Leadership from the Inside Out — Part II

In my previous post , I introduced you to Drew Williams. For seven years Drew served as assistant vicar at St. Andrews, an Anglican parish in Chorleywood, England. When he arrived in 2003, Drew found a church that was big but not growing, and a congregation that was loyal but not energized. Mark Stibbe, head vicar at St. Andrews, challenged Drew to develop a plan that would change this. On a blustery November night, just a few short months after taking up his post, Drew stood in front of a nearly-full church and presented his strategy. Those hoping for a grand vision were disappointed. Instead, Drew pointed back to the early church. In the first few centuries after Christ, the church had been organized around small, local communities. Drew noted that those early believers had typically met in the biggest house they could find, and when they ran out of room, would subdivide and form a new community. Drew admitted he didn’t have a precise plan for how to put his idea into practice, but he asked everyone present to think about the kind of difference they thought they could make if they were part of a more intimate community. He challenged his parishioners: What’s your passion? What service-oriented program would you want to start or join if you had the chance? At the end of his talk, Drew announced that he’d hold a follow-up session a month hence, on December 6. He invited anyone who thought they might be willing to lead an “MSC” – or “mission-shaped community” — team to come along. In his heart, Drew was hoping 12 volunteer leaders would show up, and four weeks later, that’s exactly the number that did. Some of those who came had a passion for children, others were eager to help the disabled, or the elderly. Drew encouraged his newbie leaders to start talking to others in the congregation, to start recruiting other volunteers and laying out plans, but provided very little direction. When a lay leader would ask him, “How often should we meet?,” Drew would say, “I don’t know, why don’t you pray about that.” When someone would ask, “Where should we meet?,” or “What should our strategy be?,“ he’d give the same answer: “Just pray about it.” Again and again, Drew pushed the responsibility for making the new model work back onto the parishioners—and (Drew believed) onto God. Drew was clear about one thing, though—every group had to have a purpose that went beyond merely meeting up. Each week Drew met with all of the nascent teams, praying for them and encouraging them to take risks and fail forward. The first MSC got up and running in January. It brought together a group of members who lived in Watford, a large town near Chorleywood. The group met in a home to hash out their mission, and soon realized that a gaggle of children were playing football in a park across the road. Parents were standing around the frozen pitch, cheering on their kids. Standing on the sidelines were a few dozen younger siblings, obviously cold and bored. Maybe, someone ventured, we could run a club for the all the kids who come out each week and don’t get the chance to play. That plan was rapidly turned into action. Word spread, and soon the freshly-hatched MSC was being asked to run an after-class club at a nearby school. At every stage the MSC members were upfront about their intentions. “We’re going to talk about Jesus, is that OK?” Virtually all of the parents said “yes.” Another MSC formed up to help people coming out of night clubs at 4 in the morning, when many were a bit worse for wear. Team members would offer the bleary-eyed revelers a cup of coffee or a ride home. One MSC bought a double-decker bus and turned it into a mobile coffee bar. They’d park the bus in a disadvantaged neighborhood and invite folks in to sip a warm latte in convivial surroundings. Video was key to making these early successes viral. Drew would film the MSCs at work, play the videos at church on Sunday, and encourage other parishioners to get involved. In addition to their community work, MSC members were encouraged to gather at least once a week outside of church to worship and plan. In setting up their worship space, most groups arranged their chairs in church-like rows. When they did so, Drew would remind them, “You don’t have to do it this way. You can ‘do church’ however you like.” Drew’s mantra, borrowed from Mike Breen, was “low control, high accountability.” Every team was free to set its own mission, but members knew the whole church was expecting them to do something that would make a noticeable difference in the lives of others. One rule, though, was sacrosanct: once an MSC grew to fifty members it had to subdivide. Initially, the MSC project had no budget. Drew says that’s part of the reason the program didn’t run into a wall of resistance—he wasn’t pulling resources out of other programs. For the most part, the MSCs raised their own money—though eventually they were able to draw on church funds for minor operational expenses like renting a hall. At one point, Drew was supporting 30 MSCs on an annual budget of