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Culture Shift: Transforming Your Church from the Inside Out
Culture Shift, written for church leaders, ministers, pastors, ministry teams, and lay leaders, leads you through the process of identifying your church's distinctive culture, gives you practical tools to change it from the inside-out, and provides steps to keep your new culture aligned with your church's mission. Real transformation is not about working harder at what you're already doing or even copying another church's approach but about changing church culture at a foundational level.
- GenresLeadershipChurch
256 pages, Hardcover
First published April 13, 2005
3 people are currently reading
36 people want to read
About the author
Robert Lewis
33 books5 followersRobert Lewis is the best-selling author of Raising a Modern-Day Knight and Rocking the Roles: Building a Win-Win Marriage. He is also executive director of the Global Reach research/resource organization, founder of the Men's Fraternity ministry, and pastor-at-large for Fellowship Bible Church in Little Rock, Arkansas. In 2001, he was named Pastor of the Year by the National Coalition of Men's Ministry. He and his wife, Sherard, have four children. Jeremy Howard holds a Ph.D. in Christian Apologetics and Worldview Studies from Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. Now a writer and editor, he lives with his wife and children in Nashville, Tennessee.
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
May 3, 2019
Robert Lewis, author of The Church of Irresistible Influence, follows up on his popular book by teaming up with Wayne Cordeiro and considering what it takes to transform the culture of your church. Culture Shift presumes we all want churches who are irresistible in their impact on lives through the gospel, but for many of us that seems too far away to experience.
Lewis and Cordeiro begin with a truth we all ought to believe: “Culture is the most important social reality in your church.” An unhealthy culture will attract unhealthy people and will permeate an unhealthy influence of those around it. Meanwhile, if you build a healthy culture, everything will change. Lewis and Cordeiro explain, “Your culture is the lens through which you view your life. If you change the lens, you change your outlook. Change the culture, and everything else changes, including the future.”
Lewis and Cordeiro encourage the reader to devote their best thinking and persistent effort to culture formation: “Wise thinking leads to doing the right spiritual things, while resolute determination leads to staying behind those things until the effort finally births a new culture. The new culture then begins to give life to everything it touches.”
You have to identify the culture you want and identify the culture you have in order to change it. This requires brutal honesty from leadership. It does no one any good if leaders can’t be honest about the culture they have. Lewis and Cordeiro are at their best in helping leaders think about how to evaluate the church’s existing culture.
They ask: What would an outsider say you value most? What would outsiders say is the spirit that is prevalent in your church?
Lewis and Cordeiro suggest that four ingredients bring your existing culture into focus: 1) leadership and values; 2) vision statement; 3) symbols, ceremonies, and celebrations, and 4) you as a leader.
They provide a window into evaluating these categories with the following questions:
• What symbols do you see when you look around your church facility?
• What ceremonies and rituals does your church honor?
• Who are the heroes in your church: what members are most celebrated?
• How can you make your leadership fresh?
• How can you get congregational buy in?
“Jesus says ‘follow me’ some twenty times in the Gospels.” He also says “come and see.” Casting vision for culture is significant, but it can’t end there. There has to be something to see.
That isn’t to diminish how important casting the vision is. Lewis and Cordeiro suggest that healthy leadership is constantly circling back to the vision.
Lewis and Cordeiro move into their experience with their churches in walking this out. Usually this is where a book like this soars, but unfortunately I found the latter half of the book much less helpful than the architecture for evaluating culture up front. For one, this material seemed much more dated, second, these chapters seemed a little too self-congratulatory and, didn’t give me enough to sink my teeth into when it came to leadership principles for implementation.
Lewis and Cordeiro begin with a truth we all ought to believe: “Culture is the most important social reality in your church.” An unhealthy culture will attract unhealthy people and will permeate an unhealthy influence of those around it. Meanwhile, if you build a healthy culture, everything will change. Lewis and Cordeiro explain, “Your culture is the lens through which you view your life. If you change the lens, you change your outlook. Change the culture, and everything else changes, including the future.”
