Video Transcript: Learning the Culture

All right, so we've been talking about culture. Just a reminder of how we got here to talk about culture. We're defining leadership as creating a leader, with all of his strengths and all of his weaknesses, interacts with a culture of a place, or a people or an organization, which basic definition is how we do things here. And he interacts with them in order to define a vision or a preferable future. And as he defines that preferable future with them, he gives them the impetus or the leadership in doing the planning, and the praying, and strategizing on how to make that future a reality.

So now we are into the idea of how do you learn the culture of a place; you’ve got to know where you are before you can know where you've got to go to a preferable future. And last time I introduced this model here: espoused values, observable artifacts and basic assumptions. Are those things that you'll see culture in, you'll be able to identify? Oh, yeah, that's who this group of people are. Now, it's very important. I told you the story of the pulpit in my previous church, that is an artifact. It was an artifact, that was something that was important, although I didn't know it's important. And so you’ve got to spend the time in order to get to know what are those important things that are part of the culture that make up the culture. In fact, there's a story I don't know if it's true or not. It's a story of The United Methodist Wesleyan pastor who was sent to serve in a small church in a small rural town on the East Coast. And he went there. And he noted the first thing he moved into the parsonage they had a place for the pastor to live. And he noted that the church building had two entrances, that's all it had. And the one was mostly blocked by this fairly good-sized tree that was sitting out there. The tree was so big, that that door could hardly be used to get people in and out. And so, he just thought, how stupid Why didn't anybody cut this tree down before and without asking anybody without talking to anybody, he loved to do this sort of thing, owned his own chainsaw. So, he got out there cut down the tree. And wasn't long before some people from the church stopped by, they were horrified. Turns out that that tree was called the Wesley tree. And according to legend, John Wesley himself had planted that tree, on one of his visits to the United States back in the 1700s. And so, it was a very important artifact as far as identifying who they are. And because he didn't find the time or take the time to get to know that culture, he committed a major faux pas, and within a week, he was out of there; they, the church, would not stand for his presence there. That's the kind of thing about artifact; it's something important, espoused values.

Now espoused values, in other words, are the ones that are spoken. That's a little tricky. Because a few years ago, in business, it was very important that you define your core values. And I'm going to walk you through a process in order to do that. But one of the challenges of defining your core values is that sometimes they go into a drawer somewhere, nobody reads them again. And so, you have to ask, well, you know, what are your values in this place? And that's a fascinating thing: you'll do that with mission and vision statements as well, if you just go around and ask some people what your mission statement, and you know, people wrote it down some time. But they couldn't remember it at all. I mean, when I came to the church, I just completed serving, as: okay, what are the values of this place? And they couldn't articulate them. What's the vision of this place? What's the mission of this place? Couldn't articulate them, even though they were written down somewhere. They were written down, and they were put aside. That often happens with values. And so, values are in the process of changing all the time. So, how do you define what they are now? It's a very important thing to define what they are now.

And then basic assumptions, underlying often unconscious, things that determine the organization's attitudes, thought processes, and actions. These are the things that define a place, but they are assumptions about life. My one son-in-law is a structural engineer. And when he graduated from Washington University in St. Louis, with his master's degree, he went to work for an organization that designs schools and as a structural engineer, he was needed in that kind of situation. He went to work for this company that was owned by somebody in their 80s, who was still working every day, 80 plus years old. And there were basic assumptions about how work should be conducted by the owner, and therefore those values were filtered down to everybody in the organization, values such as an assumption rather that you can't be trusted to put in your time. And so, they had a 7:59am starting time in this business, and everybody was expected to be there at 7:59. And at eight o'clock one minute late, the doors were locked and you'd miss a day's pay, if you didn't show up by eight o'clock, because it was assumed that you've got to be watched. And your break time was very carefully controlled, and etc. Now for a millennial, that's a horrible thing to have happened to you. Dress was very important, they had a value on presenting themselves positively to their customers, but also to each other. And the chairman would talk about, you know, how you were dressed, and how you dress reflects to you. And so every day, they wore a suit and tie. That's how they worked. All those kind of restrictions in their life. Now, my son-in-law worked there for just a few months. And he was offered a job by another organization understood the assumptions of a millennial. They gave him freedom to flex his time. In other words, he makes as he puts in his time at work. And he's got to make some time for meeting with other people on significant projects. But he's sometimes starts work at 5:30 in the morning, so that he can be home by the time the kids come home from school. He's not on a clock. But it's understood that he's going to put in his time during that time. How he dresses? As long as they're not meeting customers, you can dress fairly casual, it's kind of business casual, which is khakis, or colored jeans or something like that, and a collared shirt. But it's a casual kind of setting where people are encouraged to interact with each other. And they do team building exercises, to get to know each other and that sort of thing. But that starts with a basic assumption about what it's like, as we talked about last time to work in a millennial generation, and those other people have those other people that they want to attract. And so they created a value system that will allow people like that to feel comfortable there.

Now, all of that goes into the culture. So espoused values, basic assumptions, observable artifacts. So how in the world do you go about finding what the culture is like where you are? But we're going to talk about learning a cultural process. First step is to listen. Just to listen to how people talk, listen to what they talk about. Listen to how they handle conflict, if there is conflict, and maybe if there isn't, that says something about the organization as well, maybe positively, maybe negatively. But listening to what the language is that this group uses. Is there laughter in the place? Now, it's not one of our value systems in our church. But one of the things we value that's a staff was the fact that we have fun together, we'd all go out and have fun: fun working together, we enjoy working together. And that comes through. And if somebody came in, that's one of the things I had a consultant come in, and help us with some staff things a few years back, and one of the things he says is you know what people like to work here, there's a joy that infuses the place. If you can find all that stuff out, by listening.

Secondly, do a values exercise. Now. There may be a written statement of values. Throw that out, and start over again, gather some leaders together key leaders, and just begin to ask them questions. What are the ideal behaviors in this place? What does it mean to be a part of this organization? What does it mean to be part of this church? What? What is important to this church? And what is important to how people treat each other in this church? And what kind of skills are needed in this organization in order to thrive? You know, how do people fail in this organization? How do you deal with those sorts of things? How do you deal with each other? How do you really want to just talk about those things and then say, what is really important? What defines who we are and what we are about? And what are our greatest strengths? That's just some of the key questions to ask with a group of leaders. And it's a fascinating thing, what will come out, you'll come out with a listing of values that that will be long and large, because it this is fun stuff for them to talk about. They're talking about their place. And you say, what is it? What is this place really all about? If you put that down in one phrase, what is it all about? Now in the church that I've just finished serving? One of the joyous things I learned early on as I listened to people, and then we actually did a values exercise is that the number one thing on our list was grace, that we would be a place of grace. Now, the church has not always been known to be a place of grace. In fact, many people in our congregation had been burned in previous churches where they'd gotten a divorce. And as a result, they were kind of blacklisted in the congregation, or they were, in one case, excommunicated in a previous church, because they did this great sin. People are struggling with sin. We're having a difficult time fitting in. You know I told you about the John Fisher kind of situation where you know, that 12 steps for the recovering Pharisee that if you're part of a typical church in the United States, you have to recognize you're a sinner to get in. But boy, you never admit any sin after that, because what will people say? And so as a result, we're not very much a place of grace. 

