To me, every leadership environment is a culture. Every culture has artifacts, values, and a much harder thing to title, stereotypes. Artifacts are tangible. These are the outcomes and measures of a culture. For example, in the same way a business meets regularly to understand how to increase profit margin, I meet regularly with my team of leaders at Trinity to discuss our outcomes and measures, which in my case would be the number of students serving in ministry and the number of students worship regularly and committed to a small group. If this were the only part of leadership, I’d simply be able to state, “I’d like to see 100 students at the next Large Group for confirmation.” Unfortunately, a healthy system doesn’t happen simply because I am willing to measure it or even by what we see. Growth is the result of combining the artifacts with a more systematic approach, or values if you will.
Values are not tangible, they are the result of what people in a culture are doing. This is who we say we are. In youth ministry at Trinity communicate this value as SHINE: share Christ, help others, ignite Christlike friendship, nurture faith, and exalt God in all we do. Everything we do in ministry at Trinity is stabilized by our values. No event or activity, or dare I use the word program, comes into being without being rooted in our values. Combining these two thoughts on artifacts and values leads me to these thoughts on stereotypes.
Stereotypes or assumptions are hard to title because how does one title something as slippery as opinions and feelings. Though, I challenge you to argue that this last piece is not a significant contribution to culture or environment. Positive stereotypes in a ministry culture happen when what
we see happening combines with what we say we want to see happen.
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