Moltke the Elder - on Planning

No battle plan survives contact with the enemy - Count Helmut von Moltke the Elder

I was able to spend a couple of hours with Ken Cochrum this past week. Ken is the director of the Global Campus Ministry with Campus Crusade. After serving for a number of years in Asia, he is back in the US hoping to give traction to campus ministry on a global scale. Ken is a good leader who understands movements and what it means to be driven on biblical principles. His passion is spiritual leadership and helping leaders lead well.

It was in this conversation that the Moltke quote came up.

Moltke's phrase (along with War is a matter of expedients) did not mean that he not believe in planning, but more that he saw strategy as a practical art of adapting means to ends - and doing so in a fluid environment forced leaders to act from goals and principles rather than prescribed methods or wishful thinking.

Helmut von Moltke (the Moltkenator to his friends) was the Purssian Army Chief of Staff for 30 years. He also had a mean cross-over dribble.

Holmes on Talk

I saw this quote and liked it: A good word for us blogger types.

Speech is conveniently located midway between thought and action, where it often substitutes for both"

- Author John Andrew Holmes (American physician and writer. Best known for Wisdom in Small Doses (1927))

Galbraith on Change in Thinking

Faced with the choice between changing our mind and proving that there is no need to do so, almost everyone gets busy with the proof. - John Kenneth Galbraith

I can raise my hand on this one - quite often over the last few years. Below is a brief list of radical thinking changes that I resisted, but later came to see as quite obvious.

• Disseminated Leadership - upon joining the National Team of Campus Crusade a few years ago, I believed the best way to move ahead was to align every little niche group and tackle the direction together. Upon watching KCCC, and now Impact, it is obvious (to me anyway) that our best approach is to free leadership up to make primary decisions for their particular target. Duh! Good leaders with freedom usually generate great results.
• Apostolic Functioning - Dave Patchin once told me that I 'prayed to receive catalytic' back in 1997. True. Before that, I had been fairly resistant to the chaos. Now, after looking at afresh at how the kingdom expands, I tend to lean more toward efforts of church planting movements . . . . which are highly catalytic in nature.
• Volume over Precision - this relates to both things above, but, in a nutshell the best way to reach the world and have great churches / movements . . . . is to concentrate on having MORE churches / movements. If everyone is free to start one, inevitably you will end up with really good ones. (yes, this is the essence of capitalism and why the you never see Russian cars on the road).

btw - Gailbraith, who passed away in 2006, was an influential Canadian - American economist. His books on economic topics were bestsellers in the 1950s and 1960s. Now you know. (this was the only picture I found of him smiling - I am not sure if that is because he is an economist or a Canadian).

MLK on Friends

This struck me as painfully true:

"In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies but the silence of our friends."
- Martin Luther King

Saint-Exupery on Goals

"A goal without a plan is just a wish." - Antoine de Saint-Exupery
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Worse are plans that are not based in reality and boldness, but try to cover it by invoking the supernatural aspect of 'God choosing to move.' What I mean is this: God seems more accustomed to rewarding the foolish plans of the bold rather than the hopeful wishes of the passive.

Charging Jericho with a trumpet and a bunch of priests does not seem like a great plan, but it surely requires God to step in and do something dramatic.

To expect dramatic results without stepping out is more foolish than foolishly stepping out.

Camu on courage

There is always a philosophy for a lack of courage
- Albert Camu

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Often times I feel I can easily talk my self out of difficulty by embracing a theological / biblical stance that limits possibilities, and therefore requires me to take little risk. I limit God because my possibilities are smaller than his.

We like the stories of miracles, but rarely do we take difficult action to see them take place - we don't risk in ways that only God can rescue us from.

Of course this plays out institutionally as well. We philosophize our way out of radical change based upon preconceived notions of ministry, success, risk, change and pain. We hope that incremental change will give us radical new results . . . but more often than not, our results are in perfect proportion to our risk.

JFK

"The Bible is the common heritage of all men. It is the foundation upon which the great democratic traditions and institutions of our country stand. Recognizing what it has meant to the development of our American way of life, we can hope that other nations and societies will also find light and guidance in this book."

-- John F. Kennedy, in a letter to the Pocket Testament League, November 20, 1961

Machiavelli on Lasting Change

"Nothing is more difficult to carry out, nor more doubtful of success, nor more dangerous to handle, than achieving a new order of things."

Niccolò Machiavelli (from The Prince).

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This is the daunting aspect of change. Making it stick.