But one of my powerful memories as a child was having a woman stand up in the congregation in a worship service. Now, she had to confess, church leaders said this had to be a public confession. And it was a confession that she had committed a sin against the Seventh Commandment, You shall not commit adultery: she was pregnant. And she and her boyfriend and engaged in sexual intimacy, they were not married. And as a result, they made her stand up, which is, you know, that's a whole thing about that culture and interesting culture. But the idea of grace, then there was forgiveness offered, but it was hard, because so many people said, Wait a minute. What about those who are greedy? What about those who are cheating in their business situation, what about… and so it was an odd feeling. But what I remember most as a small kid, tagging along with my mother, is that this poor young woman was standing by herself after the worship service. It was like nobody wanted to get near her because she was an admitted sinner. And maybe they were just uncomfortable, that they didn't know what to say to her. My mother went to her gave for a big hug. And I remember her saying, as I'm sitting next to her, six years old, something like that saying, Well, I guess it's just you two, we just we two here we're the sinners. And I didn't find out till almost 30 years later, that my mother was pregnant when she got married. And so, she understood what this a woman was dealing with, and was able to engage in it and offer her grace and forgiveness and love.

Now, I've shared with you something about my failure in previous churches, and when I came to this congregation, they lived out that value of grace. In other words, we're not going to judge people for where they have been or what they've done, or what they're dealing with. Rather, we are going to be an avenue and channel of God's love and grace and mercy to people. And so, we get people in that church who are dealing with drug addiction, we've got some who conquered alcohol addiction, we got some who aren't. In fact, my wife one Sunday was in the bathroom and came out and says, you know, somebody has been smoking marijuana in there. And she looked around and was able to identify who it was, at least, I'm fairly certain who it was. So well, they're here, at least, we had a man knows, got to do his funeral, but as an alcoholic, and eventually drank himself to death to never conquer that addiction of alcohol, but he could come to our church and he could be received and loved, and he could be encouraged to do more. And on the other hand, we had a guy there who had gotten a 50 year pin from Alcoholics Anonymous, because he was sober for 50 years. But he could come in and say, Yeah, I'm an alcoholic, but I fit here, I belong here. We had ex-convicts, people who had been in jail for sexual sins against children. And they could find a place there. Now, of course, we created a safety net for the children as far as interaction and all that sort of thing. But saying, we're all broken, we've all failed, we all sin, and so they said ah grace, that's got to be number one on the list. After that, there came you know, things like Bible teaching, and commitment to spiritual growth and discipleship and those sorts of things. But that's those kinds of values, that those are the things that come up, who are we really at our core? What does it mean to be part of this congregation?

Now, values come in two different styles, you should know that there is a value that you state sometimes people will say it, say it but you know, it's not true. It's an aspirational value. In other words, they wish it was true. Many, many years ago, I was working with a church and they said, you know, we are a welcoming congregation. We are here, our value is to have people come in and we're going to enfold them. But then you look at their practices and you say it's not your value. Because there was no place when people came in to identify them as visitors, there was no place they could go to get for information. There was nothing that was said to them, we found that there were people who met the people that they knew after the worship service, they wouldn't meet new people, because they were just comfortable those new people. And we found that the community we were in was a fairly middle to lower middle class. And yet the church was upper middle class. And so, you've got Cadillacs and Lexus cars in the parking lot and big SUVs that are fairly new, and somebody coming in an old jalopy didn't fit, etc, etc. And so and they had this horrible designation, they'd had some people join the church, but one of the things they would say about them and say, Oh, that's a community person. In other words, they're not really us, but a community person, a project, somebody to work on, to hopefully make him like him or her like us. It was a good value. And they made some powerful changes in order to address those issues. But when somebody said that, you know, our value is welcoming people. And as they started discussing it, they realized, that's not really our value, our value is feeling safe, our value is feeling comfortable. And if these people come in, we'll be nice to them. But it isn't letting them come in and fit. And yet, you know, they made the changes necessary. And they were able to do it.

So aspirational and real values. Sometimes that becomes a definition that you've got to work with. As you work through values, somebody will say something, and the group will have to discuss, is that really a value? So, you do the values exercise, you get people together to talk about who are we really? What are we really about here as a congregation? What is the essence of who we are? What would it be like to fail here? What? What does that what are our greatest strengths. Then you take those values, and you group them. For instance, if you get a bunch of values that are like honesty, you know, we're committed to being honest with each other are committed to have integrity with each other, we're committed to treating each other respectfully, etc. You might put all those under a rubric of truthful or something like that, if you try to group them, and define the central, group them into similar areas, such that you don't have 400 on the list. And then you define the central themes. What is essential? What's unique about us, what makes us who we are? So that's the next step, then you create the list. And you come back with the same group of people. And you check and say, Is this true? Is this what we said? And then when they agree, and they prioritize them in some way, then you word them. Well, you try to find an interesting way to word them so that people so that they will be memorable for people, for instance, the one that's listed there, deliver Wow, through services. Zappos value statement, their number one value statement, is that they are about service, they are about serving you. They only sell online, they don't have a store, but they're going to create a wow experience through service. Now that creates an image, right, and you know that if your deal was Zappo's, you can expect high quality service, because that's who they are, at their core, the core of their being, and it's that kind of thing, you word them well, and you word them in ways that evoke emotion, that tie you into people's feelings. When we get into change processes, we're going to find the feelings of people are very important when you're trying to create change, because people will go with their feelings more than they will go with their reasons. 

So, in wording a value statement, you have to create something that creates that kind of sense of oh, I can connect with that I gave me in using a word like wow, in a value statement is important because it says it this is exciting. It's exciting to do it. And if you're working at Zappo's, you know, that's what you're about, this is what we're doing. So that's all part of the value process and you put them to the test. You try it out with a larger group, not just the key leaders now but with others, you begin to maybe do some focus groups or you invite people in or you go to people or send your elders or leaders out to meet with various people in small groups of your church to small groups to talk about, we've been talking about this, what do you think, is this true of us and then take their information back and write them out? And so that's a process to create a values list. What are your core values? Who are you at the core of your being? So you listen. You do a values exercise?

