Cookies on the bottom shelf...

A pastor friend of mine used to say, we should keep the cookies on the bottom shelf so that everyone can have some. His concern was that as a church we could find ourselves making the gospel and teaching of the scripture too technical and therefore making it hard to understand for some and therefore not engaging them.

With the "cookies on the bottom shelf" he felt we were able to help those whose understanding was "childlike" to connect with the purpose and plan of God as revealed in the scripture. The people who were "more mature" could connect by reaching down to the bottom shelf. What he didn't say that I found to be insightful about this approach. Everyone was on the same level working towards people understanding the plans God has revealed. That made everyone closer to each other!

This weeks reading has a similar feel to it to me. We need to help people engage with Gilead. If our mission is not understandable when it is communicated we've lost the game.

"If it's a mist in the pulpit, it's a fog in the pew."

~Howard Hendricks

Here are some reminders from the reading, share your thoughts about them...

~ If your vision statement is going to stick in people's minds, it must be memorable.

~People don't remember or embrace paragraphs. They remember and embrace sentences.

~If you vision is unclear to you, it will never be clear to the people in your organization

~For your vision to stick, you may need to clarify or simplify it.

~It's better to have a vision statement that is incomplete and memorable than to have one that is complete and forgettable.

~If the vision is too complicated for people to embrace, nothing changes.

~People tend to keep doing what they've always done the way they've done it. Bottom line: to make vision stick, it needs to be easy to communicate.

State the Vision Simply...

What are you thoughts?

Please, comment away!