Generally we don’t push books in this column, but I am going to set custom aside momentarily and urge you to read In Search of Excellence by Thomas J. Peters and Robert H. Waterman, Jr. (Harper & Row). It is relevant, carefully researched, and well written. It’s been on The New York Times bestseller list since January 16, 1983.
In a nutshell, this book explains why some American corporations-IBM, Procter & Gamble, 3M, Hewlett-Packard, Disney, McDonald’s, etc.-stand head and shoulders above their peers. It lists eight principles the authors found common to these corporations.
Harold Myra and I have been discussing this book, chapter by chapter, with the executive staff of Christianity Today, Inc. Although written about megacompanies that dwarf our nonprofit publishing house, we have learned much that applies. In between sessions, I have found it intriguing to speculate on direct applications for parish ministry.
Last week we discussed chapter 6, on staying “Close to the Customer.” Its forty-four pages of analysis and supporting anecdotes revolve around this premise: Excellent companies define themselves by their ability and capacity to serve the customers.
Who is our “customer” in church ministry?
I’m reminded of a story about Richard Halverson, now chaplain of the U.S. Senate. When he was senior pastor of Fourth Presbyterian Church in Bethesda, Maryland, he made it a practice to minister to people at their place of employment. On one occasion he called the principal of a junior high school and asked if he could lunch with him in his office. The principal obliged and had sandwiches brought in. The two of them talked in an intimate, relaxed way about the difficult task of educating thirteen- and fourteen-year-olds.
After lunch, the principal took Dick on a tour. Together they walked from classroom to classroom, greeting both teachers and students. For two hours Dick immersed himself in the life and ministry of a person who daily faced enormous responsibility.
Finally, they went outdoors and walked the circumference of the school property while Dick prayed for the man, his responsibility, and his place of ministry. As a result, their relationship took on a new dimension.
I think this may be as direct an application of what it means to “stay close to the customer” as I can imagine.
Sometimes daily demands keep us from the “customer.” When I was in the pastorate, many days seemed to be nothing but pure administration. The man or woman of God can get so caught up in programs, strategies, and agendas, in presiding, performing, and promoting, that a commitment to individuals becomes hazy. People become a blur of faces, a congregational mass, a list of alphabetized names in a church directory.
Jesus risked the misunderstanding of his closest friends by making an unscheduled “sales call” in Samaria. He risked further misunderstanding by spending the largest part of his three ministry years discipling a small group of “nobodies.” He refused to be distracted from the individual needs and hurts of people by the expectations of the masses.
The people orientation in excellent companies, say Peters and Waterman, extends even to the people within the corporation as well as without. “There is no such thing as a worker at Disney. The employees out front are ‘cast members’ and the personnel department is ‘casting.’ Whenever you are working with the public, you are ‘on stage.’ ” For the seemingly mundane job of taking tickets, four eight-hour days of instruction are required. Cast members learn about Guests-not lower-case ‘c’ customers, but upper-case ‘G’ guests. When one father asked his two teenage Disney employees why it had taken four days to learn ticket taking, they replied, “What happens if someone wants to know where the restrooms are, when the parade starts, what bus to take to get back to the campgrounds? . . . We need to know the answers and where to get the answers quickly. After all, Dad, . . . our job every minute is to help Guests enjoy the party.”
A good company becomes an excellent company when people say, “Each one of us is the company.”
Do church members ever say, “I am the church”? Excellent companies achieve this by immersing goals and strategies into their commitment to people. By immersing, we’re not talking about dipping a frozen custard into a pot of hot chocolate to give an already good thing a coat of something special. Rather, excellent companies are talking about something like copper and tin being melded together to form bronze.
It starts with discipling people. A pastor friend of mine moved to a different church. He quickly found the Sunday school weak and ineffectual. In one stroke, he incorporated both the first and second elements of close-to-the-customer effectiveness.
He began teaching the Sunday lesson to a Wednesday evening class of Sunday teachers. He made the lesson live; he not only taught content but also modeled excellence as he brought the Word of God alive in a fresh, stimulating way. Preparation for Sunday school teaching moved from a late Saturday night obligation to a dynamic Wednesday evening interaction. He also entered the world of his teachers’ personal problems, frustrations, insecurities, and inadequacies. They, in turn, began to enter his world of effective teaching, pastoral ministry, and vision for the church.
We can’t always lunch with a junior high principal or teach Sunday school teachers, but we can remind ourselves that what the excellent companies have learned about customer closeness traces back to the heart of our heavenly Father. As Helmut Thielicke once asked, “For whom, or for what, did Christ really die?” Obviously, not for agendas, plans, and programs, but for people-individual people.
Thielicke’s question may be a good way to evaluate this week’s schedule. It’s been a great help to me.
Paul D. Robbins is executive vice-president of Christianity Today, Inc.
Copyright © 1984 by the author or Christianity Today/Leadership Journal. Click here for reprint information on Leadership Journal.
