cops, but it polices the downward, the rest of the mission function vertical axis. It keeps an organization from fulfilling the wrong mission the wrong way.

Having said that, there is no real energy in mission. Mission is a flat reality. It expresses values. The energy is in, vision is envisioned. There are so many organizations that spend so much time constantly reiterating, re expressing, reteaching, talking about, articulating mission and then can't understand why the organization can't get up and go.

It's because the purpose of the mission statement is not to cause anybody to get up and go. Anywhere it talks about. These are the things that, that we believe, that we hold to. This is why we exist. And it doesn't take you anywhere.

So I can use this church because I don't see anything hanging. I've been in churches all the time. They have these mission statements, you know, banners or something, and they're all. No, I mean, how different can they be? Do you have one?

Okay, all right, here we go. Our mission. Our mission is to. Our mission is to be the church and not just to do church. Revering God in all we do and revealing God to all we meet.

That's a mission statement. It's a perfect little good. It's economical, it's straightforward. I've seen all kinds. Love God, love people, don't kick puppies.

There's something. There's whatever they are, that's fine, that's good. And this is a good one. I like this. There's nothing wrong with it.

The challenge is this. You can talk about, teach about, minister about that mission statement, on and on and on. But it doesn't tell anybody where you're headed. It tells you why you exist. Vision is exactly what it sounds like.

Vision is. When I look down the road, it's what I see. I see us going there. I see us having these many employees. I see this being our economic position.

I see our cash on hand. Being at this level, I see us having multiple campuses. I see us being debt free. That's vision. That's where people want to go.

Let's talk about the mission statement of the people of God. If you remember your childhood catechism, you remember the mission of the people is to love God and enjoy him forever. Right? Okay. Right.

Right. So let's take the people, the Hebrew people, in bondage in the land of Goshen. Theoretically speaking, could they fulfill that mission as slaves in the land of Goshen? Yes, you could love God and enjoy him. You could love God as a slave.

You could. Right? But it was not that mission that got them out of Egypt. It was the vision. God sent Moses to express to them clearly, to articulate, even creatively.

He didn't just say someplace, he said, the land that I gave to your father Abraham, which flows with milk and honey. So he revealed the vision. This is where we're going to go. That great getting up morning where everybody got up, got packed, looted the Egyptians, that all happened because of vision, because the mission in Israel or in Egypt remained the same.

So I'm not saying you shouldn't have a mission statement. You should have a mission statement. If you're hearing me say they're wrong, you're not listening. You should have them. It's just that you could be fulfilling your mission the night before you go bankrupt.

You could be being faithful to your mission right before you close your store. Vision is where the energy is. Vision is where the vitality of motion is. That's where we say, this is where we're headed. But mission keeps you from fulfilling the wrong vision the wrong way.

Let me give you an example. Let's suppose that I'm the new pastor of the church and the staff here is on the front row. And I'm a new pastor of this church, whatever church it is, And I come in and say to them, seen your mission statement to save the lost, sanctify the saved and send the sanctified. That's a nice alliterative Pentecostal mission statement. Save the lost, sanctify the saved, send the sanctified.

And last week before I got here, you people had 500 people in church. My vision is next Sunday going to have 5000 in church. We're going to have 5000 people next Sunday. You had 500 last Sunday. We're going to have 5000 next Sunday.

You're all thinking, well, he's psychotic. Actually, we can do it. And here's how we cannibalize the entire budget we buy a full color ad every day in the daily local newspaper saying next Sunday at our church, free beer and topless. Go, go girls.

How many of you know next Sunday we're going to have 5,000. 3,500 of them are going to be from the Associated Press, but we'll have 5,000. But what keeps us from fulfilling that vision that way? The mission statement. Because listen to it.

Saving the lost. I'm not saying nobody could get saved, but they're going to have to fight for it. Sanctify the saved. No, no, that has nothing to do with sanctification. Okay, so the mission statement keeps us from fulfilling the wrong vision the wrong way.