And then do a culture walk? You know, how is space allocated? Who gets what office and why? What's the signage like, what is assumed about the people who would come into your business or be served by your business or come into your church or be served by your church. The problem is, in doing this is that sometimes we get very comfortable where we are. Andy's family church leader at NorthPoint church in Georgia says that, you know, it's kind of like an old couch. If you live in the house, and you have this old couch, you just become so comfortable with it, you just, that's who you are. That's how you how you live, it's your couch, you don't even notice that it's getting old, you don't even notice that it's getting ratty. Because that's just been there, it's been there forever.

Had some of that experience. When I went to the church, I served first in California, the first building. And we got a group of people starting to think about culture. And one of the things they did is they walked into our worship area. Now there were a lot of assumptions made by those who had built that building back in 1971. One of their assumptions was that they never wanted to grow bigger than 450 people. And so that would be about 100 to 150 families could meet in that church. And so, they designed the building so that it couldn't be grown beyond that. We had three different architects trying to create a way to effectively expand that building before we decided to relocate. And they planned well. The idea was, well, once they got that big, that's all they wanted to do, and other churches could start, but that's what they were going to do. And so, there was that assumption, there was an assumption that if you came in, you didn't really care how things looked. And so, the walls were just like cinderblock plain cinderblock going around, and nothing fancy about them all. And they had a wonderful statement and in the dedication ceremony that I found in a file, and that was that, you know, those that rough brick just reflects the roughness of who we are. But the reality was, they were cheap. At least that was my interpretation. And so that was an assumption.

They had an assumption about the pews. The church was built in a time when orange was a popular color. I had a friend come in and walk through. And they said, woah look at this, it was kind of dirt, brown carpeting, and pews with a bright orange kind of covering, they were comfortable, but bright orange. And I was told by this person I had invited in his and knowledge of how you do this sort of thing. They said, you know, that color orange was popular in 1971 and 1972. That's it. So, anybody who walks in who's not aware of that color, was not aware of who we are beyond seeing what we are discerning some values there. And the value is that we're really going to just be ourselves and we aren't going to look, we're gonna do a thing to make you feel more welcome, we aren't going to do a thing to make you feel relevant. Turns out our sound equipment was just a horrendous thing. For people who came with large sound equipment. In fact, as one person put it, you know, the Beatles had better. We had better sound systems in our homes at that time than the Beatles recorded their most famous songs on and you come into our church and the sound system was terrible. And so the underlying assumption is, this church is for us; it's comfortable for us, not for people who come in. And so there are all these kinds of assumptions that we had to walk through. We said we're about welcoming people, similar to the church I described earlier. But if you walked in, you wouldn't find a sign anywhere that would tell you, where are the bathrooms? Where do you bring children? If you came in with three children, where do you go with those children? How do you get those children checked into the appropriate age group class? You know what's going to happen in worship, how's that? There all kinds of assumptions that we were about welcoming people when we weren't. We had to go through these values exercise of creating the values, and then listening to people but also doing the culture walk to say, Wow, now that we've got some of these values defined, is that lived out of the way we use our space? Is it lived out in the way we create things here? What is important, and so that became part of the plans. And then it's just a picture of the church I just completed serving.

Now, if I could be with you, that's the disadvantage of doing these classes online like this. If I could be with you, maybe meeting in a church we'd take we would take a walk, a culture walk, and say what do we know about this particular church, this particular congregation as a result of simply looking at their space and what they do within this space.

This is the entryway to the church I just completed serving now, there are several things that you will notice about the values of that congregation. One is you'll notice it's a cement floor; there's no carpeting. And so there's a value on being simple. And, you know, you might call it cheap. But I know from serving that congregation for 11 years that it was being simple. If you walked into the Worship Center, you'd find cement floor, and you'd find plastic chairs, that we sit on to worship. Now the idea there was we wanted to create a place where anyone could feel welcome. You didn't have to create a beautiful spot for people, it was functionally very attractive. And in our culture, now that it's changing. Turned out it's very effective practice to have this old brick, but this was an old Piano Factory. And so, you come in, you find a wide-open space. And if you came in on a Sunday morning, at about 8:30, you'd find people starting to gather you find people praying with each other, and for each other, you'd find coffee on and there's an atmosphere as the worship team is practicing. And, and there's a sense of yeah, it's good to be here, you'd find here, no signage, apparently, the signage was removed. I don't know if this was a special event that day. But you'll notice the reference to our mission statement, which is taking the next step. Our mission statement we'll get into later is, you know, we exist to encourage each other, to help each other take the next step in our relationship with Jesus Christ. And so things were used to refer to that signage like that preparing the upper rooms, I think this was a Bible school experience where we had kids in. And so that idea of working on the upper room that where Jesus had his last meal with his disciples, so this is probably a message that was given to kids in their situation, that communion kind of experience of the Last Supper, the Lord's Supper, you'll notice that that that the beams are just beams, the heating ducts are obviously visual, you'll notice there's some tables out with material on them. If you went just to the left of this picture, you would find our welcome area. We have a large section there. It's a large booth and there are trained people in there. And there are people that are ready to help you with that whatever question you might ask. We do have signage that exists on poles and various places. But later after this picture was taken, we put in some stuff because our second floor is a youth ministry area. And so our skilled men in the church built an arrow that flashes that goes up, that says young youth, middle school, high school are up here, up here, up here, and a flashes all along that stairwell that you see there. That stairwell was added during one of our expansion experiences. And it's made out of the beams of one of those old buildings that was nearby, that was torn down. And we managed to rescue the beams so that we could have a similar kind of experience. 

So just an idea of a cultural walk, it's very little, but it's that kind of thing, you start looking for what are important, what is important to the people who are here. So you do the culture walk then also culture interviews, you learn the history of people, get some of those people together and hear the stories and who are the heroes in this place? Who are the people who made this place what it is? What are significant events in the life of this place? I used to do an exercise where I would give people just a quick outline of the history of the church. And did this in retreat several times in consulting kind of situations as well. And have them write very quickly a short life history of that church. And they often go with the pastors who are the pastors, but other than that they'll do a deal with crises except for the beginning. Wow, how did this begin? And what was the vision that this church began with? Who lives at church I just served it was incredible statement that they started together because they saw that there weren't churches in the community where anyone could feel welcome. And so they decided that they were going to create that church. They started out in a room in the YMCA that they rented every week. And when the YMCA couldn't let them in, or couldn't continue to accommodate them on a Sunday morning, they ended up renting this decrepit old building that was the Piano Factory. They rented it from the owner. And the place was in such bad condition that when it would rain it would leak water down from the third floor down to the first floor and so they'd have pails collecting the water during their worship services with washcloths in the in the pail so that they wouldn't make a plink, plink, plink, plink, plink noise when the raindrops would drop in there. And they'd tell these stories, but they tell the story of the heroes, that first pastor who came and just went the extra mile to make things happen. About some of the original members who were just passionate about receiving anyone, at any time, who could have a vast variety of ages in the group as well as life experience as well as socio-economic level as far as racial level, racial experience, ethnic backgrounds, all of that. How do you create that? You heard about the heroes, how those kinds of situations, and I become part of that history.

If you were to come to that church today, they would tell you something about when I came, because it was a miraculous story of how God called me into that congregation at that time. And yeah, so history to ask questions of people as you get them, not the key leaders necessarily, but anybody in the congregation has been there a long time, what would you say? What would you say, are the most important events in the life of this church? What would you say this church is all about? What would you change? If you could change one thing about this church, what would it be? What kind of people fail to fit in here, just do culture interviews like that, you do those things, and you're going to have a pretty good idea about what the culture of the organization is. Now, last year, we realized that we had become a little loose with affirming our values. And so I took the staff through a process of talking about what are going to be our staff values. Now we had a staff of 20, 21, 22 people at various times during the year. And so we got them together. And we just had a conversation using this process, these steps. And then I would take them each time, and it took several months, but I would take what we had talked about. And I would go back and reformulate it and come back. And then I talked to the people in worship and arts because they were much more creative than I and just want to show you as an example. The results, here are the values at Covenant Life Church of the staff. One is we take it personally. In other words, we're going to give our best to minister to the CLC family, we have a commitment to the mission of CLC. And we are living that out in our own lives. Now this becomes a statement that becomes part of our evaluation process every year. How are you taking it personally? How are you living out the value of helping each other take on the mission of helping each other take the next step in Jesus Christ? What steps have you taken in this past year to grow in your faith? We continuously grow as the second one we evaluate regularly, and we're making improvements in our ministry striving for excellence. So, in other words, we don't just let ministries run but every year we go through a process by which we evaluate those ministries and we want to grow our ministries toward excellence. We collaborate, we see ministry as a team effort, and we'll go beyond our job description to serve and to help each other succeed. And so, when we have budget discussions, it's not about you know, oil, if you get that much that I can't have as much for my ministry, it's what are we doing together? Let's talk about the big picture. And what ministry do we have together? And what does that mean to have ministry together? And one of the questions we ask at evaluation time is simply when have you served somebody else on staff? When have you engaged in their ministry? When is the worship guy been helping out in our children's ministry, when have other people been helping out in worship to help out the worship ministry when there was some big event going on? 

Humility is key. We're not competing with each other. It's not our agenda that is important. But it's God's agenda that's important. And so, part of our key value is humility. And we talk about how do we live that out, because it's tough because sometimes we like to be the ones who get the attention. And we're saying, no, we're not going to do that. It's our value, slightly an aspirational value. But it's our value that we call ourselves back to a we focus outward will keep in mind the 16,000 people in our immediate area that are unchurched as we plan and pray. So, we don't want to become ingrown. But we always want to be doing things that focus on the fact that people need to know Jesus Christ in our immediate community. And we value grace together. As we value grace in the church, we will treat each other with respect, forgiveness, and care. And we've had opportunities, many opportunities to live that out, as we've had staff members who had major moral failures, and yet we were able to treat them with grace, in many cases, not all, restore them to ministry over a period of time, because we got to see them, responding to God's grace in a positive way, and our grace as well. So that's an important part of defining your culture. You know, learn the values, learn the history, learn the experiences that the church has been through that has made it what it is, look at the physical structure and see who they are and how the essence of who they are as lived out and how they allocate space. And you'll be a long way down the leadership path. Next time we're going to talk a little bit about creating your own personal set of values. And it's kind of an aside from this leadership discussion, but an important one because your personal value system has to mesh with the value system of the organization that you work in or work with.

Personal Values

Welcome back. Today we're going to talk about using basically the same kind of process to define your own personal values. Now, knowing your own personal values is important for several reasons. The famous quote, and I don't know exactly who originally said it. But "if you don't stand for something, you'll fall for anything." And so, what do you stand for as an individual? What do you stand for? Well, as somebody who's a follower of Jesus Christ, what are those things that you're committed to? Now your value system, you know, will hopefully be informed by the Scriptures and so on. I'm assuming that. And so I won't be quoting Scripture a whole lot as we talk about discovering your own personal values. But the values are important, in that they define how you act, as well as what you believe. For instance, your value system will change your behavior. In other words, if you choose as your value, one of my values is going to be personal health, well, that that can be your value. But how does that relate to your desire for comfort? You can say my value is to be a healthy, physically healthy, physically robust person. And then if you sit on the couch all day, or you watch TV, or you eat, whatever, you do a lot of snacking and that sort of thing. You don't get any exercise, then that's not really your value. And some people read this past week, one man, as I was preparing this lecture at the age of 22, was first given this idea of a value system that he would live by. And so, he wanted to say, he began to say, what do I want to be as aspirational value? What am I am now what do I want to be? And he determined, especially because of family, health history, with heart disease, and that sort of thing, among his uncles, his aunts, and even his father, that he was going to be healthy. And so, he immediately began to do an exercise program that he kept up regularly, he began to watch what he ate but it became that behavior came out of a value system.

Now, I'm the last person to say that we don't ever compromise our values we do. That's what sin is. But our core values are those things we're committed to and willing to work at, and the ones that define our behavior. Knowing your values helps you in making decisions. If you are trying to make decisions, and you've got this choice, or that choice, well what is your value? I'm working with a young couple right now, and one of their values is family. And they have three lovely children, and yet they live far away from their families of origin. And so unfortunately, their families of origin live in two different places in the United States. And so, they're trying to figure out how do we live out this value of family engagement on a broader scale than just our three children. And so, they're making a decision that they're probably going to move in the next year, toward one of the families just because they want that broader connection with cousins, and with uncles and aunts, and they want their kids to grow up in that kind of atmosphere. And so, so that value is helping them make that decision, whereas they were relatively happy where they were, but now they have to have come into this discussion, largely because of death of one of their parents. About what does it mean to have values of family? And so, it's helping them in their decision making? 

Now values can help you in your decision making. If you're purchasing a car, you're purchasing a home? What kind of value do you put on that? Is that going to be a functional place? Or is it going to be a place of beauty? If you're in a church, the value system that you have, will affect your behavior? We talked about that last time as we talked about defining the values of an organization. But you can tell when you do the culture walk, what is the value? What did they decide to do when they got the space? What did they decide to do when they had this opportunity to go into this mission or that mission? What? What's important to them in that regard? And so often, if you're in a church or organization, it's very helpful to come back to your value statement, what do we value? Well, that will help us we have an opportunity to give an increased amount into this particular thing. What shall we do? This is vitally important.

