I just finished the book, “Good to Great,” & must admit it was: Great. Estevan Andrade, a friend of mine, & one of my coaches, recommended it to me. Here are some quotes from the last chapter titled “The Flywheel & the Doom Loop.” It outlines the momentum created by a people groups efforts.

“No matter how dramatic the end result, the good-to-great transformations never happened in one fell swoop. There was no single defining action, no grand program, no one killer innovation, no solitary lucky break, no wrenching revolution. Good to great comes about by the cumulative process—step by step, action by action, decision by decision, turn by turn of the flywheel—that adds up to sustained and spectacular results.”
When I read this I think about the countless people I know who are still looking for that one fell-swoop to end the issues in their life, church, etc. Still looking for the next church program or revival to help them get there.

“Here’s what’s important. We’ve allowed the way transitions look from the outside to drive our perception of what they must feel like to those going through them on the inside. From the outside, they look like dramatic, almost revolutionary breakthroughs. But from the inside, they feel completely different, more like organic development process.”
We just signed up for Antioch’s World Mandate; this is their 20th year holding this event. We see all the glitz & glam, numerous church plants being sent out, a nice church building, 3200 people worshipping their guts out & say, “this is it.” What most people don’t realize is that “this is not it.” What is “it,” is the countless mundane decisions made, the numerous habits created & sustained, the constant call to prayer, early mornings or late nights. World Mandate started as a weekend of prayer for the nations. American church culture is riddled with people who would conclude: “We need hold a huge conference about missions.”

“The good-to-great companies had no name for their transformations. There was no launch event, no tag line, no programmatic feel whatsoever. Some executives said that they weren’t even aware that a major transformation was under way until they were well into it. It was often obvious to them after the fact than at the time. Then it began to dawn on us: There was no miracle moment. Although it may have looked like a single-stroke breakthrough to those peering in from the outside, it was anything but that to people experiencing the transformation from within.”
The tortoise vs. the hare.

“When I look over the good-to-great transformations, the one word that keeps coming to mind is consistency. Another word offered to me by physics prof. R.J. Peterson is coherence. “What is on plus one?” he asked, “Four!” In physics, we have been talking about the idea of coherence, the magnifying effect of one factor upon another.”

“And like most overnight successes, it was about twenty years in the making.”
Look at Yaks. Yaks didn’t start when Vineyard opened the coffee shop doors; it started when Mike & Nancy expressed some of their core values: People who don’t know Jesus need to know, Christ-like character is developed in service, & be excellent. Yaks isn’t a coffee shop as much as it is an expression of values. I feel bad for churches who see Yaks & say, “Oh, what we need is a coffee shop!” No. Yaks is an expression of a people ethos.

“I believe that it is no harder to build something great than to build something good. It might be statistically more rare to reach greatness, but it does not require more suffering than perpetuating mediocrity.”
Wow. Who knew?

(Talking about a high school cross-country team) “They’re just focusing on the right things, and not the wrong things, not wasting time on anything that doesn’t fit. Simple, clean, straightforward, elegant—and a heck of a lot of fun.”
What are the right things? What are the wrong things? Are you having fun?

Jeff & I were talking the other morning about a young man who will not be joining us on our journey. We were both expressing our disappointment & I said, “Jeff we aren’t doing this for results; we're doing this for Jesus. We are doing this because it’s part of our worship to God & we believe it’s the only real thing in the entire world. We know it’s true: so let’s just stay focused on the timeless truths about Him, practice the disciplines we see in the Bible, & let it happen.”