Lewis and Cordeiro encourage the reader to devote their best thinking and persistent effort to culture formation: “Wise thinking leads to doing the right spiritual things, while resolute determination leads to staying behind those things until the effort finally births a new culture. The new culture then begins to give life to everything it touches.”
You have to identify the culture you want and identify the culture you have in order to change it. This requires brutal honesty from leadership. It does no one any good if leaders can’t be honest about the culture they have. Lewis and Cordeiro are at their best in helping leaders think about how to evaluate the church’s existing culture.
They ask: What would an outsider say you value most? What would outsiders say is the spirit that is prevalent in your church?
Lewis and Cordeiro suggest that four ingredients bring your existing culture into focus: 1) leadership and values; 2) vision statement; 3) symbols, ceremonies, and celebrations, and 4) you as a leader.
They provide a window into evaluating these categories with the following questions:
• What symbols do you see when you look around your church facility?
• What ceremonies and rituals does your church honor?
• Who are the heroes in your church: what members are most celebrated?
• How can you make your leadership fresh?
• How can you get congregational buy in?
“Jesus says ‘follow me’ some twenty times in the Gospels.” He also says “come and see.” Casting vision for culture is significant, but it can’t end there. There has to be something to see.
That isn’t to diminish how important casting the vision is. Lewis and Cordeiro suggest that healthy leadership is constantly circling back to the vision.
Lewis and Cordeiro move into their experience with their churches in walking this out. Usually this is where a book like this soars, but unfortunately I found the latter half of the book much less helpful than the architecture for evaluating culture up front. For one, this material seemed much more dated, second, these chapters seemed a little too self-congratulatory and, didn’t give me enough to sink my teeth into when it came to leadership principles for implementation.
July 28, 2011
I read this book at the same time I read Albert Mohler's book of the same title as I research how to transform and recreate culture from different perspectives this summer/fall. Mohler looks out at the culture Americans live in from an intelligent Christian perspective. Here, although Lewis, Cordeiro and Bird pay lip service to transforming the community, their primary concern is with transforming the culture of the church from the inside out. That's how you eventually impact the community!
I appreciated the repeated emphasis that you don't just add another quick fix, patchwork approach, plug-n-play program, etc. to what you're already doing, but that you look at the people, giftings, talents, passions, and values God has given you and move from there: "The church will become what you are right now"--leaders are the carriers of the spiritual culture (92). I also appreciated some of the coaching lines and tips: "You're doing an A-plus job, but may I share an idea that would raise it even higher? (117)
Some statements I took issue with included the following:
Lewis and Cordeiro seemed at times a little too eager to point out they were doing men's ministries like Promise Keepers before there was Promise-Keepers (137), unleashing the church before others were unleashing the church (130) or doing church completely from a small group approach before others had transitioned to this paradigm (p. 170). In 2,000 years of church history these things have never been done before?
I also found myself wondering if there was a trace of a paternalistic attitude when it comes to doing cross-cultural missions (page 185) and if a good cross-cultural missiology course would be in order (this is something I have to be careful about myself). In helping to launch a seminary in a largely unreached country, their solution was to require students and professors to learn English so they could be exposed to new possibilities, ways of thinking, etc. from the West (126). Although there's some good stuff, an incredible amount of non-relevant, non-contextualized, non-internalized Christian material (books, music, preaching and teaching) has been mindlessly introduced to countries around the world (China would be one place where I have heard complaints from national Christian leaders) and it's everywhere in Taiwan where I work now too. Rather, what this seminary probably needs to do is go back to the bible and to their cultural roots to contextualize approaches to ministry that God's Holy Spirit wants to bless in their unique cultural context (from the inside out... this was the overriding emphasis of the book but maybe dropped for a moment here).
Finally, although I do not disagree I did wonder about the following: "Anyone can discern within seconds of contact that [a visit to a new church] "This is a healthy place" or "Something's not right here." It may take you weeks to figure out why, but the signs are everywhere." (page 188). Having been in a couple of hundred churches for missions conferences in recent years, I'm not sure this is always the case, but nevertheless still good food for thought.