A good friend of mine pastored a church that was a very large, for it had a large budget. They had gone through a relocation at one point in their history where you'll meet them at some point in this if you haven't already in this presentation, where the church they were in was growing too small, the building and so they bought a property and they moved the church. And the idea was that that was going to be phase one of a multi-phase building process. And it came time that that first relocation stuff was paid for. And that was time to make a decision about what was going to be the next step for them. And so, they began to go through that process of defining architecturally, what should we build. And at that same time, my dear friend began to think through the implications of putting more money into buildings. In the United States, we put billions of dollars into facilities, and yet we see churches numerically declining rapidly. And so there hasn't been a solution. And he began to think about how Jesus called to the poor. And so, he came to his elders, as a part of his own personal value change, came to his elders and said, You know, I think we've got to look at this again. And together, they struggled through that for a period of time, and they came to a conclusion that they weren't going to do any more building. And instead of that $300,000, a year that they had set aside for servicing the loan that had paid off their building, they were now going to commit that to missions, they were going to commit that to missions that were like the ones that they had as a congregation. So, they had a value of going to places in the world and sending people from the church there so that they could get engaged in mission. And it was a huge cultural shift for them. But it came out of a value. And the value helped determine their behavior. It helped them in making a decision about what should we do with this money with this budget this year.

And your value system, your own personal value system also helps in your fit with the culture. Do you fit with this particular congregation? Or are you going to have to adjust to your particular values in order to fit with the congregation, dealing with the congregation, in this vicinity in this region of the country. They it's a small church that had been through a rough time. That a pastor left, and they've been a difficult part departure. And so, they called a new pastor, and it was an exciting time to start again. And they all agreed on the value that they wanted that church to grow, they all agreed on the value of that they wanted to make an impact in that community. But when it came right down to it, they had an entirely different value system. As far as how that's to how's that to be accomplished. The people in the church had a high value on being an attractional ministry. In other words, the idea was that they were going to do things to get people in the building. And that's where they would reach them and touch them. And so, they put a lot of energy and effort and money and resources into making that Sunday worship experience a fantastic one. The new pastor that came had an entirely different value system: he wanted to make the church be missional. In other words, not inviting the people to come in to be impacted, but sending the church out. And so, he had this vision of a series of small groups that would meet in various places of the little city in which that church existed. And each group was going to adopt a mission within that community as well as encouraging each other to spiritual growth. And so, they were trying to mesh these two powerfully different values, and it just didn't work. And so, within one year, the pastor had to leave. And so, determining your own value system will help you determine what questions to ask if you're going into a new church situation, if you're going to be invited to be part of a ministry, can you fit there? Can you operate there well?

I once had a call to a church that was very, very high church. In other words, I wore a sport coat that day, and a tie. Now, I wouldn't do that anymore. But that then I thought I was dressing up. And one of the questions the elders asked me when I met with him is why didn't you wear a suit? I had to wait a minute, I don't think this is going to be a place I'm going to fit well, if that is the cultural value. And as I began to talk to people, I realized that indeed was the case. And so, how do you go about making your own set of values to determine how you as a leader, since this allows you as a leader, with all your strengths and weaknesses, what do your values look like?

Start as a beginner, you know, you may have done this before, but try to throw all that out and say, Okay, I'm starting from scratch. What is really important to me? And then create a list. On that list can be high points, things where things really went well for you, when there was great success, when you felt a sense of fulfillment, when you felt really good. Make a list of those moments. What is your code of conduct? In other words, when you put your life together, what are those things you say? This is how I'm going to live. What's most important to who I am ? And, and so I'll write those things down. And then you can also write down low points and say, okay, when I fail, what happened there? What will be the opposite of that kind of experience? Now, I gave you this list earlier when we're talking about another subject. But here are just some lists of values, you can find value lists online, some of them are up to 400, I think, different value systems. But do you value your health? Do you value financial security? That's a biggie. If you're not willing to risk everything for Jesus Christ, you'll find it limited. Your service limited to those places that can afford you. And so is that your value system, our possessions, your value system. Is free time your value system? Is family life, your value system? I shared with you my son-in-law made a decision based on his commitment to his family that he wanted this flexible kind of experience, my other son-in-law was offered a job. And he said, Well, these are the hours I can be here, because I've got three children, I am committed to being a father to them and spending time with them. And so, he said, I can't fit here unless you are going to endorse that. And so I will do overtime, but I won't do it all the time. And in other words, I'm not going to sacrifice myself in order to get ahead in your company. And they accepted him. And he since has gone to part time as my daughter went full time, he went back to part time so that the family at this stage with young children could be a fulfilling experience for the kids and they would have a parent available to them. Those kinds of decisions help that his value his family. Is my value system friends? Are friends important to me, is that how I'm going to commit my time and my energy? Now for some people who have had friends for a long, long time, you know, that's very, very true that they can become an important part of your value system and that I want to minister to them or I want to minister with some frugality. I put that one on there just because that tends to be part of my heritage. I'm a Northern European background a couple of generations ago. I come from a Dutch background, actually, my grandparents immigrated here, way back when, before the turn of the 20th century. And in my Dutch background, I found out that there's a legend among the Navajo, our church, our congregation in denomination has had a great involvement in ministry in among the Navajo people. And so I when I was involved with denominational ministry quite a bit, I got a friend developed a friendship with this Navajo Indian. And he said, Well, he says, You know what we say about you folks, we say that, you know, when the Grand Canyon was created, we know how it was created. And I said, Well, how was the Grand Canyon created? And he said, Well, a Dutch miner dropped a nickel and went digging for it. Yeah, frugality. Now, that tends to be one of my values. It's not one I like it's one that I occasionally will have to balance with my generosity. But I tend to be frugal in how I spend money. Generosity. Like I say, those two are seem to be diametrically opposed, but they don't have to be. Justice. Am I committed to justice in the world? Right now, in the United States, we are in a time of great upheaval. So socially, my commitment to justice in those situations. Am I committed to justice? There's a ministry called AGM something Justice Mission, where their job is to go around the world and find injustices and correct them, and what does that do for you? Are you committed to seeing that the poor are getting a fair shake? That it's not just the rich getting ahead? 

Is having things in order of value to you? You don't like chaos? You don't like messy situations? Is learning a value to you? And what does that look like? Is happiness a value to you? Probably is. In the United States, of course, we're guaranteed that we are able to pursue happiness. That's one of our national values. Some people will give up happiness in order to do something of greater importance. One of the men I admire greatly was a president of a college here in the United States. And his wife became sick. It was a debilitating and was going to be a terminal illness. And so, he quit his job in order to care for his wife over those last years of her of her earthly life. And as a result, he set up a value system that wasn't about his happiness. He was about his commitment to his wife; he realized his value: unless I have a commitment to this woman that will supersede anything I'm getting in the professional world. Now that wasn't a happiness choice. It was a relationship choice. That's the next one.

