Building a Christ-Like Culture

“Culture eats strategy for breakfast” is a famous quote from legendary management consultant and writer Peter Drucker. To be clear, Drucker didn’t mean that strategy was unimportant – but his memorable line is a powerful reminder of the importance of building a healthy, organisational culture.

Yes strategy is vital in pursuing what we see are our God-given goals and priorities, but we will chase these without success, if first and foremost, we’re not building a Christ-like, God-honouring culture, marked by Kingdom values. That is true for our mission community, it’s true for churches and all faith-based organisations.

And so throughout 2021, I want to regularly remind our mission family of our values and encourage us to consider how do we live these out day to day – as an intercultural worker, a dedicated supporter, a candidate, a National Team member, a Board or committee member, whatever our role is. For we all have a unique part to play in shaping such a Christ-centred culture at Global Interaction. It’s why we wanted to ensure we refreshed and reinforced the importance of our core values as we developed our 2021-2025 Strategic Roadmap.

Internationally respected business leader Lynne Doughtie says, “You can never talk too much about your values, healthy organisations keep coming back to them all the time.”

As a mission community we’re committed to the following shared values.

We participate in God’s mission,
being prayerfully attentive to God’s leading.

We embrace lifelong learning,
practicing humility and curiosity while encouraging formation and growth.

We build healthy teams,
expressing a Biblical commitment to community.

We partner with others,
cultivating mutually beneficial, Kingdom-oriented relationships.

We foster innovation,
taking appropriate risks and encouraging creativity.

We stay the course,
nurturing long-term relationships

During 2021 we intend to develop some helpful, practical online tools that will help us consider how we live out these values day to day and we will also be building the values into a new culture and strategic evaluation template for our teams.

In our 2021-2025 Strategic Roadmap our values are headed ‘Who We Are’.

Can I encourage you, take another look at the list above; take some time this week to read the values list slowly and carefully. Take time to ponder each one, consider practical examples of how these values can be expressed. Remember again, this is ‘who we are’.

And if this is ‘who we are’ then it must start with me! It starts as I, with the help of the Holy Spirit, seek to express these values in my relationships, attitudes, conversations, emails, actions, priorities and prayers.

Let’s together renew our commitment to building a Christ-like, God-honouring culture as part of the Global Interaction family in 2021.

Grace and peace

Scott