When there is confusion at the top, when there is a sense of the constant reiteration and re emphasizing of mission and it just doesn't seem to be going anywhere, it may often indicate that the organization has inverted the priority of mission and vision. You need a mission statement, but it doesn't tell you where to go. It doesn't tell you how to get there. Now the next couplet is between strategy and tactics. Strategy is the comprehensive set of goals and plans which if they are fulfilled, will further the completion of the vision.

The comprehensive set of goals and plans which if they are fulfilled, will further the vision. Tactics are short and medium range responses to some kind of immediate need. So there's a hostage situation in downtown Charlotte. Some nutcase is holed up in a hotel room with an automatic weapon, a woman and two kids. And he says if he doesn't get a million dollars, he's going to kill them all 3.

The cops are down in the street trying to figure out what to do. Do they lob a tear gas ganister in the window? Do they negotiate? Do they turn the heat off and try to freeze him out? Do they just put a sniper on the building across the street and bust a cap in his horace.

Sorry, hide. How do we handle that? That's all tactics. That's all tactics. That's to handle this situation.

Meanwhile, in the mayor's office across town, the mayor is meeting with 50 clergy persons, the head of parks and recreation, the chief of police, and they're trying to work out a 30 year plan to reduce juvenile crime. That's strategy. The problem is this.

I'm going to say this, and this is a hard statement, but I'm just really not going to apologize for it. I ain't running for nothing in North Carolina.

It is not the problem in business that it is in the church. Many, many churches live their whole existence decade after decade. At the tactical level, they just live fixing stuff. When the roof leaks, we know what to do. We have some sense of meaning when the floor needs to be repaired, when the sidewalks get cracked, we just know what to do.

It's tactical living. It's tactical thinking. It's not really taking anything anywhere. The problem is we come alive when we have to make a tactical response to an issue. So therefore, we actually spend our lives waiting for an issue.

The issues don't feel bad to us. They almost feel good to us because they give us a sense of fulfillment and purpose. Here's the worst thing that can happen when you have a tactical. A tactically addicted church. Here's the worst thing that can happen.

The board can become addicted to crisis. It is in crisis where they feel the most meaningful. So they can become addicted to crisis. So therefore, like any addict, if they can't find what they're looking for, they will create it. So you can actually have boards of churches that are causing the crises that they're trying to solve because it feeds their addiction.

So a strategy depends on the vision. Now, the vision therefore dictates the strategy. I see us, I own a small, what, hardware store. I gather my staff around me and say, I want to open five branch hardware stores. That's my vision.

Now I need you guys to help me plan. How do we do that? How do we do it financially? How do we get the right financing? How many staff do I have to hire?

How am I going to recreate this culture over and over and over again multiple times in multiple hardware stores? That's. That's the strategic initiative. Now, in the middle of all that, in the middle of all that, a tornado hits the home store and does a lot of damage. I.

Okay, I have to put the vision and the strategy on hold. I have to fix the store. But that's tactical. Therefore, as soon as I get that done, I have to say, we've got this done. It gives us a sense of fulfillment.

Yes, it's done. But wait a minute. Let's get back on the vision. Let's get back on the strategy. I'll give you an example of how this hit the church and many, many businesses very, very hard.

Turn to your neighbor and say pandemic.

Exactly. There are many, many organizations, colleges, universities, churches, businesses that had a strategic plan for the fulfillment of their vision. And then they are hit broadside with the unimaginable. A COVID pandemic. And so everything had to stop, or at least we were told it had to stop or at least we were lied to, that it had to stop.

I won't go on with that. Or we were criminally lied to, but then, no.

So let's take the church. Let's talk about church world, and you can apply it to business. Look, when I'm talking about what's happening in the church and you own a business, if it sounds like I'm talking in tongues, you have to pray for the interpretation. So if I say associate pastor, you have to hear vice president. All right, so here's what happened.

We had to develop a tactical response. Big churches were better at it and more nimble than little churches. Because of all this, big churches, prosperous churches, already had ways to put their services online. They already had cameras. They already had that.

That culture existed. And I'm going to tell you something. In many ways, many large churches actually prospered during COVID I know that's bitter to hear that, but it's true. Because they were able to cut expenses dramatically. They laid off staff.

They didn't have to turn the lights on as often. They didn't have to turn the heat on as often. They cut expenses dramatically. They already knew how to do online, so they did online. Furthermore, what surprised us in Covid was this.