Are you grow committed to growth? In your capacity, in your skill? In your character? Are you committed to truth? What about wealth? Is church part of your commitment? Now, there are many people who say that that's a fascinating thing to me that I've had people say that to me, and I know that they're part of the church only occasionally in worship service and not involved in anything else. But for you. Is that a value system that you're committed to the church as what Bill Hybels called The Last Hope, on earth, the last hope for the earth, committed to churches, the instrument that God is going to use to bring about his kingdom and build His kingdom here. Peace of mind, the security of value for you? That's an important thing to consider. If you were to be called into a mission field where safety is not guaranteed, would you be willing to go? Or is security greater value for you? Respect, sincerity, personal growth, hard work? You know, that's a value of a lot of generational people.

So, you look at these kinds of things, you can find other lists, encourage you not just to look at lists and pick one or two, but to say, is this true of me? Who am I? So, you start as a beginner, you create a list, then you put similar statements together. For instance, if you get integrity, and truth and honesty, all together, some things like that, you try to chunk them together, in some way, in a meaningful way. And then I highlight themes, what are the themes of your life? And what are the themes of what you put down on paper. And then once you've highlighted themes, you prioritize them. In other words, this is the most important thing to me, this is the second most important thing, to me, this is the third most important thing to me and try to create, five or six of them, don't try to make too many. And then you write them out. It's important that you write them out, just because it gives you something to refer back to now, some of you who practice journaling regularly, this will become just a process, but you'll write in your journal. For the rest of us, it's got to be something that we put down. I had the privilege of in the month of February going through a process again, where I just said, what's important to me, I'm at one of those change points in my life where I've recently retired from ministry within the congregation that I last served, and I am serving in other capacities now. But I was able to be by myself for a period of weeks. And with first brother coming, and my wife joining me, but time by myself for at least five days in a couple of different stretches. And so, I sat down with my computer, and I just said, what's important to me, in this next stage of my life, what are those things that I want to see lived out in my life, and then to look for opportunities to continue to serve that fit with those values of who I am now. Now, many of my value systems are ongoing. But there are some now that are changing, as now my opportunity to engage more of my grandchildren's just a reality, because I now have the time to do that. And so, they become a higher priority for me, than they were. sSo you write it out. And then it put them to the test. Is this real? Is this true? If you're married, you can do this with your wife. If you're not married, you can do it with a close friend, saying, you know, look, this is I'm trying to define what's really important to me, in my life and behavior, does this look really important to me these values? So, test them out, and then look at how you live them out. In other words, begin to make life plans based on that value system that you have discovered. For instance, here's one person's value system statement part of it. So is ranked value number one, his health and wellbeing. And he scored all of his values, one to 10 in order in order to prioritize them. And this one came up as an eight. And so, when did he do this? Well, on 1/20/16. What are the action steps to practice conscious breathing every morning? That's was one action step. This has become one of my values. I realized that I'd gotten out of physical conditioning when I was engaged in active ministry and so I begin my morning with devotions and time with God and then I spent some time exercising. Two, learning and growth. This person scored an eight. In other words, as he scored all of his values, this is important to him. And so, he's going to read two books a month. Integrity, honesty is important to him. And so, he's going to do Shadow Work exercises every night. In other words, the shadow work, that's the dark side that I talked about before. And so, he's going to identify those areas in his life every night, where he was tempted to go off into the shadow side of his experience. A creativity rank, as a seven. He's going to schedule time each week for creative writing. That's how he expresses his creativity, and adventure is part of his value system. And so, he's going to plan a trip to South Africa, those kinds of things, you do those kinds of things, and you're going to find that you're gonna have a better understanding of who you are and how you act; you'll have a process by weight making process for making decisions as you compare your opportunities to the values that you hold. And you'll understand how the organization in which you fit relates to you and how you relate to it as a leader, so that you will be leading out of a value system that corresponds to the value system of the church. Not exactly, necessarily, but you can still be a leader in that kind of situation. 

Now, you know, just an example of that, the church I served in Southern California was a upper middle class church, as far as the value system there, they had grown up, or the kids had grown up with a certain level of wealth in their life, some of the people in the church were very wealthy. And I had control of a lot of money. And I grew up blue collar; my father worked in a factory all of my life that I can remember. And so, my value system reflected that frugality and not any kind of opulence in our experience. And so I wondered when I first got the call there, whether I could serve that kind of congregation and I had conversations with people there. And in some cases, I had to adjust to my value system to fit in with the church value system, but also, I had an impact on the church value system as well. And so, it goes both ways. But once you understand what you're committed to out of your background, out of your experience out of your life, what God has called you to be, it's going to impact your leadership in a positive way.

Ethnic Culture Interview with Mia Clark

Bruce - Welcome back to learning to lead. And we've been learning about the leader and how God will form a leader and how our backgrounds all play into that, as well as our personalities our spiritual giftedness, our life experiences, all of that God puts into us being a leader, all of our strengths. And all of our weaknesses are part of that. And we've already begun the discussion on culture, the way we do things here, and we talked about American culture and what that looks like and I asked you to translate that into where you are, as far as how we discover what the culture is. And then how do you discover what the culture is in a certain place? Well, I want to introduce to you today, a new friend. For me. This is Mia Clark Grissom. She is an educator in the city of Muskegon, Michigan. And somebody I got to know of a second hand that in the church of which I was a pastor, we had a class on racial reconciliation, And Mia was gracious enough to come down and be part of that class for a Sunday just to help us understand in my community, which is predominantly white, a little bit more about what it's like to be a person seeking reconciliation and love from that side. So welcome. 

Mia -Thank you. I'm so glad to be here. 

Bruce - Mia, it is such a privilege for you to be here. But tell us a little bit about yourself. Let's start that way. Just some of the background that's gone into making you the person you are today. 

Mia - Okay, well, what's really, really crazy is I was born and raised in Brooklyn, New York. And I was raised in a middle-class family. However, you know, as a teenager, I wanted to do my own thing. And I thought I knew everything. And I got into the drug culture and everything. And so, the Lord had to save me from that. And even in my experiences in the drug culture, my mom forced us to go to church. Whatever we did Saturday night, Sunday morning, we were in church. And so that's where I grew up, in church. I know the Lord. I didn't know him on a personal level until I became an adult. But I knew that I knew of the Lord and you know, the Bible says that if you train up a child, you know the way they should go when they're old, they won't depart from it and everything that I would hear even while I was at church back then it still comes to my remembrance scriptures, different songs and things like that. But I came here to go to a for called Teen Challenge, from Brooklyn, New York to Muskegon, Michigan, it was like, oh my god, different worlds. Two different worlds totally. And so, with Teen Challenge, I did a year there and after I finished graduated from the program, I got married and I stayed here in Muskegon. Yeah! 

