Check out Shane Walton’s Movement Builders blog.
I’m loving everything I’m reading there. Because Shane is focusing on all sorts of movements–nonprofits, businesses, political campaigns, churches, his research can help us get at the “principles” common to all movements. As we seek to “build spiritual movements everywhere,” it pays to tap into God’s story wherever it is displayed.
Shane’s article on Movement Defined lays out a benchmark in his holistic definition of movements. A clear definition helps us “honestly” evaluate our efforts. When things are tough, we’re often tempted to lower the bar, to define the guts out of something so that we can say we’ve achieved it. A clear definition helps us prevent that temptation.
Shane defines a movement as:
An ongoing, informal group action that is inspired by a passionately shared idea and directed toward positive change
Shane unpacks the components of this definition in more detail.
Ongoing: A movement is not a once and done sort of event. A well attended press conference, a big release party for a new product, or even a good turnout for a volunteer event doesn’t qualify as a movement. These may be well positioned to launch a new movement, but that momentum must be continued.
Informal: A movement is not fully controlled by anyone. Though you can shape and coordinate a movement, there is no formal hierarchy able to seamlessly pass down orders. This is a trade-off, but the outstanding organic growth and word-of-mouth marketing that a movement offers almost always outweighs the loss of formal, hierarchical control.
Group Action: At its heart, a movement is a group of people simultaneously acting in a similar fashion.
Passionately Shared Idea: The members of this group share a common belief, discovery, or piece of knowledge that has led them to act in this similar fashion. And this idea is not of the boring variety. Members are excited about the idea and the action, and so they actively pass it throughout their group
Positive Change: People become involved in this group action to make a positive change. That positive change could be a broad and sweeping such as the Civil Rights movement, or it could be on a more individual level such as adopting an amazing new product or service to improve your own life. But in all cases the idea is being spread and the action is being taken because of a positive change which excites the members of the group.
All these components are essential for a powerful and long-lasting movement.
(Add Shane’s blog to your RSS reader. Try printing out some of his articles, for example The Big Idea: Planning Part 1, and discuss it as a leadership team.)
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