I have the honor of working with some of the smartest people in the world.  One of those people recently did something really stupid. Well, I mean, he wrote a book about being stupid.  Well, not him being stupid exactly, but some stupid things that we as churches do that keep us from growing.  So I sat down with my very smart friend Geoff Surratt and talked stupid.

Shawn:  Geoff,  I get the opportunity to rub shoulders with you on an almost daily basis and know that you live this book out (not the stupid part).  What is the one principle from the book that you would say you have seen play out the most results for you in your ministry position at Seacoast?

Shawn, it has been a privilege to work side-by-side with you over the past several years. I love your heart for constant growth in ministry creativity and effectiveness.

In the second chapter of the book, I talk about finding the right role for the pastor’s family. When I came to Seacoast 13 years ago, I was really struggling with this mistake. After a couple of years out of vocational ministry, I was very excited to get the opportunity to work with the Seacoast team in what was quickly becoming an explosive growth environment. The mistake I made was playing the “God-card” with my wife and coercing her into a move she wasn’t ready to make. In the book I outline the process we have gone through over the past decade to understand the unique challenges of ministry on marriage and how we have step-by-step built a firm foundation for an amazing relationship. As of this coming August, I will have been married to my best friend for 27 years, and I can’t wait to see what the next 27 will bring.

Over the past few months, we have seen the decimation ministry can have on marriage as several high profile pastors’ homes have disintegrated. For young pastors just beginning ministry and veteran pastors with years under their belts, there is nowhere they are more vulnerable to the enemy than at home. There is no chance that when we get to heaven God will say, “Too bad about your family, but great job building a huge church. Fist bump!”

The best advice I can give to any pastor or church leader is to find out how your spouse is feeling about ministry. Sometime soon, you need to get a babysitter for the kids and take your spouse to her favorite quiet restaurant (one where they never ask, “Do you want fries with that?”). After dinner ask her this question, “What impact is the church and ministry having on our family? How do you feel about what I am doing?” Give her time to talk without interrupting or explaining or correcting. And then act on what you hear. Are there changes you need to make? Do you need to find ways to prioritize your family more effectively?

This is something you do very well, Shawn. You and Connie strike a great balance between ministry and family and you do a fantastic job of excelling as a pastor, husband and dad. Thank you for leading in this area.

If you have not bought a copy for all of your staff – do it today by clicking here!

I am back from vacation and wanted to give you a linked list to my friends who gave me the honor of reviewing my new book Wasabi Gospel on their blogs…check them out!  If you reviewed and I missed you, please let me know in the comments and I will link to you.  If you would like to get a free copy by reviewing the book, shoot and e-mail to acmiller@abingdonpress.com

**UPDATED**

Greg Davis
http://www.gregdavispsu.com/tech-blog/2009/7/8/wasabi-gospel.html

Scott Anderson
http://communicationsbreakdown.com/?p=14

Chris Roberts
http://chrisroberts.wordpress.com/2009/07/07/wasabi-gospel/

Rick Phillips
http://imused.net/2009/07/07/wasabi-gospel/

Wasabi Gospel — Worshiply

Wasabi Gospel:

Wasabi Gospel

Wasabi Gospel Review

Wasabi Gospel by Shawn Wood

My first look at the Wasabi Gospel

Book Review: Wasabi Gospel

Wasabi Gospel: The Startling Message of Jesus

Wasabi Gospel & The Lobster Dude

Wasabi Gospel Book Bomb

On vacation so this will be short.

Buy  a copy of Wasabi Gospel today (or 10) at Amazon.com

The month of July is dedicated to posts about innovation and ideation.  Every post will be about a word that can either help or hinder the innovative process. We will look at both the pros and the cons of that word. Today’s word is…

Synergy.

The question is, do you choose lots of idea and stories or is it best to rally around one common theme.

Every organization has to find it’s synergy points.  Many times as an organization of 13 campuses (and for you it may be 13 departments) we have to decide between localization (which is often the best practice) or synergy.

Here are some positives that I have found in choosing synergy.

1. Central Support Marketing. When we are all together around one idea or theme Central support can build and execute marketing pieces.  It’s not probable that we could make 13 ‘great’ marketing pieces (for each individual campus), but a shared theme brings synergy to one piece that will benefit all campuses.

2. Message support.  If we share a common theme, it allows us to mention the details of that theme in the message. On the other hand, with localization we are forced to be ambiguous, which is not as effective from a marketing standpoint.

3. Series support.  We can tie the overall message series to a shared theme.

4. Creative support.  Campuses or departments do not vary on their worth nor leadership abilities, but there is definitely a spectrum of creative abilities. Because of this spectrum, there is a a great deal of positives when we can pool our ideas together and share the creative weight.  Its crowd surfing for the creative minds.

With all of this talk about being “good enough,” one may get the impression that I am for mediocrity.  Nothing could be further from the truth.

In fact, I believe the “good enough” principle allows us to be good enough at most things so that we can be absolutely great at just a few things.

Over the course of writing posts on this subject I have really been trying to examine where I land right now in my life, and I’ve been asking myself a series of questions that may be a helpful tool for you.

1.  What three areas of my life can I really be great at, and in doing so change the world?

2.  What three areas of my life am I currently feeding resources (brain ram, energy, time, creativity, money) into, when in truth they don’t add up to squat?

3.  What three dreams do I currently have that will need those same resources?

4.  What can I do to make margin in my soul for those dreams?

So I have been discussing “Good Enough” for a few posts here in June on ShawnWoodWrites, and then Seth Godin wrote this post, to which a few people pointed me.

As I read that post and thought about what Seth was saying (and what all of you, who were quick to point it out, think he was saying), I realized I had two choices:

Either Seth would define “mediocrity” not as a lack of excellence, but rather a lack of effectiveness,
OR
Seth Godin was contradicting himself.

I think Seth is too smart to contradict himself, so I am going to side with choice #1.

Read this post by Seth on how a “good enough” hand-written sign was actually the most effective thing that could be done.

The assumption is too quickly made that “good enough” is mediocre, and that excellence is effective.  If  that were true, we would not use all those extra words–we would just say, “Be excellent.”  But the truth is, sometimes a “good enough” hand-written sign is mediocre and sometimes it is effective.

Are there examples in your ministry where “good enough” has been, well…good enough?

I cleaned my garage this week.
By cleaning I mean that twice a year I take everything out.  Power-wash and repaint the floor with an anti-skid gray glossy paint.
I then spray off everything in the garage and place it back in its assigned place.
I like a clean garage.
My “good enough” line on my garage is probably higher than yours.

That is the beauty of the “good enough” line.
My good enough line is mine, and yours is yours.

Each organization has to set a good enough line and then stick to it.
Just like mission drift, there can be “good enough line drift.”
We can drift too high in a pursuit of excellence, which is unhealthy, or we can get lazy and allow ourselves to drift below into mediocrity.  Either is destructive, and neither is effective.

My intention with these posts has been to make you ask questions and determine your own “good enough” line, not dictate it for you.
For some, it will be the conviction of a pursuit of the idol of excellence; for others, the sin of slothful mediocrity.

What have you done to safeguard your own standards?

The “Good Enough” principle produces more leaders.  The lower the bar is able to be set (and remember, the bar needs to be set at “effective”), the more people can contribute.

The higher your quality line gets, the fewer leaders/volunteers that are able to  be involved.
A pursuit of excellence breeds a leadership culture that prohibits people from serving.

Raise the bar cautiously. It’s very hard to lower your “good enough” line.

Once you’ve eaten at Ruth’s Chris Steak House, Applebee’s just is not the same.

I interrupt my rants about “good enough” today to tell you about free books.

I have the honor to be a presenter at Ben Arments STORY conference.  Ben is someone that I have respected as a church planter, leader and creative guru for many years.  Let’s just say I am stoked.

Ben has a little write-up on his blog explaining the details of this, but I wanted to let you know that if you register for STORY soon you will get a copy of “200 Pomegranates and an Audience of One“.

The “Best Rate” for STORY ends June 30.

Register here

Your auditorium is completely slammed.
You have put as many chairs possible in the place.
You are running two services on Saturday and five services on Sunday and you really can’t add any more.
You have a slightly outdated projector system. Everyone else is running 10k projectors in HD and you are still in SD, running 6k projectors.
10k projectors in HD is where the current “excellence” line lands (although we all know excellence is a moving target…as soon as you buy the 10k’s they will have fallen below that line!).

This is a great example of the “Excellence Myth” and the “Good Enough” principle in play.

The “Excellence Myth” says that if you will be more excellent, you will be more effective and more honoring to God.  It’s a myth.  People will use “excellent” scripture to prove this, but the truth is those scriptures were not talking about updated software, moving lights or lumens – they were talking about your life.
The “Good Enough” principle says that you cannot get another butt in a seat.  Butts in seats = changed lives, and the reason we do what we do is changed lives. Therefore, 6k projectors in SD really are good enough, because they are effective.

If our goal is excellent tech, the “Good Enough” principle does not work, and you better budget up cause it’s going to be a bumpy and expensive ride.

If our goal is to always do our “best,” then you will get fixated and obsessed with every detail and in return, you will not get a lot done.

But if our goal is truly to be effective, we will replace a lot less equipment, we will stop a lot sooner on projects (not to be lazy, but to be more productive) and we will find the “good enough” line for our church/organization…and we’ll hit it every time.