Bruce - Well, tell us about, it's a different world from Brooklyn, New York. What's different about that, as far as the culture of a large city, Brooklyn, to West Michigan? 

Mia - Everything where I'm used to hearing city noise fire engines, just people hustling and bustling all the time. It was crickets. And what I'm okay, it was nothing, you know, I could hardly sleep because there was no noise at all. So that was really a culture shock. 

Bruce - I've got grandchildren who live in Seattle. When, the first time they came to visit a few years ago, after we'd moved to this area. We got out of the car and one of them said, "what's all that noise?" It was noisy at night. With all the various pictures and buzz. 

Mia - yes, it is. It's, it's really something. And what's funny is, well, in the big city, of course, there's so much to do, you know, it's like New York never sleeps. And so, you can always find something to do. But here, you go to church, you go to the movies, and you're done. There's really not a lot more to do. So that was a big change for me as well. 

Bruce - Well, you are an educator, you're not necessarily in the classroom, but you're somebody who's in that position of making decisions about education. How did you get attracted to get an education in education? 

Mia - Well, you know, after the Lord saved me, he put on my heart to work with young people. And I was a housewife, and I didn't work. I just, you know, was home all the time, and I start to get bored. And a friend of mine came to me, she said, you know, the kids were talking about their school and stuff. And so I started to talk to young people that I was working with, in the church. And they were, you know, had so many complaints about what was going on in their school. So I said, Okay, I'll just go in and speak for you guys and speak to the principal. I walked in the principal's office, just as someone to you know, say, Hey, these are the children feeling. And I walked out with a job and then he immediately hired me, I mean, right on the spot to serve as the dean of students. And so, I said, Wow, well, since I want to be in education, I want to work with kids. I might as well educate myself. And so, I went on to get my masters and well now I'm finishing. I just finished my Ed specialist degree, which is a step under the doctorate and I will continue on and get my doctorate degree in that. So, it was like a street kid from Brooklyn came to Muskegon and the Lord blessed her to earn a doctoral degree so that was a blessing. 

Bruce - Yeah, well as we talk about how God prepares leaders. Often you just see those things moving from here to there and or why, well, here's why. 

Mia - God does those things. 

Bruce - It's just rather amazing. 

Mia - He really is. He really is. 

Bruce - So one of the differences too, as being a guest in your church a couple of weeks ago, the church culture in the African American church is very different from the church culture and the typical white American church. Reflect on that a little bit from your perspective. 

Mia - You know, I've learned because I attended First Presbyterian here in Grand Haven, and beautiful spirit. It's, it's a little quieter. But I mean, the pastor spoke so well. I mean, it was just, you know, everything was just really, really nice. It's just that we tend to have a little bit more fun, I guess, you know, we shout, we dance, we wave our hands. I mean, we just, we make a lot of noise. Whereas the other churches, like in Spring Lake in Grand Haven, they're just a little bit quieter. But they know the Lord and they share him in their way. So, they praise him in their way. 

Bruce - And being in your church and worshiping with other African Americans in this area as well, I find that the preacher often feeds off the response of the people. The fact of we were talking earlier about being in a Good Friday service. And the first pastor is just encouraging people to respond, and especially us more conservative, white folk. And the next guy who got up because they were doing various pastors were their rotation, then this guy got up uprightness. And now he said, if you're respond while I'm preaching, he says, I'm going to be distracted, I'm gonna lose my place so just please be quiet but such is life. Right? The difference in culture, the expressionism the desire to be an emotional part, yes. I grew up in a denomination is very much head knowledge and emotions, you just didn't touch those a whole lot as far as religion goes. 

Mia - Right! I see Well, in our church, the more you speak out or the more you say, amen, or the more you say, preach, or anything you say to the preacher, it makes them want to go more harder and longer. And so sometimes we'd be like, Okay, let's not encourage him. We'd be there forever. 

Bruce - That, too. It's just one of those cultural things. Yes, it is. It's part of the way we do things here that's the way we define culture, the way we do things here, right, as different between African American churches, this one on that one, and white churches the same and writing of ethnic groups that are going to be listening to this interview. But the idea is to understand the cultures. 

Mia -Right. And even though the culture is different that the premise is real. It's all about worship, it's all about praise. It's all about learning about the Bible and learning scripture and learning about God. And so, I've learned that that happens in both churches. We just a little bit noisier. 

Bruce - Of course. One of the things that struck me in hearing your story, as we talked to our class at church was the fact that here you are, you're in this position within the Muskegon school system. And you're going to start a charter school next year. 

Mia - Yes, I've worked for the public school system. And the charter school is a public school, but it's not a traditional school. And so right now, I currently work for a charter school called Muskegon Covenant Academy. And it's just a phenomenal school where we work with all types of students that come from various different backgrounds who have struggled in their home districts. And so, we try to help them get back on track. But with the charter school that I want to open, the one I work at now, is a high school, I want to open, I am going to thank you, Lord, I am going to open a school for elementary students, and we'll work with them wanting everything is centered around test scores and things like that. But I want to be able to provide a quality education that is not being done in the urban communities. And what's really what really, really pushed me to do it is because a lot of times and not only to work with the kids, but to work with teachers as well, because we have a lot of staff teachers that come from suburban communities that have never been in the hood, have never been to the ghetto, have not experienced, you know, what African Americans or people of poverty experience so I want to train them how they can best help these particular types of demographics, to do better and to excel in school because I'm a firm believer that education is the only way out of poverty and paying your tithes. 

Bruce - Well, that's something we've talked about in this class is just the fact that the changing is what leadership does: it changes things, but it starts with a need or a desire, right? And the leader sees that, boy, this has to change, this must change, and how, and that drives us to learn during the people work through a variety of things. Now, what are some of the changes, you're hoping this charter school will accomplish? One that you're going to be working with the teachers, but what part of the African American culture is this going to touch? 

Mia - It's going to the particular community that I work in the demographics of the students are very, very low functioning. The families, single parent homes, mostly mothers raising children by themselves, poverty, so many different things, disease, sickness, you know, and our children suffer because they don't have the opportunity to get so many things that they might need, things that are, you know, a quality as far as it might be norm to the suburban person, but it's, you know, like, we don't get that in the urban community. But I want to open their minds to know that everything that anyone else can have, you can have as well. And so, it'll reach those students that are struggling, not only academically, but as far as financially and live in situations, homeless situations, couch-surfing, we have a lot of that lot of teenagers and students, they couch-surf, they go from house to house, just looking for a place to lay their heads. And so those are the students that I want to work with, those are the kids that I want to cater to, I want to make sure that they have an equal opportunity. 