We. We had to get people at home to give. We couldn't take up an offering in the house. So it surprised us. We were able to teach grandpa how to give online, and it was great.

So actually, revenue went up during COVID for many, many church, many churches. Because in the old days, when grandpa went to Florida, he took his checkbook with him. Now, the consistency of giving because of online giving is causing the cash flow situation to actually be so. Then finally, some level of sanity returned to the federal government. We could take our masks off, which weren't doing anything anyway, and return to church.

Okay, we could all go back to church. Now we made our second mistake. We thought who would never come back to church was young people. But young people found out staying home with their own kids was not what they wanted.

They said, no, we got to get these little brats back to children's church. Before I lose my mind. Who stayed home and who isn't coming back is Grandpa. Grandpa found out that he not only knew how to give online, he enjoyed sitting in his jammies in a recliner and with a cup of coffee and watching you do church. So what do we do then?

Now listen to Dr. Mark. I'm going to help you with this. That was a tactical response that created its own market. So we made a tactical response to an issue. And the market generated its own.

And the tactical response generated its own market. So therefore, you have to do what it takes to the minimum that it takes to maintenance this market. It is a diminishing market, but you have to keep this market going. You have to, you created this market with your own tactical response. So you've got to, you've got to maintain this market.

However, this is not the reason your church exists. If you're going to close up church and just do online, then that's fine, that's perfectly okay. But then you're going to have to go in the pulpit and apologize to all the television evangelists that you used to preach against, because now you are one.

So what you have to say is, yes, we still have online. Yes, we're still going to take care of that. Yes, we're still going to maintain that. But we got to get back on our vision. This is where we were headed.

This is where we were headed. Maybe our resources have been diminished, maybe our numbers are left less. We may have to rethink the strategy based on how we've overcome a tactical issue, but we got to get back on strategy. So when that tornado hits your hardware store, you have to fix the store, but immediately that's over. You say, okay, we've lived over the tornado.

Now we got to talk about these branch stores. My vision of having five new hardware stores hadn't changed. Now we got to get this. This strategy may have to be dialed down because the tactical response may have depleted resources. Are we making sense?

I'm not asking if you agree with me. I really don't care. I'm just, I'm asking, do we understand? Okay. All right.

That's the middle couplet. Here's the third couplet. And this is where customer service gets hurt. So the first couplet between mission and vision that causes frustration at the senior executive level. I've preached 19 weeks on the mission statement of this church, and it just doesn't seem to be going anywhere.

That's at the front. Strategy and tactics.

What that causes the frustration between strategy and tactics, causes middle level frustration, doing more, working harder. Nothing seems to be happening, spinning our wheels. This just doesn't seem to be going anywhere. But where customer service gets hurt is the confusion between or the reef, the barrier where your ship runs aground. On the issue of purpose and function, they are what they sound like.

Function is what I do. Purpose is why I do it. Now, here's the problem. The longer people at lower level of operations stay in the Same purpose. They can begin to own the purpose, the function.

The longer they stay at a lower level of function. Let me make sure I get this right. The lower level of function. They can begin to own the function. This belongs to me.

I own it. This is mine. And they forget why they do it, how it connects to the entire mission function, vertical axis. So that they become an island of function that is disconnected from the vision of the church and even from the mission statement. They.

They work in the parking lot, but they've forgotten that it has anything to do with being the church.

So this is companies business, church. So I go to. Down to the local bank perhaps, and I go in to cash a check. And the cashier at the window is rude to me. She says, you can't cash that check unless you have three forms of identification.

Passport picture ID with a star on it and the footprint of your firstborn male child. I say, I don't have all that stuff. I don't have that. I just want to cash a check. She says, there's a line behind you.

There's a line. If you don't move aside, I'm going to call security. I said, look, ma', am, you see this plaque over here on the wall of the bank? It says, the mission of this bank is to make our customers dreams come true. Today my dream is to cash this check.

She says, I don't care anything about that. For me, as the customer, she is the bank. There's a president somewhere. I don't care. There's a policy manual, there's a procedure book, there's all those things.