I appreciated the repeated emphasis that you don't just add another quick fix, patchwork approach, plug-n-play program, etc. to what you're already doing, but that you look at the people, giftings, talents, passions, and values God has given you and move from there: "The church will become what you are right now"--leaders are the carriers of the spiritual culture (92). I also appreciated some of the coaching lines and tips: "You're doing an A-plus job, but may I share an idea that would raise it even higher? (117)
Some statements I took issue with included the following:
Lewis and Cordeiro seemed at times a little too eager to point out they were doing men's ministries like Promise Keepers before there was Promise-Keepers (137), unleashing the church before others were unleashing the church (130) or doing church completely from a small group approach before others had transitioned to this paradigm (p. 170). In 2,000 years of church history these things have never been done before?
I also found myself wondering if there was a trace of a paternalistic attitude when it comes to doing cross-cultural missions (page 185) and if a good cross-cultural missiology course would be in order (this is something I have to be careful about myself). In helping to launch a seminary in a largely unreached country, their solution was to require students and professors to learn English so they could be exposed to new possibilities, ways of thinking, etc. from the West (126). Although there's some good stuff, an incredible amount of non-relevant, non-contextualized, non-internalized Christian material (books, music, preaching and teaching) has been mindlessly introduced to countries around the world (China would be one place where I have heard complaints from national Christian leaders) and it's everywhere in Taiwan where I work now too. Rather, what this seminary probably needs to do is go back to the bible and to their cultural roots to contextualize approaches to ministry that God's Holy Spirit wants to bless in their unique cultural context (from the inside out... this was the overriding emphasis of the book but maybe dropped for a moment here).
Finally, although I do not disagree I did wonder about the following: "Anyone can discern within seconds of contact that [a visit to a new church] "This is a healthy place" or "Something's not right here." It may take you weeks to figure out why, but the signs are everywhere." (page 188). Having been in a couple of hundred churches for missions conferences in recent years, I'm not sure this is always the case, but nevertheless still good food for thought.
August 14, 2015
"Even if you have not yet identified your church's culture, others have. Culture announces its identity through everything you do. The values of your church - stated or unstated, thought out or unintentional - shape the feel, behaviour, and attitude of a congregation more than anything else...If you don't take time to identify [your church's] dominant values, you won't be able to evaluate whether they're the values you really intend to express. Nor will you be able to check your alignment."
"Culture Shift" acts as a guidebook for pastors and ministry leaders who are faced with the challenge of identifying, shifting and living into the culture that God desires for their congregation. I read this book as a university student and picked it up again as I take on a role in leadership at my church. While there were pearls of wisdom in the book, I found that the authors still largely adhere to the typical American evangelical model of church which is based around programs. While both authors would undoubtedly argue that this isn't so, just because they create their OWN programs as opposed to plugging and playing what others have created, it is still largely programmatic based. I really enjoyed the first portion of the book that dealt with theory and concepts, but as soon as they ventured into showing how their churches function I tuned out. It felt like it was simply an opportunity to give themselves a big pat on the back and one of the authors continually promoted the many other books that he had written. Perhaps it's just that I'm on the outside of the evangelical circle, but I found myself rolling my eyes...and doing so often.
"Culture Shift" acts as a guidebook for pastors and ministry leaders who are faced with the challenge of identifying, shifting and living into the culture that God desires for their congregation. I read this book as a university student and picked it up again as I take on a role in leadership at my church. While there were pearls of wisdom in the book, I found that the authors still largely adhere to the typical American evangelical model of church which is based around programs. While both authors would undoubtedly argue that this isn't so, just because they create their OWN programs as opposed to plugging and playing what others have created, it is still largely programmatic based. I really enjoyed the first portion of the book that dealt with theory and concepts, but as soon as they ventured into showing how their churches function I tuned out. It felt like it was simply an opportunity to give themselves a big pat on the back and one of the authors continually promoted the many other books that he had written. Perhaps it's just that I'm on the outside of the evangelical circle, but I found myself rolling my eyes...and doing so often.
December 13, 2013
Excellent tools for changing church culture.
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews