Shaping Your Ministry Culture by Nate Ruch.
Nate Ruch is the Executive Director of University Relations at NCU.

Every church has a culture.
Culture: The way we do things around here.

Every culture has a code.

Initiation Requirement

The requirements to be one of you.

A language

Shaped by shared experiences. There are unspoken expectations in language.
The longer your part of a church, the less you recognize language differences.
What you are saying isn’t being heard by new people.
Generations view words differently.
Chose your words wisely.
Words come out of shared experiences, and if someone is new, then they are left out because they don’t know the code.

Do’s/Dont’s

What do I wear? Dress code.

Symbols

Wednesday nights, fine arts, missions trips,
ie. “They care more about missions trips than they do camps.”

Climate

How people feel when they experience the culture? Both insiders and outsiders.
The climate makes them adjust.
When I come into contact with your ministry, what is the feeling?
Do they feel cold or warm.

Keys to changing the code.

A wise leader won’t change the culture without knowing the code.
Leadership Task: Continually move the culture forward.
People find peace in the normal. (Keeping it predictable.)
People know their place, their expectations, their role in the normal.
You may be moving them to a new place, but they don’t know what that looks like. Your role is to move them from the normal to the new place.
People resist change because they don’t know their role in the future.

Continually change the culture.

You won’t be anybody anywhere, if all you do is try to maintain.
I can’t find my confidence in the present, but I have to find my confidence in the future.
What is God wanting to do in our city?
What is God wanting to do in the future in our students?
What’s our ministry look like in 6 months, in a year?
Talk less about today and more about tomorrow.

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