So far Germany’s brilliance in attack has derailed the World Cup campaigns of Australia (4-0), England (4-1) and Argentina (4-0).

Yet just six years ago the national team returned from 2004 European Championship in Portugal without winning a single game.

Jurgen Klinsmann tells the story of how German football was rebuilt from the ground up. Here’s an edited version.

I got the chance to decide on the direction we took when I agreed to take over as Germany coach that summer, with current manager Joachim Loew as my assistant.

‘Jogi’ and I began the whole regeneration process by trying to give our national team an identity.

We decided to go down an attack-minded route, passing the ball on the ground from the back to the front line as quickly as possible using dynamic football.

From that, we created a style of play that this Germany team in South Africa now really lives and breathes.

When Jogi and I took over the German side, we made our plans very public and made it clear that we were trying to rebuild from the bottom up.

The German Football Association (DFB) helped us by putting a lot of pressure on all the first and second division teams in the Bundesliga to build academy programmes and ensure talented young players were coming through.

We held workshops with German coaches and players, asking them to write down on flip charts three things: how they wanted to play, how they wanted to be seen to be playing by the rest of the world and how the German public wanted to see us playing.

We then announced that it was our intention to play a fast-paced game, an attacking game and a proactive game.

Once we had done all that, we created a curriculum for German football.

I brought in a former international team-mate of mine, Dieter Eilts, to run the under-21s and said they had to play the same way as the senior team because they would be a feeder for it.

I was always looking long-term but I knew our plans would be measured by our success at the 2006 World Cup.

I was basically doubted for the two years I was coach – and when we lost 4-1 to Italy in a friendly game three months before the 2006 World Cup, everybody wanted my blood!

We had another game three weeks later against the United States and we won that one 4-1.

That victory saved my job and kept me in charge for the World Cup because the DFB had been ready to make a change. They wanted the conservative approach again, not the revolution.

But I kept on being positive, explaining that this was how I wanted us to play. I did not know if we would master it in time for the 2006 World Cup but we would give it a shot.

We had the players for four solid weeks before the tournament began and were able to get our thoughts across. They agreed to train the way we wanted them to and do extra work. Soon they started to believe in the system.

In the second game, when we beat Poland with a last-minute goal, the whole nation embraced us and said “yeah, that’s our team and that’s how we want them to play”. We lost in the semi-final against Italy but I was still very proud.

After that World Cup, I was burned out after two years of banging my head against a wall but I made it clear to the DFB that Jogi had to take over after me to continue the job we had started.

He has continued to develop that initial style of play and is enjoying success. It has taken Germany six years to learn to play it properly – and it has developed along the way – but the players are completely comfortable with it now.

Germany’s style of play might work for England because, in a way, Germany now play a lot like a typical Premier League team, with the emphasis on pacy attacks.

But whatever approach the England team decides on – whether it is attacking or defensive, patient or high tempo – everybody in the English game needs to sign up to it.

After all, it is the players, coaches and clubs who will help to make it work.

Now go back and list the lessons for renewing an organisation or movement and the lessons in growing leaders.

Hopefully Germany will beat Spain later this week and not spoil a good story!

HT: IngitionJournal

I’ve come to see institutional decline like a staged disease: harder to detect but easier to cure in the early stages, easier to detect but harder to cure in the later stages. An institution can look strong on the outside but already be sick on the inside, dangerously on the cusp of a precipitous fall.

Jim Collins

David Mays has summarized Jim Collins, How the Mighty Fall. The five stages on the road to ruin:

1. Hubris Born of Success: Great enterprises can become insulated by success … and lose sight of the true underlying factors that created success in the first place.

2. Undisciplined Pursuit of More: Companies in stage 2 may overreach by making undisciplined leaps into areas where they cannot be great or growing faster than their ability to fill key spots with capable people.

3. Denial of Risk and Peril: Companies in stage 3 begin to discount or explain away disturbing data, blame outside forces, and take outsized risks without giving enough weight to the consequences.

4. Grasping for Salvation: Instead of getting back to the disciplines that made them great, companies take dramatic action, seeking a silver bullet solution.

5. Capitulation to Irrelevance or Death: Some companies move quickly through the stages while others take years or decades.

Read the complete summary.

“How The Mighty Fall: And Why Some Companies Never Give In” (Jim Collins)

One hundred and ten people turned up for an Adventist church planting summit in Western Australia recently. Up from forty-five the year before.

Two new churches have already been started since the summit. They’re not just starting individual churches, whole networks of new churches are popping up. Among indigenous people, immigrants and Aussie battlers. Another among university students and young adults. There’s a third expanding network of house churches.
Since 2003 we have started forty three new churches, twenty-five of them in the last two years. That’s an increase from 50 to 93 in six years.

In 2003 the denomination was growing at 1% per annum. Now they increase by 2.5% each year. The target is 10%. They have no problem with existing churches, but their clear bias is for reproducing churches of all shapes and sizes.