I don't care about any of that. Listen to me. She has bought the bank. She owns the bank. She is the bank.

To me, she's the whole bank. She's everything.

So unless what she does as a cashier can be related to the rest of the mission function, vertical axis. She becomes an island of dysfunction. Her function becomes dysfunction. So what she does has got to be connected to why she does it. I first learned this when I was coaching.

I coached before I went into the ministry. I coached basketball, men's basketball and women's. I love teaching, coaching, women's basketball. They didn't know everything.

And I coached football. I loved coaching football. I played and I loved coaching football. So I've got this offensive tackle whose shoe size exceeds his iq. And I say to him, all right, bubba, when the ball moves, when that ball moves, you go over there and hurt that boy.

The ball moves, go hurt him, okay? And then we run an off Tackle, slant to the right and he knocks the defender into our tailback. I say, okay, this on me, bubba. This is not on you. This on me.

Like Ricky Ricardo. I didn't explain it right.

So let me explain. The reason you're going to hurt that boy is to clear a pathway for the little guy on our team with the ball. So if we run right, you have to hurt the other boy left. If we run left, you have to hurt the other boy right. Sandwich hand, milk hand.

If I don't connect the purpose of his blocking with the. If the function is to block, but if I don't connect that with the. With the end result of making a pathway for a belly dive, then we're. We have dysfunction. It happens all the time.

It happens in churches all the time. So you tell, you tell the greeter at the front door. You say, when people show up with babies, don't let them come in the auditorium. Make sure they get those babies to the nursery. So the morning comes, it's a pouring rain.

Some single mom, first time there, gets out in the rain, trudges in with a baby on her hip and a 2 year old. She's leading by the hand. And the greeter at the front door says, stop right there. Stop right there. You're not taking that baby in the auditorium.

Jesus hates babies and so does the pastor. So you just take that baby to the nursery.

Okay, now here's the thing. Here's the thing. Did she do what you told her to? Yes, she did. She did tell you.

But she has lost the connection between getting babies to the nursery and revealing God. All we meet. So the disconnect between her function and the mission of the church causes dysfunction. It can happen internally. We have internal customers.

You understand the term internal customers, right? So I don't know if you have. Let me try to choose something. You may not have a print shop. Any church here have an internal print shop?

No. Good. All right. So the youth pastor goes down to the print shop and says, I need these poster, 50 posters by Friday. And the guy at the print shop says, let me just tell you something, son.

The bad place will freeze over before you get those posters on Friday. The rules say you have to have your request to me two weeks in advance. You're not getting those posters on Friday. The youth pastor says, I know, I know. See, I'm sorry about that.

I'm sorry, but we're having a big concert and I need these posters on Friday. And the print shop says, no hablo ingles.

Do you understand? What I'm saying to you? No. So the tension, the internal tension between internal customers, they are customers of each other, has happened because of the disconnect between function and purpose. I was the president of two different universities.

You know who I struggled with on it the most? You know who I struggled with the most? Campus security. Oh God. Every one of them like Barney Fife with their bullet in their pocket.

I used to say to them all the time, I'd meet with them periodically and say, your job is not to protect the college from the kids.

They're not the bad guys. Your job is to protect the kids from the bad people. So Oklahoma, in the middle of a snowstorm, teacher gets to an 8 o' clock class and the door's locked. So she calls the security. Building 108 is locked.

He says, I know it's locked, I just lock it, he says. She says, yeah, but don't you see I have a class in here at 8 o'. Clock. I just lock that building. She says, I know we're in the snow.

So he gets in the car, drives over there angry, unlocks the door. Because if he gets to thinking that his function is to keep the buildings locked, the people who want them unlocked are the bad people.

So you got somebody that cleans up your Sunday school rooms. On Monday morning, she comes into the five year old Sunday school class. There's pieces of construction paper and little broken crayons and the chairs are all over everywhere. And she looks at it and she says, look at this, look at this. I just had all these chairs set.

Why can't they put their chairs back? I don't know, maybe because they're five.

But if she thinks her job is to keep the Sunday school rooms clean, then the people who mess them up are the bad people. So what we have to do is, is convince her. Your job is not to keep the rooms clean. Your job is to prepare this space for messy ministry to happen.

