How do you expand your circle?

If you’ve followed along for a while, you know that I think about this community as a circle. The basic idea is that the circle defines whatever the community’s about—core values, mission, goals, stuff like that. You can check out the about page or Defining The Circle for some info about this particular circle.

So in my visual, people inside the circle are folks who buy in to what the circle represents. A particular circle might be a business with employees and customers, a church or other ministry, or even a neighborhood. Some circles, such as a business, are tightly defined. Others, like a neighborhood, might be more loosely defined.

If I haven’t lost you yet, stop and think for a moment about one of your circles and the values, mission, and goals that define it. Then ask yourself how you might go about expanding the circle. Basically, I think about two models which I call push and attract.

PUSH

Pushing people into the circle looks like this. It’s basically about coercion, and it’s built around selling, convincing, and persuading.

• It’s a talking model—it says, “You listen, and we’ll tell you what you need and why you should do it our way with our program.”
• It’s very difficult and expensive to sustain. There’s little incentive for those who are forced or coerced to become loyal supporters and promoters, so you must constantly prowl for new victims.
• It requires incredible persistence, because the moment you stop pushing they’re likely to leave.

Most importantly: To push people into the circle, you must stand outside the circle and shove people in a direction they may not really want to go. Do you see what that means symbolically? Leaving the circle means abandoning the very values you’re trying to promote.

ATTRACT

Attracting people to the circle is like being a magnet. It’s about doing things that people want to be part of, built around modeling and meeting needs.

• It’s a listening model—it says, “Tell me what you need and we’ll work together to meet those needs.”
• Because it’s an attraction model, it’s much easier to sustain. People who are excited about the message and programs will remain without coercion and will willingly recruit others.
• This approach says we’re on the same journey, and we’re all learners, helpers, and facilitators with common interests.

The key difference for me is that you pull people into the circle from the inside. They enter and remain willingly. Symbolically, that means we bring people into the circle more with our actions and attitudes than our words and expertise. So you attract new members by living and being the values you’re promoting.

INCLUSIVE/EXCLUSIVE

The push model demands exclusivity. If someone resists, you simply move on to the next prospect. You spend your time sorting people into prospects (worthwhile) and non-prospects (not worthwhile).

The attraction model invites inclusivity. You spend your time building relationships, listening, and figuring out how to help people.

That doesn’t mean that everyone will be in your circle. Some will make different choices, but you always leave the door open if they are attracted to what’s happening in your circle.

What’s your take? Can you see how this applies to your circles? How will you expand your circles in 2010?

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Defining The Circle

Setting The Stage For Success

If you know what you’re going to write before you begin, why bother?

How do you decide what to write about?

It’s a question authors hear frequently. We try to offer deep, wise responses that make the process appear more purposeful, and less desperate, than it really is. However, I thought it might be a good topic for a quick post.

A blog, if it works, is a community. I picture a community as a circle, and in this case the circle’s defined by the topics we discuss. I try to address issues that interest me, and that I think will interest you. A lot of the rationale behind this community is explained on the about page, but those are my thoughts.

You’re part of the circle as well, so how about some feedback?

What attracts you to this site? What would you like to discuss?

Please leave a comment, visit my website, and/or send me an email at rich@richdixon.net. 

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One can be very happy without demanding that others agree with them. ~ Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

I’ve been thinking a lot about Chris Guillebeau’s insightful analysis of What Makes A Community? We all live, work, and play in a variety of communities, and I guess I’m especially interested because my efforts to contribute via speaking and writing essentially involve building an online community.

Using a metaphor from my friend Eric Larsen, I tend to envision a community as a circle. The circle has a defined boundary; you’re either in or you’re out.

I think that most worthwhile communities want to attract members and expand the circle. The trick is figuring out how to accomplish that without changing, blurring, or completely erasing the border and making the circle meaningless. If you bring folks into a circle without a clear boundary, you’ve just created an unfocused group with no clear vision, mission, or purpose.

Most communities face two boundary issues. The first is clearly defining the edges. What’s it mean to be inside the circle? Why does the circle exist? What are the shared values and common purposes?

The other problem involves eliminating extraneous and exclusive requirements. A clear boundary doesn’t imply that everyone inside must look, act, or think exactly alike. Within a vibrant community there’s plenty or room for diversity, discussion, and disagreement.

It’s a question of covenant, and no meaningful community can exist without one.

As a teacher, I really only had one rule in my classroom: Everyone gets treated with respect. There’s a lot of latitude for individual behavior and discussion within that boundary, but you can’t stay here if you consistently violate it. You choose, and you’re free to leave if you wish. But if you decide to stay (and I hope you do), that’s the boundary.

Some properties of covenant for a healthy community:

• It’s as inclusive as possible; it doesn’t unnecessarily exclude people.
• Membership is an individual choice, and it’s okay to enter or not.
• It defines the vision, mission, and purpose of the community.
• It’s open to discussion, clarification, or change that advances the community’s mission.

A covenant doesn’t inherently imply exclusion or elitism. It doesn’t mean that those inside the circle are superior; it simply means that we’ve agreed to a common vision. We’d love to have you join us, and it’s okay if you don’t.

What are other properties of covenants in healthy communities?

Please leave a comment, visit my website, and/or send me an email at rich@richdixon.net. 

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 A community is a group of people united through a common struggle with the same stories.

Chris Guillebeau wrote an insightful article called What Makes A Community? I encourage you to read Chris’ thoughts through the lens of a Christian community.

Chris asserts:  “…a community needs friends AND enemies …You need a villain, a bad guy. The bad guy can be a person, group, idea, or belief … having a defined enemy increases the strength of the community.”

