For the Love and Hate of Cookie Cutters
I’m not sure of the origins of the cookie cutter but I’m going to assume that it’s like many things in our lives and history, someone needed to be able to reproduce the same product over and over with the exact same results. That idea was part of the industrial revolution, assembly lines and standardizing production to be able to produce the same product with the same results with the quickest turnaround possible. And it worked! Today, just about anything can be reproduced with a cookie cutter precision. Even the term “cookie cutter” can be used in an adjective form to describe so many things.
Have we ever stopped and asked ourselves at what cost though?
Like many, I’ve attended a variety of conferences and workshops to learn, grow, and get better at what I do. There are some amazing churches and organizations that are doing amazing things and many of them are quick to share their ideas and resources to help others grow. This is a great thing and we need more of this type of healthy sharing and collaboration. There are always things to be learned from others that can be applied to our ministries, churches, and organizations. One that I believe does this particularly well is Church of the Highlands in Birmingham, Alabama. They are a large church with multiple campuses and they host a conference annually called Grow. Throughout this time they talk through systems and ideology and give away a lot of things to help churches grow. I’ve had the privilege of attending a couple times and always leave excited and inspired. Something they say often is they are trying to produce systems that are able to be reproduced in any church, anywhere, no matter the size. I believe they do a good job at this however, it’s really easy for me, and probably others as well, to attempt to “right click, copy, right click, paste (control click for us Apple guys).” To attempt to not just replicate the system but the experience as well.
I’ve learned the same is true of developing leaders. I’ve had the incredible opportunity to work with student leadership and help others do the same over the past several years and cookie cutters won’t work. Yes, like Highlands, there are systems that can be replicated but the relationships within those systems are all different and require a different approach. John Ortberg says, “Disciples are handmade not mass-produced.” Man, isn’t that the truth. I have to remind myself that my teams, or any team really, are made up of individuals and if I want my teams to succeed and thrive I need healthy and thriving individuals.
In a world of cookie cutter mass-production we still will stop in awe and wonder at that hand crafted masterpiece. It stands out! The same is true of the leaders we produce. Resources are important and so is training, conferences, and workshops but in the end we have to be able to recreate and relate those to the people we lead and serve.