Over the last century, rapid change in technology has seen the rise and demise of many companies in the business world. There are some businesses that have survived and a few companies have not only survived but have maintained a high level of success, even in the face of change.

In 1994 James Collins and Jerry Porras wrote, “Built to Last: Successful Habits of Visionary Companies”. The authors set out to discover what makes exceptional companies different from other companies. Their findings are enlightening for the members of the business world but there are some things I believe can be applied to the church as well.

They discovered that enduring companies, companies that were “Built to Last”, were not built around a specific product or identified by a specific product, but had a reason to exist that went beyond any single product.

“If you equate the success of your company with the success of a specific idea…then you’re more likely to give up on the company if that idea fails; and if that idea happens to succeed, you’re more than likely to have an emotional love affair with that idea and stick with it too long, when the company should be moving vigorously on to other things.” (pg. 29)

These visionary, highly successful organizations were built around a set of core values. Whether good, bad, moral or not, these core values drive the company. Hewlett-Packard, IBM, Motorola, Walmart and 3M, to name a few, have not endured because of any one product, but have endured because of a set of core values that are ingrained into the culture of the company. Many products come and go for these companies, but the companies endure because they remain focused on their core values rather than their products.

We get this mixed up in The Salvation Army on occasion as well. We have a set of core values: Salvation | Holiness | Intimacy with God | Compassion | Respect | Excellence | Integrity | Relevance | Co-operation | Celebration, and we have a mission: The Salvation Army exists to preach the gospel of Jesus Christ and to meet human needs in His name without discrimination. Is it not fair to say that sometimes we confuse our activities with our core values and mission?

If our mission is to spread the gospel then I think it would be reasonable to state that our “products” are the practical methods we develop to spread the gospel. (Some will argue that our product is souls saved, not so, that is the work of our Lord.) The danger within the Army as with any other church or organization is that we sometimes get our product and our mission mixed up. How many times has the argument against change in the Army been: “But that’s not Army!”

Herein lies the problem. Too often we identify our Army with our product (methods), rather than our mission and values. Attaching our identity to our methods rather than the mission and values hinders our ability to roll out new methods of fulfilling our mission.

With that mindset IBM would have gone out of business trying to sell the best typewriters in the world when there was nobody left wanting to buy typewriters. Every product, no matter how successful, has a limited lifespan. So do the methods of the Army, NOT the mission, NOT the values, just the methods.

Thomas J Watson, Jr., former CEO of IBM, wrote: “If an organization is to meet the challenges of a changing world, it must be prepared to change everything about itself except its beliefs as it moves through corporate life…The only sacred cow in an organization should be its basic philosophy of doing business.” (pg. 81)

The authors make this assertion: “A visionary company carefully preserves and protects its core ideology, yet all the specific manifestations of its core ideology must be open for change and evolution.” (pg. 81)

The Salvation Army has been wildly successful through its history in the mission of “preach the gospel of Jesus Christ and meet human needs in His name without discrimination.” God has blessed the Army and we can rejoice in how He has allowed the Army to live out its mission. But we must not be satisfied with what we have done in the past, nor make the assumption that our methods of yesterday or even today will be effective tomorrow.

A Hewlett-Packard Marketing manager once said: “We’re proud of our successes, and we celebrate them. But the real excitement comes in figuring out how we can do even better in the future. It’s a never ending process of seeing how far we can go. There’s no ultimate finish line where we can say ‘we’ve arrived.’ I never want to be satisfied with our success, for that’s when we’ll begin to decline.”

Is this not reminiscent of William Booth’s “While women weep as they do now I’ll fight…”? There is no ultimate finish line for us and we should never be satisfied with our success as long as there are still hurting people in the world. Do we find excitement in discovering how we can convey the gospel better tomorrow than we did today? Or are we putting too much energy into preserving products that have reached the end of their life-cycle? We should never be satisfied with our success or our product line. Our energy and excitement should come from figuring out how to do even better tomorrow than we did today.

But what if our new ideas don’t work? If we identify our Army with the things we do, this may be a problem. But if we identify our Army with our Mission and Values, we are on the way to greater things. R.W. Johnson of Johnson and Johnson often stated: “Failure is our most important product” (pg. 147). Failure is a part of the evolutionary process. The challenge is to remember that it is not the products that make the company it is the company that makes the products. In the same way, it is not our methods that make us The Salvation Army, it is the Mission and Values of The Salvation Army that determine what our methods should be.

Companies will come and go. Companies that are “Built to Last” will cling to their core values, but make changes in order to be successful in today’s marketplace. And if they don’t change, another company will come along and fill the void. Even more assuredly, God’s church will carry on until the coming of Christ. But it will move forward by those who are committed to the mission and not worried about protecting the methods. The gospel never changes, however, the way we communicate it does change, and must change, in order to be relevant.
Our Core Value: RELEVANCE
We seek to understand and meet the needs of people in our communities.
We adapt our methods to meet changes in those needs. We are progressive and pursue innovation and effectiveness. Our ministries respond to the demographics of the people living in their communities. We undertake studies to determine how we can serve best.
This Salvation Army core value tells us that we cannot remain stagnant, that we cannot hold on to things which are no longer relevant. It is our mission and our values that we must cling to. Visionary companies have found a way to “Preserve the core AND stimulate progress”. I believe a visionary church must do the same. We can still be The Salvation Army even if we do things differently because our values and mission won’t change. I believe The Salvation Army can continue to be visionary and relevant if we are courageous enough to cling to our values and mission and let go of everything else as necessary.

by Captain Rob Kerr