Five months ago a Board took on a question. Would reading a book together actually change how we work?
The answer, now that we have closed this reading, is more complicated and more hopeful than I expected when we started. Some things have changed. Some things have not. Some things are just beginning. None of it is finished, because organizational health is not the kind of work that finishes.
This is the next-to-last post in the Reading Together series. The October 7 post will release the companion guide we have been building all summer. This week I want to look back at what these five months have been, what surfaced, what we learned, and where the work goes from here.
What Has Changed
Three things have shifted at McPherson First, in my read, across these five months.
The shared vocabulary has started to take hold. Words like mission, values, rallying cry, strategic anchors, cohesive team, clarity, reinforcement have started moving from the book into our language. That is not a small thing. Shared vocabulary is the precondition for shared work.
The willingness to name what is hard has grown. The Board has gotten more comfortable saying out loud where things are unclear, where systems contradict stated commitments, where decisions have drifted. That kind of honesty is not automatic. It builds slowly through repeated practice, and it has been building.
The clarity on a few specific questions has firmed up. Q1 (mission) and Q2 (values) were already settled when we began. Across these five months, Q5 (rallying cry) became more concrete, with three specific dimensions and the beginnings of measures. Q3 (what we do) and Q4 (how we will succeed) have moved further into focus, even where the formal answers are still in motion.
That is a real harvest from five months of patient reading.
What Is Still Unfinished
In the same five months, the work has surfaced what is still ahead.
The full playbook is not yet written down. Mission and values are affirmed. Rallying cry is taking shape. Q3, Q4, and Q6 still need formal answers. The Board’s continuing work into 2027 is to settle each of those, not as a one-time decision but as a discerned answer the community can live into.
The scorecard for the rallying cry needs to be built. The three engagement dimensions (worship attendance, serving and volunteering, Grace Group participation) need baselines, thresholds, and a monthly rhythm of review. That work is in flight, not yet landed.
The reinforcement work, Discipline 4, is the long horizon. The systems of the church (budgeting, hiring, evaluation, calendar, communication) are not yet aligned around the affirmed clarity. They were not built that way. Bringing them into alignment is months and years of patient, unglamorous work. We are at the beginning of it.
The vocabulary needs to live in the body of the church, not just in the Board. The Board’s ownership of the playbook becomes meaningful only when the staff, the ministry leaders, the Grace Group hosts, and the congregation begin operating from the same shared language. That work has barely started.
I do not say any of that with discouragement. I say it because it is true, and the truth is what allows the next steps to be real rather than performative.
What I Have Learned as a Pastor
A few things I am taking from these five months personally.
A church Board can absolutely read a book together. That is not the ask I was most worried about. The harder ask is whether the conversations will be substantive, and that depends on the pastor’s preparation and the Board’s willingness, not on the book.
The Wesleyan framing and the scripture helped. Grounding each question in scripture and the Wesleyan tradition made the framework feel less like borrowed business language. Naming the missio Dei connection to mission, the sanctification connection to values, the kairos connection to rallying cry, and the calling connection to accountability was part of that. The framework is not Lencioni baptized. It is the church’s own questions, recognized in fresh language.
Pace matters. A reading section per month was the right pace. Less would have felt slow. More would have collapsed. The biweekly Reading Together posts let the conversation breathe between Board meetings without losing momentum.
Gratitude
I want to name a few thanks publicly.
The Leadership Board read a book together for five months. They came to meetings prepared. They asked real questions. They voted with their voices in April when affirming mission and values, and they kept showing up with engagement after that vote. The willingness to do this work is not a small gift. It is the kind of leadership the church needs more of.
The staff carried shared vocabulary into how they plan and communicate. Their monthly touchpoints have been brief but useful. Their willingness to extend the conversation beyond the formal Board meetings has shaped how this work has moved through the church.
The Reading Together readers, at McPherson First and beyond, have been reading along week after week. The series is richer because of you.
A Posture for What Comes Next
Philippians 1:6 says, “the one who started a good work in you will stay with you to complete the job by the day of Christ Jesus” (Philippians 1:6). The good work at McPherson First is not the playbook we have begun to write. The good work is the formation of this congregation into more faithful, more healthy, more clearly aligned Christ-followers, in this place, in this season, and beyond. The playbook is one tool that serves that work. It is not the work itself.
The faithful posture now is gratitude for what has happened and patience for what is still ahead. Real progress has been made. Arrival is not yet, and is unlikely in any human timeframe, because organizational health is something the church grows into rather than something it achieves. The work continues.
What This Week Is About
Our Board met Monday to wrap this reading. The agenda invited reflection on the whole journey: what was most valuable, what feels different than it did in April, what areas need continued attention, what recommendations the Board has for how this work continues into 2027 and beyond.
One Last Question
If you have read along this summer, here is the question I want to leave with you. What of this conversation will you take into your own community?
Not all of it. Maybe a question that has stuck. Maybe a scripture connection you had not seen before. Maybe a discipline you want to try with your team. The point of the Reading Together series was never to convince you to use the framework as Lencioni wrote it. The point was to think alongside us, in language anchored in scripture, about what organizational health looks like for a faith community.
If something has lodged in you that you mean to take into your own work, I would love to hear it.
The next Reading Together post lands October 7, releasing the companion guide. After that, this section of Substack continues, ready for the next book the church reads together.
Thank you for reading with us.