4 Steps to Create a Compelling Culture
“Culture is the soul of the organization.” - Dee Ann Turner
You can have an excellent weekend service and efficient systems, but still, lose momentum by not being attentive to your church culture. It is essential to win the battle in the spiritual, but also to remember the influence culture has on your church as well. Culture is not just your best intentions. It is the reality of what you guard, emphasize, and reward. Culture is the air your team breathes as they operate in your ministry and pursue your church’s ministry mission.
A healthy culture is not always easy to create or maintain. In her book, It's My Pleasure: The Impact of Extraordinary Talent and a Compelling Culture, Dee Ann Turner offers some great advice to those seeking to create a great culture in their organization. Here are four simple steps she gives to help create a compelling culture.
4 Steps to a Compelling Culture
1. “A Clear Purpose for Existing” - This is the "why" for your church or your vision statement. We have this purpose from the Great Commission, but what language will you use to contextualize this for your specific part in that great work?
2. “A Challenging Mission” - Your vision is the world you see because of your church exists., Your mission is what you and your team are going to do every day to achieve your vision. This should be simple and easily repeatable by everyone on your team.
3. “Determine Core Values” -Your church will be and do many things, but if you could only focus on a few repeatable, memorable values, what would they be? Everything else will grow from there.
“Businesses [or churches] do not become excellent in the big areas without focusing on the small details too. Excellence in small things leads to excellence in big things.” - Dee Ann Turner
4. “Guiding principles” - These are your cultural statements. What phrases are you using to summarize the different aspects of the culture you want to create?
Leaders love seeing external growth. So who can blame them? However, we need to also focus on creating cultures in our ministries that will cause us to be internally strong. When we have internal growing up, the external growing out will come and be sustainable.
Which of these areas does your ministry need to focus on to help create a more compelling culture? One of the reasons it is so vital to have these four areas clear and repeatable is because of how you can use them to market and brand your church. You not only can use your core values and stories of your fulfilling your “challenging mission” in your social media posts but how people experience your church in person also helps or hurts your brand. This is because what they say to others about the church is building your church’s reputation or brand.
Keeping these four areas in front of your team will help you create memorable experiences at your church and handles for people to grab on to in your church promotion and advertisement. Talking about the kind of church your area with clear values and purpose for existing takes the guesswork out of first-time guest’s expectations of who you are making them more likely to visit.