So that when you come in on Monday, I want two things to come into your mind. First of all is messy ministry happened here because I made it possible. The second thing I want to come in your mind is job security.

Messy Sunday school rooms are your friend.

I want to tell you this. Then we'll start to bring this to a conclusion. It can happen even in the lowest level business. My wife and I were driving through the mountains one time, saw this sign for someone like Mamie's Cafe or something like that. And it says, next, right, World's best Pies.

No, that's pretty audacious World's best pies. I said, well, we're turning in. She didn't say, good. What? She said, world's best pies.

We turned in, and the lady was in there. I said, hey, Mamie, how's business? She said, horrible. She said, I make a dozen pies, and they're all gone by two in the afternoon.

I said, what? I think your sign could be to blame.

So she actually has begun to resent the customers. She's gotten to think that her job is to make pies.

Her job is not to make pies. It's to sell pies. If you make pies and don't sell them, there's a word for that. It's called bankruptcy.

So there are people that can actually begin to resent their own customer base.

So I'll close with this, and then we'll think of questions for which I have absolutely no answer. So get ready. Here we go. So here's how it happens.

There's a youth group. They get a new youth pastor. And the youth pastor goes to the group, and he says, I'm new. We can change anything. So they say, we don't want hot dogs on Wednesday night anymore.

We want pizza. He says, great. No problem. So he goes to old Uncle Bob, who has fixed hot dogs for the youth group every Wednesday night for 37 years. He has never taken a vacation.

He's never missed a Wednesday night. And he says, hey, Bob, we don't want hot dogs anymore. We're gonna have pizza. So don't buy the hot dogs. I'll bring boxes of pizzas.

All I need to do, open them up, slice them, put one slice on a paper plate. The kids will come through and get them. If there's any leftover, the boys can have seconds. He says, no, no, no. He says, I don't have the pizza unction.

I have the hot dog anointing.

And he says, yeah, but see, the kids don't want hot dogs anymore. He says, I don't care.

What's the kids got to do with it? Because he has forgotten that 37 years ago, somebody said, you know what would be great? As if we had a more fun kind of family atmosphere, if somebody would come and cook hot dogs for the kids before they get here on Wednesday night. And Bob said, I will, I will. And he's been faithful for 37 years.

But now he's taken possession of. Has nothing to do with the church, with the strategy, with the mission, with the vision, or with the teenagers. Now it's all about Bob and that is how the customer base becomes destroyed while people are still doing their jobs.

Mission, vision, strategy, tactics, purpose, function. I ought to be able to tell how somebody works on your parking lot team, tell you something about what you do believe to be true about the church.

All right, I've told you more than I know, so let's stop.

Thank you, you're very kind. All right. Ay, preguntas. Who has questions, raise your hand. Yes.

Can you be kind of loud? Good. Oh, here comes a microphone. Oh, I'm the mic guy. So, hey, thank you so much for everything you said.

First off, that was amazing. I was just curious, that's all. Incredible information. To understand as a pastor, business owner, how do you properly communicate that to those people that, let's say, have forgotten the vision or claimed it as their own? Like, how do you not dumb it down, but more make it conveyable to someone who doesn't own the thing?

Good, good. That's a. That's a wonderful question. Now listen to this.

Leadership is communication. It's a synonym. You might have a great communicator who's not a leader. Take for example, a stand up comedian. But you cannot have a great leader who isn't a communicator.

So you have your responsibility, son, is to communicate that downline all the time, over and over and over again. The further down the mission function vertical axis you go, the more often you have to say it and you have to take possession of it. Teaching that, enforcing it, calling that is actually cultural protection. The chief executive officer, the president, the pastor, whatever you want to call it, one of your top jobs. And that's a whole nother lecture.

We're not going to talk about the 10 functions of executive leadership, but you are the chief culture officer and therefore you have to constantly stay in touch with what is the functional culture at the lowest level of your organization. You have to say it and say it and say it and say it again. Teach it, talk it, explain it over and over again. There's no substitute and no shortcut for constant communication and enforcement. And enforcement.

