A Big Hairy Audacious Goal

In 1994 James Collins and Jerry Porras published their book entitled Built to Last: Successful Habits of Visionary Companies.  In it they introduced the idea of the Big Hairy Audacious Goal or BHAG for short. This was a statement designed to focus a company on a single, medium to long term, organization-wide goal which was so big and audacious those on the outside would question if it were possible and those on the inside would think it was impossible.  The goal of throwing this gauntlet down was to unify employees to work together to accomplish a seemingly insurmountable goal.  It was to be both strategic and emotionally compelling.  Almost immediately it became the duty of anyone leading an organization to identify and rally their people around the organizational BHAG.  Soon in boardrooms, conferences, and shareholder meetings the question became what is your BHAG. Often they would employ more common language by simply asking, “What do you have big going on?”

 

It probably took less than one business cycle for this new way of thinking about unifying, motivating and emotionally engaging employees in the business world to make its way into the church.  I remember being at a conference where a pastor shared each month he would meet with a mentor from the business world to help him in developing the capacity to lead his very large church. Each month when they met, the first question his mentor would ask was, “What do you have big going on?”  As you could imagine this made him feel both pressure and anxiety as he endeavored to come up with a vision and goal which was worth attaching the title of BHAG.

He is not alone.  Right now there is a Pastor somewhere, sitting in his office, begging the Lord to give to him some vision which will unify, motivate and emotionally compel his congregation to achieve strategic measurable goals.  Maybe he is thinking about growing the church by 10%, baptizing 50 new people in the coming year, launching 2 new multi-sites by 2015, or increasing traffic to the church website by 60%.  Coming up with a good BHAG is harder than you think..  This pastor has to make it audacious enough to be emotionally compelling and motivational, but achievable enough that it might actually happen.  It is also hard because in the near future he probably has a meeting with an elder chairman who wants to do something big, a board who is getting impatient for results, his staff who is wondering where he is going to take them, or a church-wide leadership team who is going to ask him the question, “What do you have big going on?”

I wonder what would happen if he answered the same way the pastor who shared about meeting with his mentor answered, “I got nothin’ big going on.”  Would he feel he failed to hear from God?  Would he wonder if his ability to lead would be questioned?  Would he fear being fired?

Maybe he would be bold enough to simply point out the obvious truth, that after two decades of the trying to implement the best business practices in the church it simply has not worked.  In his book The Great Evangelical Recession, John Dickerson builds the case that the American Church is on the precipice of a spiritual recession.  Attendance is shrinking, donations are drying up and young Christians are fleeing the church. Simply put, more and more people do not care about the church's answer to the question, “What do you got big going on?” Soon, if Dickerson's research is correct, there will not be enough people sitting in the pews to enable the Pastor’s latest BHAG to make much of a difference.

Despite what the researchers tell us about the near future of the church, I actually have great hope. Not in the business models we have built, but the family of God that is bound together in Christ Jesus.  I have great expectations for His body which shares one faith, one hope, one love, one Spirit, and one Father. After all, Jesus himself said, "the gates of hell shall not prevail against it." (Matthew 16:18)

Still, I cannot help but wonder what it would be if we put away this silliness of trying to motivate people with a Big Hairy Audacious Goal and instead helped them grow in the capacity to love, listen, follow and when necessary, wait.  As the man I had coffee with this morning put it, “You want a BHAG? Learn to wait on God and trust him.  That’s a BHAG for you.”  I think he is right, and not just because he said it with passion.  He is right because his is point of view agrees with scripture.  Isaiah 64:4 says, “For from days of old they have not heard or perceived by ear, Nor has the eye seen a God besides You, Who acts on behalf of the one who waits for Him.”  You want something big going on?  You want to be blown away by the audacious?  Wait on the God who acts on behalf of those who are willing to trust Him, and then you will see that which seems impossible and unimaginable.

