Summit Session 5

Session 5 of the Willow Creek Leadership Summit opened with a demonstration of innovation in action. If you haven't checked out the Erik Mongrain video that I posted last week, you need to do so - Erik's "Air Tap" is amazing.

From there, Harvard Professor Michael Porter spoke to us about "Strategy and Leadership." Specifically, Porter's topic was "Trying to Do Good in Your Community" which led to the question, "How do you do well at doing good?" I appreciated his passion when he stated quite simply that "We can't afford to not be effective."

Porter is a very educated academic-type of cat, but he raised a lot of questions that I think most Missions Teams at our local churches would do well to wrestle with. In particular, some ideas that got me thinking were:

• The mind-set of philanthropy must be shifted from seeing your efforts as charity to understanding that you are delivering a social service; the question then becomes "How do I add value to that customer?"
• Value = Social Benefit / Dollar Expended
• "Worthiness" can't be the basis for why we choose to do something, as there are literally thousands of worthy causes; our decision must be based on where I/we can add the most value.
• Most groups do too many things with too little value, allowing passions to supersede the examination of value!
• Meeting the needs of our communities must be at the core of our purpose as a church, but it must be done well.