Most of the rest of the church in Australia is on the decline. So why do the West Australian Adventist stand out as an exception? I’ve been tracking with Adventists in Western Australia for last five years. Here’s what they are teaching me about fueling church planting movements within existing denominations:

1. Leadership makes a difference

I can’t go past the influence of the state President. There’s no razzmatazz about Glenn Townend. He’s godly, committed to the gospel, determined and gracious. He knows how to steer a course, and take others with him. He can outlast the few who resist change. He’s the sort of guy people want to follow.

2. Shared ownership

Five years ago when Glenn walked into a training event I was running, he walked in with a team. Other leaders had people with them, but Glenn had a team. Young men and women and the young at heart who had signed up for action. Glenn is not the one man band. He knows how spot good people and give them a job to do that fits their strengths. I’m thinking of Warrick Long, his business manager. Warrick knows how to build robust systems around a vision. I’m thinking of Phil Brown, his coach/trainer of church planters, he knows how get alongside the early pioneers. I’m thinking of Peter Roennfeldt who drops in every now and again as the movement’s “Gandalf”.

3. Conservative and radical

Glen is conservative, he’s not out to impose his agenda on existing churches. He’s out to win them to a kingdom vision. He’s also radical. He promotes all kinds of innovative ways to reach people with the gospel and multiply disciples and churches.

4. Money isn’t everything

These guys are not throwing big dollars at church planting. They spend their money carefully, investing it in activities that build momentum and capacity, rather than propping up dependent church plants.

5. Multiple streams

A number of leaders have emerged who have multiplied new churches. Glenn has resisted the denominational tendency to centralize and control. He’s encouraged diversity around a single purpose.

If these West Australians can make a difference, why are they the exception?

It is no exaggeration to say that the global Anglican church of is at a crossroads facing its greatest crisis since the Reformation. It’s been there at least since the 1998 Lambeth Conference when the vast majority of Anglican bishops worldwide rejected “homosexual practice as incompatible with Scripture.”

Despite this the Episcopal church in the US and the Anglican Church in Canada have pursued an agenda of acceptance of homosexuality and the ordination of practicing homosexual clergy.

A decade later, at next July’s Lambeth Conference, the battle over the nature of the Anglican communion will continue. The church is going through a painful and protracted identity crisis. Whatever happens at Lambeth, this crisis will not go away.

So what is to be done? What is the future for the world’s 82 million Anglicans?

Here are some suggestions from a movements perspective. A word of qualification, I am not an Anglican. These are the musings of a concerned outsider who none-the-less loves the Anglican church.

1. Return to who you are.

Movements are renewed by making an innovative return to tradition. Rediscover the essence of the Anglican tradition in it’s unity and diversity. Here’s a good start from JI Packer: Who We Are and Where We Stand.

2. Don’t forget innovation!

Returning to your tradition is only half of the equation. You must make an innovative return. Institutions spend an inordinate amount on energy on non-essential traditions. In contrast, movements are willing to change everything except their core beliefs in pursuit of their mission.

3. Say goodbye to the hegemony of the West.

It’s time to catch up to what God is doing around the rest of the world and learn from it. Read the story of Archbishop Peter Akinola and the amazing growth of the Anglican church of Nigeria. Peter Jenkins demonstrates that throughout the “Global South” it is a biblically orthodox version of the Christian faith that is capturing the hearts of ordinary people. There lies the future of the Anglican church.

4. Learn from John Wesley

John Wesley was born and died an Anglican. Unfortunately the Anglican church of the day was not big enough to contain him. He once said, “I love the rites and ceremonies of the Church. But I see, well-pleased, that our great Lord can work without them.”

Wesley was a loyal Anglican but when the clergy forbade him to preach in “their” parishes he proclaimed, “The world is my parish!” and preached without their permission to thousands who gladly heard him and joined the Methodists.

5. Make room for more Wesleys

Expect God to raise up a new generation of John Wesleys. Is the Anglican church big enough to give them room? What should happen when a bishop seeks to block the planting of a new church by Anglicans in “his” diocese despite it’s decline? Will they be given room?

6. Pour fuel on the fire

Where is the Anglican church prospering? Where are lives being transformed by the Gospel? Where are disciples being made? Where are pioneering leaders to be found? Where are churches being planted? Where is God at work? Go there and learn.

Visit the Anglican church of Nigeria. Visit St Mary’s London. Find out why the Sydney diocese has no problem growing leaders. Get excited about what the Church Army is doing down in Berkley NSW. Find out where there is unexpected success, learn from it and multiply it.

Make sure you devour the writings of Roland Allen, CMS missionary and mission strategist. Almost a century ago he wrote Missionary methods : St. Paul’s or ours? and we still haven’t got the message.

7. Have some grandchildren

Having grandchildren is a wonderful way to become young again, vicariously. The Anglican church has already birthed a dynamic movement called Methodism. Why not do it intentionally? That’s what the Southern Baptists are doing in world missions. They are planting indigenous churches that are biblically orthodox but not necessarily “Southern Baptist”.