The ability to wait is not born out of our fortitude.  We do not try hard to stay in this place until we are called out of it.  It is born in developing the capacity to listen for and hear God's voice.  We can wait, because having learned to discern His Voice, and when He is silent this give us the confidence He has not yet told us to move. Jeremiah 6:16 bids us, “Stand at the crossroads and look; ask for the ancient paths, ask where the good way is, and walk in it, and you will find rest for your souls.”   Asking, listening, and discerning is the way we discover tthe ancient path.  Once it is revealed we are to walk in it.  Much turmoil is experienced when, in our impatience, we do not wait for God to reveal the good path.  The ability to wait is also born out of developing an intimate knowledge of the One whom we are waiting to hear from.   Growth in our experiential knowledge He is present, wise, trustworthy, loving, and kind gives us confidence to wait.  If He has not beckoned us to move it is because He knows what He is about.  He knows what is best. 

We think that waiting is unproductive.  It is anything but.  It is the place where we learn to hear God’s Voice.  It is also the wilderness where we are prepared for what is to come.  It is here character is formed and refined to reflect the nature of Jesus.  Nowhere is this more evident than in our capacity to love.  Galatians 5:6b says, “For the only thing that counts is our faith expressing itself in love.” In waiting we are forced to lay everything else aside; our ambitions, our desires, our selfishness and open to what God might be doing.   We learn to love God by trusting Him in the uncertainty and obeying His commands even when the fruit is not immediately apparent.  We also have opportunity to engage His command to love our neighbor as our self.  The space created in waiting forms the room necessary to be present with your neighbor.   Rather than churning to make something happen, you can open to the opportunity to listen, love, and be with your neighbor.  

Maybe if we adopted learning to loved like this as our Big Hairy Audacious Goal the church would not be shrinking, young people would not be leaving it in droves, and we would not have to worry about the finances.

I think of Jesus.  His ministry was pretty simple.  It began in His incarnation.  He is Emmanuel, God with us.  He is present.  He did not worry about what His goal was going to be, He only did what he saw the Father doing.  He developed the capacity to listen, discern and follow wherever His Father would lead, and He waited 30 years to begin his ministry.  Above all He loved. He loved the Pharisee who would sneak to see Him under the cover of night.  He loved the rich young ruler who would decide the cost of following was too great.  He loved the disciple who would betray Him, the one that would deny Him and those who would desert Him.  He loved the sick, the marginalized, the unclean, the outcast and the half-breed.  He loved the demon possessed and those possessed by their own lust, pride and greed.  He loved the Jew and the Gentile.  His love was kind and compassionate. It was full of grace and truth.  It was given freely and completely.  It was selfless and sacrificial.  I do not have time to describe all the facets of His love, but I sum it up by saying, it was a love which is so much more than we could ever possibly envision or imagine.

What if we made that kind of love our aim?  What if we were willing to allow God to develop it in us in our times of waiting so we would be ready for whatever He might call us to, and what if in the waiting we sharpened our ability to listen for and discern His voice so we could say like Jesus’, “We only do what we see the Father doing.”  I have a sneaky suspicion what would be unleashed would be far greater than anything which could be accomplished through the latest Big Hairy Audacious Goal.  The possibility of it gives me great hope for the future of the church.

Wait for the Lord; Be strong and let your heart take courage; Yes, wait for the Lord. Psalm 27:14

Jeremiah

“Those who wait for the Lord

Will gain new strength;
They will mount up with wings like eagles,
They will run and not get tired,
They will walk and not become weary.” – Isaiah 40:31

“I am the Lord; Those who hopefully wait for Me will not be put to shame.” – Isaiah 49:23

“Truly, truly, I say to you, the Son can do nothing of Himself, unless it is something He sees the Father doing; for whatever the Father does, these things the Son also does in like manner.” - John 5:19

“If I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, but do not have love, I have become a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal.  If I have the gift of prophecy, and know all mysteries and all knowledge; and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. And if I give all my possessions to feed the poor, and if I surrender my body to be burned, but do not have love, it profits me nothing.” 1 Corinthians 13:1-3

“By this all men will know that you are My disciples, if you have love for one another.” – John13:35

“For My thoughts are not your thoughts, Nor are your ways My ways,” declares the Lord.” Isaiah 55:8

"Now to Him who is able to do far more abundantly beyond all that we ask or think, according to the power that works within us, to Him be the glory in the church and in Christ Jesus to all generations forever and ever. Amen." - Ephesians 3:20 & 21