You have to be strong. Now, I hear people say all the time, yeah, that's all fine, but you can't fire a volunteer. Now Listen. Listen to Dr. Mark. Oh, yes you can.

Now, it's not what you want. It's the last thing you want to do. The last thing you want to do is fire anybody. The godfather said blood is expensive. You don't want that.

On the other hand, if you can't remove a volunteer, you are in bondage to your least effective member.

So there has to come a time. Nobody wants to do it. You go out to the parking lot team and you say, it's all over, Bob. You can't be on the parking lot team anymore. He said, I parked more cars at this church than anybody I know.

But we can't have you out here in the parking lot waving a gun around. We can't have it. People arrive at the auditorium with their hands shaking. So we've been over it and over it. So give me your yellow vest.

Hand over your flashlight. It's all over. You have to. You have to. You.

The culture of your operational organization is your responsibility. If you have a bad culture at the lowest level of function, it's not their fault, it's your fault.

That's the problem. You ask a good question, you get a novel for an answer. I didn't mean to go on, but that was an excellent question. If nobody else thinks of any more, we're going to call on you again. So think of another one.

Hey, Dr. Rutland. Hey there. I've followed you for 20 years now. I had the pleasure of going to university when you were the president. And I don't know if you remember this really short story, but it's the thing that stuck out the most to me over these years.

I'm a parent of four kids. And you told the story of fighting with your kids over the lights. You know that story? Yes. Okay.

I want tell it, if you will. I took notes. Dr. Rutland preached chapel more than 50% of the time when you were the president. And I've gone back and looked at my notes. I was a new believer.

And so much of my Christian walk in life, my theology has been impacted by your teachings. Well, thank you. What a nice thing for you to say. So, so powerful. But this story here is the most memorable and the one I use the most with my kids.

Thank you, Pastor. Thank you. Well, this is not really a course in parenting, but the same concept you can get so concentrating on what you do as a parent that you forget why you're doing it. So the mom cleans her kitchen floor, gets it all clean and it's shining. And then her 5 year old comes in out of a muddy backyard with a dandelion that he's picked, and he walks with muddy feet toward her and he says, mom, this is for you.

This is for you. And she says, get your muddy feet off of my floor. And she's forgotten that cleaning the floor is not why she lives. Raising five year olds is why she lives, I love. It's much easier for me to pick on women than tell self revelatory stories.

So I really appreciate you bringing this up. Thank you very much. Yeah, yeah. Extremely helpful. Yeah.

I went through a phase. I don't know, I guess nobody else gets these OCD things going, but I went through this phase when my kids were little where I drive up in the driveway and it just seemed like every light in the house was on. I would lose my mind, Kids, you know, I've been off in some godforsaken foreign country, Michigan or somewhere, and I pull up in the driveway and my little girl runs out to me, daddy, Daddy. And I say, no, no, stop. No kisses.

Get up. The light's on in your bedroom. Go. Turn. And it really.

I hate telling this. Yeah. Thanks, friend.

It really became a problem for me. And then I had this kind of thought. Not a vision, but it came in my mind. I could see myself laying in a coffin in the family room before my funeral. And I could see my teenage son lean over the coffin and say, well, dad, the lights are out.

I just. I just thought. I don't. I don't want my headstone to read, here lies the electricity sheriff, because that's some. Do you see that even in parenting?

That's a terrible inversion. My job is not to keep the lights off. That's a thing I do. And I do that. But that's not my job.

My job is to raise healthy kids. So it was liberating to me. It was liberating. The kids would run out, they'd say, oh, the lights are on. I'd say, no, not all of them.

Go up there and turn. There's one up there. Go get it on before let's light up the county and turn the air conditioning on and open the doors.

It was liberating. It was liberating. That's. That's actually. Pastor.

That's actually purpose and function. It really is. And you leave and you think that's fun for me to tell that. Well, it's not.

You all are way too jolly for Christians. This is. Who else take. I need to keep track of the time. I have a question.

I'm back here in the back. Hear the voice. All the way back here in the back. Yes.

So I have a. The opportunity that I have. I kind of. I'm in what they call middle management. Yes.

At a fairly large bank.

