Reading: 3.4—Completed Actions

3.4 Completed Actions: Accountability is greatly enhanced when GCOs are viewed as completed actions rather than as hopes or dreams or even targets. What’s important is what is accomplished, not what is intended. There is an expression that proclaims, “actions speak louder than words.” Taking that concept one step further gives you, “completed actions speak louder than intended actions.” A tactic that is purposeful in pushing toward accomplishment of GCOs is the use of the past tense, articulating desired outcomes as completed actions.

I use this technique in a variety of ways to push progress forward. For example, I’m currently working with churches in an initiative called the GO PROJECT. It’s a revitalization process that is designed to be completed in eighteen to twenty-four months on average. Over this timeframe, churches move through five markers and each marker is further defined by a set of checkpoints, checklists, and outcomes. In short, to complete a marker, the church will hit each checkpoint, check off all the items on a checklist, and will achieve a set of prescribed outcomes. All of this information is captured and tracked in the GO PROJECT ROADMAP Tracker. The following is an excerpt from the Tracker of one of our GO PROJECT churches:

MARKER 2 Checklist of Checkpoint OUTCOMES:                                                 Date Completed:

GO Leader Team (GLT) Identified & Mobilized                                                      March 15, 2020

Training for GLT in Four Leadership Dynamics for Vitalization Conducted            July 25, 2020

Vision Team Selected & Mobilized                                                                         August 10, 2020

Prayer Teams to Support Vision Team Recruited & Mobilized                               August 19, 2020

Notice that each action is articulated in past tense. The protocol for using the Tracker requires that an action be thoroughly completed before a date is entered. It’s in the completion of each action that progress is made. Intended actions or partially completed actions don’t count. To check them off before completion registers a false positive and gives the illusion of progress that, often, serves to impede progress rather than advance it.

There are numerous challenges to establishing accountability and I won’t try to list them all. I will, however, include several prevailing challenges. First, there is the culture of a particular church, and, I might add, the culture I am about to describe is common to many churches. In part due to the Program- Scriptedness that we discussed earlier, the history of how the church goes about conducting leadership meetings, and the actions that should follow such meetings is a history of habitual slow pace, no need to rush, approaches to strategic planning and execution. There is no sense of urgency and the leadership culture of the church is content with these slow- paced habitual patterns. It’s important to note, again, that over 80% of churches are in plateau or decline, with most experiencing little to no conversion growth. Yet, there is little sense of shifting to a higher gear and truly starting to make things happen. Ironically, organizational leadership books by the dozen include reference to the fact that the first step in navigating change or revitalization or turnaround or whatever you want to call it is to establish a sense of urgency.

For example, John Kotter, a leading authority on organizational change, says a great deal about urgency in his back-to-back books, Leading Change and The Heart of Change. In each of these books, he unveils his Eight Stage Process for navigating significant change in an organization. The first of these Eight-Stages is “Establishing a Sense of Urgency.” He writes, “Establishing a sense of urgency is crucial to gaining needed cooperation. With complacency high, transformations usually go nowhere because few people are even interested in working on the change problem. With urgency low, it’s difficult to put together a group of people with enough power and credibility to guide the effort or to convince key individuals to spend the time necessary to create and communication a change vision,” (Leading Change: Kotter, p. 36).

Second, church leaders are inclined to set ministry apart from other organizations or businesses that are not ministry, so the kind of catalytic, high accountability strategy they might undertake in their business or professional world doesn’t make it across the threshold of the church. Somehow, ministry is supposed to be “spiritual” or “other worldly” so the common sense, strategic engagement leaders might undertake in other walks of life are thought not to apply to ministry.

Third, pastors and leaders are largely, if not exclusively, working with a volunteer ministry workforce, and it’s reasoned that volunteers can’t be held to high standards, but that the church must simply settle for what it gets from folks. In truth, though, people are drawn to challenge, particularly when that challenge is meaningful. Also, let’s not forget about doing all to the glory of God.

These and many more challenges can be overcome when strategic urgency and diligence are, first, modeled by key leaders and, second, promoted by those leaders. If key leaders will shift the culture, new habits and disciplines can be formed, and the bar of accountability can be raised.

Accountability Tracking: “Keeping track of yourself and others is the essential flip side of the action process. There is no other way to be sure that commitments are honored, deadlines met, calls returned, and long-term projects tracked through their various stages. Failure to keep track can result in any number of serious consequences.” Stephanie Winston – The Organized Executive, p. 48.

Setting Great Commission Objectives (GCOs) and establishing accountability are greatly enhanced when GCOs are viewed as completed actions. What’s important is what is accomplished, not what is intended.