Bruce - Something's got to change. 

Mia - Because our future and if I mean, if I look at my students today, if I look at the African American culture today, I wouldn't want them to be my leader in the future. I deplore the pants hanging behind, you know, underneath their knees, and, and things like that, but that's what they see. That's what they see on TV, they think it's cool, they see these videos. But that's not how life really is, you know, and so those are the ones I want to reach out to, I want to get them before they are influenced by the street. 

Bruce - So you got to catch them before high school 

Mia - gotta catch them, I got to catch them before Middle School. I really do. That's how bad it is. We hear so many, even children, teenagers, that are committing crimes that are doing things because and some of them, they don't know any better. That's all they've seen. That's all they've seen with their parents, you know, their uncles or my uncle sells drugs, I want to wear the sneakers that he wears. But I want to introduce them to a different life. And with that, I believe God has given me the ability to lead where I can lead them and their families to something better. And not only education, but as far as Christ as well. So just change their whole dynamic, though their whole thinking of life. 

Bruce - What are some of your models for leadership? I mean, as leaders, when did you figure out that God was calling you to be a leader, first of all? And secondly, did you have any models? I didn't feel my calling till I was working in my second church. An understanding of what leadership is, when did that start dawning on you that yes, I am a leader and I can make a difference. When did that start? 

Mia - I believe that it started to dawn on me when I first walked into that Principal's office to talk about my kids and about the students that I had been working with. And that was in 1996. And every it's like, a light bulb just went off in my mind, you know, they need this, they need someone to really, really go to bat for them someone to really, really be in their corner. Because society, I mean, this the state, even all of the states, in education, they've just focused on test scores. When these kids are out here dying. I mean, they literally dying, and they're not being well educated. They don't know anything else. And that's what I believe the call was given to me and a man by the name of Kevin Christopher, when I was a teenager was my choir director. And no matter what I did, Kevin, he always loved me. He never treated me differently. I mean, there were times that I would literally have a drink and then go to church on a Sunday afternoon because we black people, we stay in church all day. So, we have 11 o'clock service and three o'clock service or seven o'clock service. I mean, so I would literally go into church and he would never judge me. He would just love me. And a lot of the things that he taught me as a child, that's what I find myself doing to my kids and they're like, Oh, for real you love me regardless. 

Bruce - Thank God, he put some of those people in our lives. 

Mia - Yes, that makes a difference. 

Bruce - I think it's very important like what you're talking about to have some models for kids as they grow up to say, well, you know, yeah, I do want to be like, right? In some way, shape or form. 

Mia - And it's not that leaders don't make mistakes. It's that leaders learn from those mistakes in the end. Like I always tell my students, I don't I tell you what I did, or what I've experienced. So maybe you don't have to go down that road, you don't have to experience that pain. That's something that you can skip, because I'm telling you, it was no fun. So, I mean, and like I said, I did make mistakes. But God, you know, his grace. And that's what people need to see, they need to see that his grace is sufficient. And it fully equips you. 

Bruce - My wife tells me that you're known to, or at least you told the story about driving down the street, you see kids hanging out, and 

Mia - I have no fear. I really don't. And it's funny, because I will literally, if I'm driving down the street, I live in a quiet community. But I work and where I work at, I don't mind driving in the hood, I don't mind and if I see you standing on the corner doing something you're not supposed to do, I'm going to get you. And I do it the other day. And this is just funny. Um, the other day, I was looking for a student, went to the projects. And when I got first, when I pulled in the parking lot, I said, Oh my God, it was just a big old truck full of boys and all you could see is smoke coming through the windows. And I said, oh, Lord looked at these boys. I said, God, I know you got my back. So, I get out the car. And I'm like, kind of nervous at first. And then I'm like, Nah, I'm just gonna go ahead and walk. I start walking, literally, the doors fly open from the truck. Hey, Miss Clark. You was my principal. Hey, Miss Clark. And I'm like, Oh, my God. So I walk over to the truck, and I just started fussing at them. Boy, put that marijuana down, you don't need to be. God has given me no, fear. I have no fear. 

Bruce - and a real courage as well. Right? That too is a gift. And you say it is something to say that God equips where he calls if he's gonna call us, into something he equips us to do it. 

Mia - That's right. And I just don't have a spirit of fear. I just walk. And it's funny, because they literally started to put out their marijuana, they started rolling down the windows and the smoke out. I mean, pulling up your pants, it was like, Okay, well, at first, I was thinking, wow, you know, I don't know these boys. But, I did. 

Bruce - Apparently, you have held up for them a vision of something that's different, and hopefully freeing for them eventually, and that sort of thing. And they know what that is? Yes. Hopefully they'll make those choices. Well, we've got a lot of people out there who are going to be watching this anything you would say to them finally, as far as being a leader? What are some of the maybe a lesson or two, success or a failure, whatever you'd like to share with a group of people that are going to say, Okay, I understand that culture is very now it's extremely varied. And that's an exciting thing. We aren't all made alike. And our situations all aren't alike any final thoughts you'd say God it really want to be thinking about that. 

Mia - Lead with love. I believe that. That's it. For me, I lead with love, I lead with love. For my staff, I lead with love for my cheek for the students, even for their families. And they know me for that. They know me, no matter what they know that Miss Clark is going to love them Miss Clark is going to be there and support them. So, I lead with love and it just draws people. The loving kindness have I drawn thee. And that's it: lead with love. 

Bruce - I forget the saying, but it's something about people follow you to the extent that they know you love them. 

Mia - They will, especially young people, especially young people. 

Bruce - I imagine children. I mean, children, that's hugely important. They care about me. It's not just I'm a person. 

Mia - Right, right. And a lot of them, what's really sad, is in our communities, a lot of our children are not loved, or they don't feel loved, because they didn't get it from mom, or they didn't get it from dad or dad wasn't in the home. So, to give them that like in my school now. I'm the Mama Bear, you know, I fuss at you. I discipline you and I love on you all at the same time and they love that. 

Bruce - Thank you so much for being here. 

Mia - I enjoyed it. 

Bruce - I hope you caught on to some of the things we've been talking about culture, the way we do things here. Here are some things that we just heard about a different culture than what I've been presenting to you is slightly different but some of the needs and our leader you know, relax to the needs within that culture defining how things are done here in order as we're going to talk about soon to the develop a vision for the future. Mia has given us a great vision to say okay, it's not happening the way I want it to happen the way I think it should happen so I'm going to start another school and we're gonna make it happen there. It starts with that kind of leadership interacting with a culture and so appreciate you helping enlighten us. 

Mia - Well, thank you for having me. I really enjoyed it. 

Bruce - Thank you.