I used to work in a plant that employed around 3,200 people. Of those, 430 or so reported to me. I also had 18 direct reports. That included six department managers, 6 quality managers and 6 engineers. Now believe it or not, when I first joined this company (I had about 200 people at first) I made sure to visit every single employee that worked for me to personally introduce myself and tell them that I had an open door policy and that any problem they had, they could come and talk to me about it.
Yeah.. I know. But that little policy worked beautifully for me when I managed a machine shop with 14 employees. Obviously I had to change my way of doing things to fit the new environment I found myself in or I was going to find myself completely ineffective in accomplishing the commission I was hired to fulfill. Common sense would tell me that... but one thing I have always wondered about 'common sense' ; How did those two words ever get together to form a phrase? That would be like Lemmy Kilmister of MotorHead and Tammy Wynette getting together to form a Country Speed Metal Band. Come to think of it, that would probably be the only kind of Country Music I could enjoy. Common sense ain't very common, ok?
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.Whoooowee! Don't stand by that man Tammy, you might spontaneously combust. You think George Jones was a mean drunk?? Although, after looking at these two, if they had a child wouldn't he look something like this:
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I do love me some Bocephus.....
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Oh man. Would somebody throw me a line? I think the current's got me... I need to learn how to FOCUS !!
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Anyhoo, the last thing I said that made any sense was that it would have been stupid of me not to change my way of doing business if the old ways weren't allowing me to do the job I was commissioned to do. Now my job; it wasn't a great commission but it was a commission none the less. And so I did change. I found that I could change anything I wanted as long as I stayed inside the set of rules my bosses had set for me. They just wanted good but honest results.
I was a student, I guess you could say, of something called LEAN MANUFACTURING. I wrote about the father of LEAN MANUFACTURING in this post. Well, I have said all that I have said so far to share with you this story which I ran across in a book I read some years back about Lean Manufacturing called Lean Manufacturing for the Small Shop by Gary Conner. I ran across this particular parable again recently but had never applied it to the Church before. Let me know what you think:
"This is the story of the ham bone. A couple had been married only a week or two, just back from their honeymoon, and the new wife decided to make her new husband a special dinner. So, she went to the butcher shop and ordered a large "bone-in" ham. Hams like these can have quite big bones and this one had a large joint sticking out of one end. The young wife asked to borrow the husband's hacksaw to cut off the ball joint. Glad to oblige, the husband lent a hand, but questioned the reason for cutting off the end of the ham bone. The wife pondered for a moment, shrugged, and simply said that her mother had always cut it off so she did too.
Time went by and the opportunity came for the husband to ask his new mother-in-law the question: "Why do you cut the end of the ham bone off before you cook it?" Again he got a momentary blank stare and the same answer as before: "That's the way my mother always did it." Now the husband was on a mission to find out the answer to this question. He visited Grandma on the pretense of cleaning her gutters, but in reality to seek the ultimate wisdom regarding ham bones. Finally, he was able to pose the nagging question: "Why do you cut the end of the ham bone off before you cook it?" Grandma shuffled into the kitchen and reached into the pantry to retrieve the explanation. She simultaneously satisfied the young husband's original question and unknowingly perplexed him with an even deeper mystery. "It doesn't fit in my pot," she explained as she hefted the 50-year-old cast iron stewing pot.
The message in the story, of course, is that the young wife and her mother continued to carry out practices of the past, even though the conditions may have changed. People do this every day, in life and in business. The "ham bone mentality" of carrying on outdated practices as if they were law can hold us back." (emphasis mine jss)
So, church folks. Quite a few of you read this Blog and I am not just talking about the traditionalites. You think maybe it's time to quit sawing off the bones or at least understanding why you do. You aren't being very smart if you don't.
Who says you say? Well.....I do.....and Lemmy. He's a Church Planting Guru in his spare time....so back away....slowly.
James Monday....Title of today's post is a Motorhead song...Have a great weekend.
