GlocalNet

The following article comes from Bob Buford’s monthly e-newsletter.

Globalism comes to my doorstep – it is unavoidable

I believe clarity of mission is more than important.  It is central to getting focused in order to not fritter your time away on a thousand different interesting ideas.  After working together for several years, Peter Drucker gave me, in one short phrase, my mission statement.  I remember with crystal clarity.  It was like getting orders from heaven – deep base voice.  European accent.  Lots of gravitas. 

We were together for a conference which Leadership Network hosted at the Biltmore Hotel in Los Angeles in 1991.  Peter said to me, “It is your mission to work on transforming the latent energy in American Christianity into active energy.”  e.g. Stick to America.  But what I am finding, seventeen years later, is that a good many of the leaders I am called to serve want to bear fruit overseas.  And by getting involved in their work, I get drawn overseas.  Lately I have been asking, ‘Is serving the Americans, who invest themselves in the broader world, consistent with my mission?’ 

Here is an example: Three years ago, Phil Anschutz, from Denver, whom I had partnered with on a spectacularly successful church planting/teaching church project (1,500 new U.S. churches and 1,200 new teaching church events in six years and still going!), called to say, “What about planting churches in Europe?”  Trying to stick to my mission, I repeated almost by rote, “Phil, my mission is to transform the latent energy in American Christianity into active energy.”  Three times in repeating my mission mantra, Phil said, “Yes, but what about Europe?”  It was like Jesus responding, “Feed my sheep” three times to Peter in John 21. 

I finally relented to Phil’s conscience-provoking question by saying, “Well let me look into it.”  I did.  And the result was a project called the European Church Planting Network staffed by Leadership Network and primarily funded by Phil.  ECPN, which is run by a Canadian and an Englishman, gathers leaders who plant young churches in the hard soil of post-Christian Europe in fifteen countries.  The objective is 400 new churches by the end of this year. 

There is an old saying that says that when we plan God laughs.  I prefer to think that God smiles and puts up with His oh-so-human children.  Globalism is here to stay and unavoidable – our stock markets, our Internet relationships come from a borderless world. 

And, particularly for Christians, there is a kind of instant affinity and bond that goes way beyond geography.  I now am involved in an energetic batch of projects that transcend nation states.  But perhaps, with a loyalty to my original promise, they all start with strong leadership in the United States.  And these projects all fit within the values I developed working with Peter Drucker, the ultimate global thinker (raised in Europe, his primary career in the United States, his ideas deeply respected and practiced in Asia (see below).
Here are My Top Ten Values as Peter taught them to me over our twenty-year relationship: 
1.  Build on the islands of health and strength. 
2.  Work only with the receptive and only on what’s trying to happen.
3.  Go big or go home.  Focus, don’t do dribs and drabs.
4.  Giving is not a result – changed lives are.
5.  The fruit of my work grows up on other people’s trees.
6.  The entrepreneurial-style leader is where the leverage begins. 
7.  Bet on a great leader with a big idea. 
8.  The essential ingredient for success is a steady stream of innovation.
9.  “It’s your job to release and direct energy, not to supply it.”
10. Structure follows strategy, and strategy begins with clear desired outcomes.  To What End? 
 

Having given it some thought, I find that examples of this “creeping Globalism” spread through all three of the primary enterprises that are my Second Half preoccupations these days: 

  * Leadership Network (http://www.leadnet.org) and Halftime (http://www.halftime.org). ; Tom Wilson, Leadership Network’s CEO, and Board Member, Dale Dawson, were last week in Rwanda helping President Kagame rebuild that desperate country into the first “African Tiger.”  It is called Bridge2Rwanda (http://www.bridge2rwanda.org/). 

  * Bob Roberts – a super entrepreneurial pastor, from the DFW mid-cities, is building four new Leadership Network-style groups in the Middle East, China, Malaysia and the Philippines.  He says that there is a movement of churches who are becoming what he calls “Glocal,” both local and global in a web of seamless connectedness. 

When I interviewed Bob Roberts for Finishing Well , he told me:

“When Christians get involved in the kind of work we do it changes them.  If you go to a Third World country, as we do, and start touching the world in places and ways that make a real difference, you come away with a whole new kind of love for the world.  It takes more than just hard-working people; it takes smart people, intentional people.” 

  * In our two most recent Halftime Institutes, we had participants from Australia, Tanzania, India and Sweden – all intent on convening groups of Halftimers in their countries.  Leadership Network’s Bob Durfey was last week in South Africa working on developing a Halftime Group there.
  * Bill Hybels (WillowCreek, Chicago) and Rick Warren (Saddleback, Southern California) both have huge ministries that mobilize thousands of people to work for God’s purposes in fifty or so countries around the world through the WillowCreek Association and the P.E.A.C.E. plan.
  * Bob Inc – my small team who work on a portfolio of separate personal projects:

      o I am an advisor to Bright China Foundation which has established Drucker Academies in 27 cities in China to teach Peter Drucker’s principles of effective management and ethical leadership. (http://www.brightchinagroup.com/en/)
      o I am Chairman of the Board of The Drucker Institute.  We are creating Drucker Societies around the world (Korea, Dubai, New York City, Vienna) who are tasked with bringing about positive change by taking Peter Drucker’s ideas and ideals into their local communities.
      o I am founding member of a new organization called L3.  L3 is a group of high capacity leaders from around the world focused on life, legacy and leadership – L3 members are committed to accomplishing the transition in the Second Half of their lives from success to significance.  They are about 70% ex-Young Presidents Organization members.  The membership qualifications are stringent but more inclusive than YPO’s, e.g. not just company presidents.  (http://www.l3org.com) ;
      o And, of course, there is this “Next Chapter” of “My Next Book” which gets responses from all over the planet.

Bottom line: Man proposes.  God disposes.  As Rick Warren said in his book, The Purpose Driven Life , “It’s not about you!”

Men are not free when they are doing just what they like. 

… Men are free when they are obeying some deep, inward voice of religious belief.  Obeying from within.  Men are free when they belong to a living, organic, believing community, active in fulfilling some unfulfilled, perhaps unrealized purpose.
—D.H. Lawrence

So What about You? 

  1. How does globalism affect you, your family, your lifestyle? 
  2. In terms of relationships, you might have with people and organizations in other countries, what common interest, what affinity draws you together, gives you a common cause? 
  3. What are your “Top Ten Values?”  What sources did you draw them from?