I feel that human nature tries to minimize the risk of making it stick by lessening the degree of change that is actually needed. In other words, in order to make a change, we try to change less than we ought, and therefore do not achieve the full change we desire. We feel it is easier to make small change work, but in the end, small change does not get us the necessary change needed to accomplish our goals. (Kotter has made a living explaining this).

In the end, we often dream to small and therefore limit our ability to reach desired goals.

Burt Bacharach on Words

"A synonym is a word you use when you can't spell the world you first thought of,"
- Burt Bacharach

How true it is.

I was really just looking for a way to work Burt Bacharach into my blog.

It is truly what the world needs now.

Bradbury on jumping off

"Go to the edge of the cliff and jump off. Buid your wings on the way down.'' Ray Bradbury

I like this because it is descriptive of a certian leadership style - one that I find very satisfying. The way to grow leaders and find solutions is by jumping in - even (or especially) when there are few answers. Through a process of 'going' everything becomes clearer new methodologies are produced - in real time with real results (good or bad).

In my view, nothing develops leaders better than deployment.

Is It Really Like This?

More from Forgotten Ways: This is a research quote from Sally Morgenthaler,

Despite what we print in our own press releases, the numbers don't look good. According to 2003 actual attendance counts, adult church-going is at 18 percent nationally and dropping. Evangelical attendance (again, actual seat numbers, not telephone responses) accounts for 9% of the population, down from 9.2% in 1990. Of the 3,098 counties in the U.S., 2,303 declined in church attendance.

Is this true? My take on stats like this is similar to Winston Churchill's ("the only statistics you can trust are those you falsified yourself"). On campus are we experiencing this decline? or is it a 'church' thing only? Would you say, from your observations, that the church is in decline in the west? Or are we moving ahead and progressively getting better and better at reaching students (and people) in all categories?

Most of Alan's book does not focus on the gap, but on what happened to make phenomenal Jesus movements happen. His findings are truly amazing and should inform the expansion of the church for years to come. I put this in my must read category - especially for those who are leading toward the rapid expansion of the kingdom (you will love it).

If you don't own a copy get one here.

You can hook up with Alan and his thinking here.

J. Oswald Sanders on Caution

A great deal more failure is the result of an excess of caution than of bold experimentation with new ideas. The frontiers of the kingdom of God were never advanced by men and women of caution.

- J. Oswald Sanders

Opportunities

Recently a old college buddy of mine accepted a new leadership role in the US Marines. I congratulated him on his promotion . . . and here is part of his response. Worthy insight.

"It is an awesome responsibility and will most certainly be the pinnacle of my career. I find it funny that it is something that I have aspired to for so long and when the moment unexpectedly came upon me, I hesitated. I actually debated not taking the job. It was some wise counsel from several mentors (my dad included) that showed me that I had a moral obligation to accept this responsibility. Part of my conviction was a quote by Winston Churchill..."

"To each there comes in their lifetime a special moment when they are figuratively tapped on the shoulder and offered the chance to do a very special thing, unique to them and fitted to their talents. What a tragedy if that moment finds them unprepared or unqualified for that which could have been their finest hour."

King George III

"To be a subject of Great Britain, with all its consequences, is to be the freest member of any civil society in the known world.”

This is King George III speaking to the British Parliament in regard to the American colonist . . . . just before the American Revolutionary war.

People in power often feel that they are running open and beneficial systems. Often times leaders do not fully understand the constructs that others are asked to live under that they themselves do not seem subject to. In King George's case, he made a very factual statement, but missed the point entirely. It is not about the ability to live under a fairly free system, but the ability to design and build a system of your own, that works for the goals and dreams of the people it represents.

Hang with me now - I think this is the essence of what must happen for us to move forward in reaching students of all kinds in the US and all over the world. Good leadership must be freed up to build independent constructs (or not) to get the job done in various student categories. For 50+ years we have tried to do it all under the umbrella of the 'white middle class way' - and lets face it, it simply has not worked.

However, the Impact Movement and the Korean version of Crusade have found fertile new ground in the US by playing by rules that they themselves have created. Impact has gone from 30 movements 3 years ago, to well over 140 now (Impact was stuck at under 30 for the first 10 years of its existence under the USCM). KCCC (the Koreans) entered the US with a special dispensation from Dr. Bright to do whatever they wanted. When I first heard about this, it really trouble me (since I was to be leading the charge in this area). But, it turns out they are doing fine (shocker) - in fact, we would love to have the success they are having (no recent numbers, but they will have over 2,000 students at their conference in LA - with about 40 total staff).

Leadership in both of these student groups would be quick to tell you that everything is not perfect, but their problems are their problems to solve - and they are capable of doing it.

So here is the axiom: Good leaders, with freedom, accomplish great things.