Industry Leadership or: What I Learned At Lunch With Perry
I was fortunate to be able to participate in a leadership lunch with Perry a few days ago. These are lunches where Perry takes about eight employees out to eat and talk about leadership. Anything goes: we are allowed to ask him whatever we want regarding leadership. Many things were discussed during the lunch, but I most appreciated the vision Perry cast with regards to industry leadership. It may sound odd to think of a church in market leadership terms, but I was curious about how we at NewSpring see ourselves — via Perry — in the world.
Perry’s answer betrayed his absurd level of faith. He said we need to do the best we can at all times in all things. If we do that, we will be the leaders. Mediocre is the standard the world sets for itself; if we do our best all the time, we will lead.
Now I hate mediocrity — no secrets there. Incompetence has always annoyed me. And I have long been troubled by the amount of mediocrity that Christians seem to dwell in. (I am currently working on a longer piece contra mediocrity.) I am pumped that I work in a place where excellence is pursued — where perfection is sought. These may be lofty goals, but they are refreshing. God has given us so much; we are simply seeking to give Him the best. But at the core it is faith that drives all of this. We — again, with Perry — have faith that if we do our best, God will honor that. And it is through this chain reaction of faith and obedience that God allows us to lead in the areas He wants us to lead in.
This is sort of ethereal, but I must say I was quite pumped about the future. It ties in great with what Perry said yesterday at church: What if your best days are ahead of you? We must usually expect something from God for there to be revelation. We want the supernatural: we must let God do the super and we must do the natural.
Other things I heard at lunch with Perry:
- Honesty [with each other] is the most important thing we need to have for the upcoming year
- What Perry knows now that he didn’t know then: that his biggest critics would be Christians
- With the technology we have we do not have to put up with bad preaching anymore
- Read Deuteronomy and change the way you think: change it to when, not if
[...] In a leadership lunch with my pastor Perry Noble a couple weeks ago, he predicted a lot of churches would close over the next 20 years (and that those remaining will get bigger.) [...]
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