The Director’s Cut

Must-Win Battles

September has rolled around again and that means that the International Corporate training season is upon us. I leave on Wednesday for the US first-stop Louisville KA where I am delighted to be involved in the Friends of Norman Grubb Reunion before heading for Philadelphia to facilitate a corporate training programme. Quite apart from the struggle of being away from home I am loathe to miss a moment of what is proving to be the most exciting work that I have been involved in since we launched Grace West in 2000.

In preparation for the programme that I am facilitating in the US I have been reading this year’s must read management book which goes by the name of “Must-Win Battles” by Peter Killing and Thomas Malnight, published by Wharton it is a really interesting read. Whilst prepping I found myself applying the key issues that are raised in the book to our situation in The Grace Project and in doing so it helped me to bring some real focus to where we are in Christ.

When we launched Grace West it quickly became the laboratory in which we developed our understanding of regeneration, sanctification and oneness. And now seven years later Grace East is proving to be the place where The Lord is ushering us into a new phase of life where we lay hold of ‘power for service.’ In Grace West we learnt that healing was about relearning in Grace East we are relearning about healing and the charismatic. [Have a listen to my latest talk from the Living Under Grace Series Tmes of Refreshing]

According to the book’s authors one of the major criterion for determining what is and what is not a Must-Win Battle [hereinafter MWB] is impact. The key question is: “if we win this battle, what difference will it make?” The answer has to be that it will make a huge difference – not just to one part of the organisation, but to the achievement of the company’s overall objectives. I was very taken by this process and needless to say have been relating it to our context here in The Grace Project.

I hope to discuss with you in more detail The Grace Project’s MWB’s. In the meantime it seems to me that given our current mission statement which is “To change the way that the world perceives Christianity” then our MWB’s will include:

1. The battle for the spirit of the church

2. The reuniting of the Word and the Spirit

3. The battle against passivity

4. The battle against Grace Pharisaism

Crucial to the success of an MWB journey is that there must be a shared agenda right through the organisation. Top down & bottom up. Corporate people speak in terms of shared agendas and expected behaviours; we have an expression for that too, we call it ‘a community of the Spirit.’ When the Lord laid it on my heart to open The Grace Project He gave me the simple standing instruction that I was to grow a church by grace alone I had assumed that what that meant was that I was to grow a small church. I had come to believe that if a church was big then it was necessarily compromised. But may not necessarily be true! My initial impression of Joseph Prince’s 14,000 strong church in Singapore is very favourable. He is certainly preaching grace alone. I am challenged by that. We live in the world’s leading city – London. It is the financial capital of the world, the fashion capital of the world. If we are prepared to take on our must-win battles I am confident that it could once again be the Christian capital of the world also. To borrow from the title of the management book de jour of a few years ago it is time for us to go from “Good to Great” and this we will do if we are of one heart, one voice, one spirit and one mind.

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