Leading a movement..

I am in the early and development phases of leading what I hope to see as a large and growing movement.  The world has many issues and problems, and I believe that the solution and hope for improvement from an altruistic sense is the local church.  Last year we had roughly 3% of our church engage in work abroad.  As the United States moves into an election year, which many of us wish was different from the negative attacks and social media blitzes, I am increasingly convinced that broadening our perspective and serving people abroad makes us kinder, wiser, and humbler.  The combination of the small percentage of engagement and high societal need make me driven to have a leadership impact.

While 3% sounds bad, it was still over 150 people, and the work they did was amazing, and people need to hear about it and see it.  As I type this, we have a medical team in rural Cambodia performing surgeries and even teaching things like better dental practices (all things that make the world more awesome).

Malcolm Gladwell, in his book Tipping Point, presented amazing research showing that somewhere between 11-17% is a magic moment where momentum becomes a movement.  While thinking about how to increase engagement from 150 people to 700 people, I’ve had plenty of opportunities to doubt and question our team’s ability and my leadership potential.  Seth Godin stated, “Great Leaders don’t water down their message in order to make a tribe a bit bigger. Instead, they realize that a motivated, connected tribe in the midst of a movement is far more powerful than a larger group could ever be.”

My takeaway is that the people we have doing work are awesome.  So I’m going to tell our stories and invite people to be a part of it.  This last week, I started a digital newsletter combining old-school and new-school mixed into a storytelling format. I created a system and a deadline to put it out on the 1st of every month, and about five days before the first one was to be sent out, my external hard drive crashed, and I lost the ability to make some edits one of my team members suggested.  Ultimately, I sent it out good enough because I’m not trying to write perfect stories or make perfect videos.  I’m trying to make the world more awesome and maximize people’s potential and experience.  I initially felt the need to delay my release and improve the product but remembered the often-shared statement of “Don’t let perfect be the enemy of good.”

What are you trying to lead?  What’s your biggest obstacle?