Sometimes I think the struggle is those of us who are standing in the middle of helping the higher ups or the executives. Right. And helping with the culture at the function level, can you give us some insight on how to like bridge that? And when we find ourselves in the middle, how do we keep ourselves focused on the vision but also help others not get stuck in the function part? Okay, first of all, let me encourage you with this.

You have the hardest job at the bank.

It's easier to be a teller or to be the bank president. What you have is actually see a real job.

So you use the appropriate word. Actually you are a culture operative. So your job is to reach up into upper management and discern from them, no matter how badly they articulate it. It's your job to figure out what is the culture of this bank. And it's your job then to express and enforce that culture below.

That's not the way we do things. That's not the way we answer, that's not the way we respond. That's not the way we handle this kind of situation. So middle management is actually the conduit between upper vision and functionary dysfunction. You have maybe one of the most important jobs in the bank.

It's just not the best paid.

Ain't life great?

We're just about to wrap it up. Yes, yes. We at the stand. Alright, I'll stand up. All right everybody.

Yeah. So I'm going through a transition right now. I work for a company, manufacturing company. We have been growing and doing very well for the last seven years. We just got bought out by a large company.

They're talking exactly about vision and missions. And I'm, I'm in the middle like her. I have a lot of influence at my facility and in leadership. And it's hard for me to, I'm trying to get them to buy into the vision, but I don't even buy into it. And it's one of those things where I don't have any.

You don't have any say in it. And the company hasn't done, hasn't done a good job of getting the buy in on the people who have the influence. Yeah. So I'm, I'm like in the middle. I'm like, I don't even believe in this.

And they're shoving it down their throats like this is the way we're gonna do it. And it's like, man, we've been making money. I don't see why we need to change. You got to show me why. So I'm just isn't asking for guidance.

So the question is, how do you believe in a vision that you don't even believe in? Isn't that excruciating? That's a very. I don't want to be lighthearted about that. That's a very difficult situation.

But listen to what I'm going to say to you. Several things on this. Listen, the first thing is find the things in the vision that you can believe in. It's not all. I promise you, it's not all wrong.

There are some things in it that are valuable. So find the things that are valuable and fasten your gaze on those. Do the best you can. Be as downwardly loyal as you can be and as upwardly loyal as possible. You have to deprive yourself of any possibility of sounding disloyal to the company.

You have to be loyal to the company. Find what you can that's positive. Speak as positively as you can. You can go home and say all that stuff to your wife, but at the office, you have to be loyal. The second thing is this.

That's the first thing. The second thing is this something I say to youth pastors and associates and middle management all the time. Listen, anybody can leave. You have the right to leave. You see, you can leave.

You just have to leave like a Christian. You don't get to roll a hand grenade in the door as you go out. But it's perfectly okay to leave. Leaving is not an act of disloyalty. Staying and murmuring is an act of disloyalty.

Is that making sense? So what I would suggest, son, is find the things that you can feel as positive as you can be, as loyal upwardly as you can. Speak loyally to the people down and read the wonans.

Open up the newspaper every day and say, there's someplace that needs my genius.

Is that it? Okay. I want to be faithful. What time did you say we'd stop, Pastor? Oh, 8 o'.

Clock. All right. All right.

This young man knows his function.

I feel like you kind of answered this in bits and pieces throughout, but I. The way my brain works, I need it in, like, one comprehensive answer. So I think whether you're the overall leader or you're, we'll say, a volunteer for a church and you do believe in the mission, it's kind of separate from what he was saying. How do you, like, how do you keep yourself from disengaging with the mission as you're trying to carry out the functions to see, like, how do you stay mission minded and not get completely caught up in the works that carries it out? It's a good question, son.

I hear what you're saying, but the Problem with the answer or response to that kind of question is like this. Guys used to say to me all the time, they say, how do I get my batting average up? I'd say, well, get more hits. That'll do it every time. That's going to strike out less.

That'll help. So into response to that is, you say, how do I keep myself more on mission and vision and all that. The answer is, keep yourself more on mission and vision and learn it. Concentrate on it. Be faithful to it.

Be passionate about it. Embrace it. You also, she's the chief of culture at her company because she owns it. You also are a culture officer. How you do what you do, how you talk about what you do, and how you allow the people around you at lunch break to talk is your responsibility to the culture.

Stay focused, stay on it. And remember what Jesus said. He who is faithful in small things will be made master over great things. Be faithful and loyal where you are. Keep your eye on the ball, and God is going to lift you up.

God has a great plan for your life, but you got to do it here. Amen. Or wherever you are. I don't know where you work, so. Here, do it here, because your boss is right over there.

So I'm helping you, son.

All right, we still got a couple of minutes here. Okay, Here's a lady right in the front, son. She's had her hand up several times.

Thank you. As of tonight, I am liberated and I am no longer on the light because, honey, she's free of the light patrol. She's not going to be the electricity sheriff anymore. Or is it him? Oh, it's you.

Oh, it's you. You know, sister, repentance is good for the soul. Let's give her a big hand.

Who else? All.

Hello. I have a question. My name is Joshua Womble. I serve at the Refuge Greensboro campus. I have a question.

Okay. Everything that was stated tonight was very valuable. But I do have a question about, like, just the differentiation between CEO, culture and church. Because the thing is, you'll see the implementation of strategies and vision, but the people are operating as if we're working for Apple with Tim Cook instead of shepherds over parishioners who are discipleship to make sure they're in alignment with Christ. So how do we stay focused on to where instead of just maximizing profit or shareholders, which is the parishioner's desires.

We may be a numerically big church, but the spirit is not there. God's presence isn't there. How do we implement these strategies? And continue without losing our identity as shepherds, disciples, pastors, leaders within the faith. It's a good question, and I hear the spirit of the question, so let me respond to that.

It is the same thing, but it has to be done differently. So. So, yes, the way you do culture reinforcement and culture protection and culture teaching in a church may feel, but it's an emotive thing. It's a feeling difference in a church than what you might have at Apple. Okay.

But it's the same. What you want is the same outcome. This is. This is not the way we do stuff at wherever you sit. This is not the way we do stuff.

That's cultural protection. I won't have you acting this way. I won't have this. This is not the way we do this. That's the same thing as if at Apple.

If you say, if you do that again, I'm going to fire your. I'm going to dismiss you. Okay? It's the same thing. It's not doing something different.

It's doing the same thing differently. It's a spirit of difference. Is that making sense? Is that helpful? Okay.

Yes. All right. All right. We have a couple of minutes here. Yes.

Who's whoever? Okay, there's somebody way in the back, somebody on the front.

How you doing today? Appreciate you coming out tonight. Thank you. My question to you is, when it comes to the mission statement, what are some guidelines or some principles you will ask someone or you can tell a young person or their family entrepreneur, whatever the case may be, on how to create a great mission statement? On the formulation of a mission statement.

Wow. Thank you. That's a very good thing. Now, listen, what you want is economy of language. A mission statement that's too wordy is counterproductive.

You. You want a mission statement that is economical, that is pungent, that says what you want, and that is easily employed. That's the wrong word. Easily applied across the various branches of the company or the organization.

So Edwards Pie Company in Atlanta, Georgia, to make, manufacture and sell wholesome pies for the American family. To make, manufacture, and sell wholesome pies for the American family. That's a clear mission statement. You see that? Now that's not the vision statement.

The vision statement comes when the CEO says to the board, we sold 5,000 pies every month last year. I feel that if we will buy three more ovens, we can take that up to 10,000. And with a minimum of three more trucks, our distribution can go up and we can increase our cash flow and our margin, our profit margin will go up. That's vision. That's vision.

So the mission statement is an economical statement of how we're and why we're going to do stuff. Your own personal mission statement. My mission is to serve God. You, you have a mission statement. Say where'd my questioner go?

What would you say your name is, son.

So your own personal. You need a mission statement to serve God, to obey him, to walk through life in a way that he feels I've been successful. Something like that. That's your mission statement. You have that.

You hold yourself accountable to that. Economical, clean, clear. But then you say I want to go to school, I want to go to college, I want to get a better job, I want to open a business. That's vision. Is that making sense?

Good. All right. Hey everybody, I appreciate you. God bless you, everyone.