I initially reacted pretty negatively to this notion. I didn’t like the “us versus them” mentalitt or the assertion that a community “needs” an enemy. But I think we can learn a lot about Christian communities by analyzing this idea.

First, I’m not certain whether or not a community “needs” an enemy. This may be an interesting philosophical question but in the real world I don’t think it matters. I suspect that every worthwhile community has natural enemies, so whether they’re a required element is sort of irrelevant.

For Christians, I think the nature and identity of the enemy is a more essential discussion. Christians waste enormous amounts of time and energy, and alienate countless millions of people, by inventing false enemies and battling them. Preachers rally the troops against all sorts of ideas, behaviors, groups, or individuals. We close ranks to defend ourselves from these imagined invaders, clearly identifying “us” as the good guys and “them” as the bad guys deserving judgment, contempt, and exclusion.

That’s a wonderful strategy if your goal is strengthening the walls of the existing community, increasing a sense of internal unity by building fortifications against the evil outsiders. Nothing brings people together like a perceived threat, and it doesn’t much matter whether the threat is real or imagined. We can love the bad guys, but we must label them and keep them “out there” at all costs. Any weakness in our defenses will allow them to infiltrate, and then their badness will rub off on us.

There’s only one small problem with this approach—it’s precisely what Jesus instructed us NOT to do.

The church has one primary purpose—to bring the outsiders in. Everything we do should be designed to weaken the walls and break the barriers. “They” are not our enemy, and they only threaten us if we give them the power to do so.

An old friend used to observe that the church is a hospital, not a hall of fame, and a hospital’s frequently a stinky, unpleasant place because it keeps admitting all of those sick folks. But a hospital that refuses entry to those who need it most isn’t doing what it’s designed to do.

The church DOES have a real enemy, but it’s not unacceptable behaviors or divergent ideas. And it’s certainly not the outsiders, the “bad” people we so often exclude with our words and attitudes. The church’s true enemy is a crafty, evil one who uses our tendency to isolate ourselves against us. The true enemy fosters hate and mistrust to isolate us from those who need to hear about Christ.

If we represent the church as a circle, the central goal is to bring people into the circle and make it larger. The enemy gladly hands us the bricks with which to build walls around the circle, bricks constructed of judgment and divisiveness. The enemy whispers that we ought to condemn those with whom we disagree politically and separate ourselves from people who behave in ways of which we disapprove.

I imagine that our true enemy’s greatest fear is that we will actually take Jesus’ words seriously:

“But I tell you who hear me: Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who mistreat you. If someone strikes you on one cheek, turn to him the other also. If someone takes your cloak, do not stop him from taking your tunic. Give to everyone who asks you, and if anyone takes what belongs to you, do not demand it back. Do to others as you would have them do to you.” (Luke 6: 27-31)

Love tears down the walls between good guys and bad. It’s a poor way to build a fortified community that’s safe from intruders. It’s the only way to build Christ’s church.

Who tends to look like the enemy to you?

Please leave a comment, visit my website, and/or send me an email at rich@richdixon.net. 

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A community is a group of people united through a common struggle with the same stories.

This definition comes from an insightful article by Chris Guillebeau called What Makes A Community?

I highly recommend Chris’ site, The Art of Nonconformity. Chris’ writing makes me think and inspires me to extend my own ideas. I took a long bike ride yesterday and considered one of his claims about community. 

Chris asserts that “…a community needs friends AND enemies …You need a villain, a bad guy. The bad guy can be a person, group, idea, or belief … having a defined enemy increases the strength of the community.”

I think he’s probably correct, but “enemy” is a dangerous term that can generate significant misunderstanding and unnecessary conflict. We must define such a concept clearly and deploy it carefully.

Every community has insiders and outsiders. If we’ve decided to join a particular community, we naturally agree and identify with its members. The insiders are “us” and the outsiders are “them.” Unfortunately, we tend to create excessive and pointless quarrels by incorrectly casting all of “them” as the enemy.

My friend Eric characterizes a community as a circle. Eric says that you need to be clear about what it means to be inside the circle, the shared vision that defines the community. If you don’t choose to enter, that’s fine. We still respect and value you; you’re just not in this particular circle right now.

Choosing to remain outside a community doesn’t make you evil. “They” aren’t automatic enemies.

In fact, if you wish to expand the circle and grow the community, the new members must come from “them.” You’re not going to attract folks to your circle by calling them names and portraying them as evil.

Sadly, insecure members of a community often feel threatened by those who choose not to enter their circle. It’s somehow okay if we decide to exclude you, because then we’re in control. But there’s a sense of rejection when you determine that my circle’s not for you. We need to be secure enough to avoid labeling those who choose differently as the evil enemy.

A true enemy poses an actual threat to the community or its members. Simply choosing not to enter the circle shouldn’t be interpreted as threatening.

I’m not certain whether a community “needs” enemies. My idealistic side wants to believe they don’t, but in the real world it probably doesn’t matter. Most communities have natural enemies, so we just need to be clear about the bad guy’s true identity. He’s already there; we don’t need to invent him.

If the community values itself and its members, it’s important to identify, define, and confront actual threats. Real threats shouldn’t be ignored, but we don’t need to waste time and energy on imagined dangers.

Ideally, we establish a community to accomplish something apart from simply perpetuating itself. The real potency of the circle isn’t enhanced much by repelling invaders, because this sort of oppositional mentality gives “them control. “Their” tactics, agendas, and priorities dictate the actions of the community.

Real strength develops when a community unites behind a common purpose. Ironically, that sort of shared vision tends to attract “them” and make them want to join “us.”

The best way to destroy an enemy is to make him a friend. ~ Abraham Lincoln

Who are your real enemies? How can you make your community such an attractive place that he wants to join you?

Please leave a comment, visit my website, and/or send me an email at rich@richdixon.net. 

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