Culture eats strategy for breakfast!

When I first took over as senior pastor of Kerith Community Church, one of the things I felt God say to me was to not worry about having an amazing strategic plan, or casting an audacious vision for what we were going to achieve in the next five or ten years as a church. 

Instead, I felt God say that we should focus on our culture as a church, because if we got the culture right, then everything else would follow. 

Creating a Jesus-like culture

At the time, I didn’t have a clear idea of what our culture should be and so I started studying the life of Jesus and thinking about the culture he sought to create. 

What I began to see was how radically different his culture was to that of the other religious leaders of his day. 

The Gospels in the bible are full of interactions between Jesus and other religious groups like the Pharisees (a Jewish group of people who believed in resurrection and followed the strict laws of the time). In many of the encounters we see the religious leaders disagreeing with, and challenging the things Jesus was saying and doing.

From the way he treated a woman as she came to draw water at a well (John 4:1-42), to Jesus inviting himself into the home of a tax collector (Luke 19:1-10); from an altercation in the temple courts (Mark 11:15-18), to a woman anointing Jesus’ feet with oil (Luke 7:36-50). 

Each one shows us something of the culture of Jesus - that he allowed people to ‘belong’, to be close to him and to experience his love and care, before they made a decision to ‘believe’ and put their trust and faith in him. I quickly realised that this is the culture we need to have as a church, if we are to be his body on earth.

One peach and one coconut

To express what I thought our culture should be, I decided to try and write it down. 

I find when you talk about something, it is possible to be vague and woolly, but when you write it down, it forces clarity. Writing also allows others to shape and to challenge what you are sharing. 

As I began to write down my hope for the culture of Kerith, I was reminded of a book I read called The Starfish and the Spider. This book used the image of a starfish and of a spider to show contrast between different organisational structures. 

In a similar way, I developed a picture of a peach and a coconut, using them to show two contrasting cultures (hear more about these contrasts in this video).

Soon after, these pictured soon became a book of contrasts, called The Peach and the Coconut. 

The first section of the book explores the difference between the peach and the coconut culture, using stories of Jesus from the Gospels much like I talked about earlier. The second section is an exploration of the implications of that culture in every area of church life in today’s society. 

Kerith’s culture - ten years on

Ten years after the book was first published, I am incredibly grateful to God for that initial prompting. I don’t believe we would be where we are today, especially having come through the pandemic, without having the culture we have developed over this past decade. 

But of course, our culture is still far from perfect. 

I have come to realise that both changing and then maintaining a new culture is hard. As a church, we have also realised that some of the culture we thought we were looking to develop, looks different now. 

For example, emotional health has become a much bigger focus for us, as has creation care and diversity and inclusion. We’ve seen a huge shift in our church as women can now serve as elders and church membership looks very different to how we thought it was going to be. However, the core of the culture we are going for remains the same.

Playing your part in building a Jesus-like culture

I want to encourage all of us to keep our focus on building the culture that Jesus demonstrated to us. 

For those who are new to Kerith, then I’d urge you to read The Peach and the Coconut, and go on one of our Peach and Coconut courses. 

For those who have been around long enough to have engaged with The Peach and the Coconut already, let’s keep working together to be the people Jesus longs for us to be. There is still so much more God has in store for us. 

In fruitfulness, in salvation, in healing, in community, in holiness, in being a force for change in society and so many other areas. The way we embody each of those things is a focus on Christ and the way he wants us to show up in the world. 

And finally, to anyone leading a family, a small group, a ministry, a church, a business, a classroom, a hospital ward, a band or a football team, I want to encourage you to… 

• Think hard about what you want the culture to be in those places.

• Write it down. Try to express it in pictures. 

• Live out that culture in your own life and be an example.

• Celebrate people who model the culture, and challenge the behaviour which violates it.

• Don’t give up. Cultures take a long time to change and then a lot of work to maintain.

Because, in the words of management consultant Peter Drucker… “culture eats strategy for breakfast!”.

Photo by Joseph Gonzalez on Unsplash