“Leaders are either culture setters or culture breakers.” – Wayne Cordeiro

The question was posed to me the other day… “If you find a plot of land, lay a bed of quality soil, water it and fertilise it, what do you get?”
Answer? Nothing! You might get some weeds, and some pretty healthy weeds at that, but nothing really of any substance. The reason is that if you’re not purposeful about what you want to grow, you’re not going to get it. If you want apples, plant apples. If you want tomatoes, plant tomatoes. It doesn’t matter how good the soil is, or how good the fertiliser is if you don’t plant anything worth growing.

The same is true of culture. We can talk talk talk, but if we aren’t intentional about the culture we want to establish in our church community, then we’ll get a lot of weeds and not much else. We might have a culture, but it is most probably not the one we want.

The best way to plant a culture is to start from the top down. It starts with our leaders, and spreads to every person that steps foot in the door. When that culture is modelled from the top down, pretty soon, that culture becomes the norm. If someone in the community breaks that culture, it’s easy enough for anyone in the community to pull up along side them and say “Hey man, you know that thing you were doing last Saturday? That’s actually not what we’re about here…” That process actually empowers the church because there is ownership in the standards and expectations of our community. If a leader breaks the culture, the ramifications can be pretty messy. It undermines everything we set out to achieve.

Now when I talk about culture, I’m not talking V-Necks, iPads and Beanies. I’m talking about values, moral frameworks, disciplines and practices that hold us to a higher standard than the world would. A standard God calls us to. And it’s not about legalism, it’s about holiness. Our Young Adult community pulls no punches in stating what those standards should be measured against. Romans 12:2 says “Do not conform to the patterns of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind…” The bible tells us to only aspire only to those things that build others up. “All things are permissible, but not all things are beneficial.” ( 1 Corinthians 6:12 )

So we should constantly be measuring ourselves in every area of life against this, and lead by example – the result if we don’t is a very messy garden…