Central Coast Evangelical Church is just one of the churches in a growing movement of Independent Evangelical Churches started and led by graduates of Moore College. Other Anglican churches are planting non-Anglican churches where the parish system frustrates the advance of the Gospel.

8. Remember your heroes

The Anglican church has produced some great leaders throughout it’s history: John Wesley, Charles Simeon, William Wilberforce, Henry Martyn, Samuel Ajayi Crowther, Wilson Carlile, CS Lewis, John Stott, David Watson, and many more.

Study their lives. Tell and retell their stories and the lessons from their lives to a new generation.

9. Plant some trees

The best time to plant a tree? Twenty years ago. The second best time? Now.

Charles Simeon was the pastor of the Anglican church at Cambridge for 50 years. When he began in 1782 there were only a dozen evangelical ministers left in the Church of England. When he finished 54 years later, one in three Anglican churches were led by evangelicals. The vast majority of them were men influenced by Simeon in Cambridge. Many of them were converted through him.

10. Thank God for the Episcopalians

We can be thankful that the Episcopalians in the US provide an insight into the future of the Anglican church. . . if the decline continues. The Episcopalians are in free fall. In 2008 they led the way with the fastest rate of denominational decline in the US.

Why would that be?

According to Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori, Episcopalians aren’t interested in replenishing their ranks by having children. “They tend to be better-educated and tend to reproduce at lower rates than some other denominations.” You’ve got to give her credit for creativity. Here’s the real reason.

Is that the future you want for the rest of the Anglican church?

The same pattern is clearly discerned in the birth and rebirth of Christian movements. God unmakes his people in order to reshape them.

The church in the West is going through such a time.

We tend to want to project our experience on the rest of the global Christian movement. I’m not convinced. We want to foist our doubt and confusion on the church of the Global South and they’re not buying it.

How do we navigate such a time? We need to understand what is going on.

God is sovereign and he chooses the times and seasons for his people. Our call is to respond with faith and surrender.

To begin with we have the world as we know it. We know what the rules are. We know what works. We know what we should do. Life is predictable. The world makes sense.

Then come the losses. We lose our bearings. We lose our confidence. We lose our hope. The world becomes a confusing place. Doubt and despair enter in. We find ourselves in the wilderness with no way forward and no way back.

God is powerfully at work unravelling us so that he can reform us. But we don’t know it. We just feel the terror and shame of our undoing.

The wilderness is the place of danger, devils and temptation. It is also the place of profound encounter with God where we return to the heart of our faith and prepare for the promised land.

There will be a new era. God is faithful. But there will be no resurrection without a cross. No new life without death.

How do you breathe new life into Disney animation? Simple. You don’t.

This is what you do instead. . .

Start a new company called Pixar. Produce film after film that everyone wants to watch— Toy Story, A Bug’s Life, Toy Story 2, Monsters Inc, Finding Nemo and The Incredibles.

Films that succeed “because they are the vision not of executives or a committee, but of one person who is given the resources to make the best possible film.” (John Lasseter)

Bring Disney back into the picture. They buy out Pixar and hand over key leadership positions at Disney to Pixar animators and producers. Put Apple and Pixar founder, Steve Jobs, on the Disney board.

Then wonder, who took over who?

How do you breathe new life into a declining church, denomination, movement, mission agency, theological college?

The same way.

GK Chesterton agrees, “Men invent new ideals because they dare not attempt old ideals. They look forward with enthusiasm, because they are afraid to look back.”

The Bible knows nothing of our preoccupation with the new at the expense of the old. If the Scriptures have a bias it is towards the old. God’s people are called to return to the old ways, the ancient paths. They are warned about mirroring the values and norms of the contemporary world.

The ‘new’ that is promised has nothing to do with the latest social trends but everything to do eschatology—the end times. A new reality has broken into history. It is the world that belongs to a tired old age. It may look cool, powerful and attractive but it will not last.

We are called to return to the first things, to where it all began. How do we get there? By turning away from an age that is passing away and living in the new reality that Christ has established.

It’s a decision, a way of life that we must choose every day. No matter how old or young we may be.

With the drawing of this Love and the voice of this Calling
We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.

TS Elliot

1. Dissonance
From childhood, Count Nikolaus Zinzendorf had been devoted to Christ and committed to the spread of Christianity throughout the world. In 1722, in his early twenties, he opened up his estate in Saxony to provide sanctuary for religious refugees fleeing persecution. They came having suffered for their vision of the New Testament church reborn. They built a village, Herrnhut “the Lord’s watch”. Zinzendorf set up a number of institutions to help the poor and the refugees. There was a printing press for cheap editions of the Bible and other religious literature, a bookshop, dispensary and school. Here was a community of believers gathered together with a dream for the renewal of the Church.

2. Struggle
By 1727 an assortment of refugees and others from Moravia and Bohemia, of Lutheran, Reformed, Separatist, Anabaptist and even Roman Catholic backgrounds, arrived at Herrnhut, bringing a variety of ideas and expectations and inevitably disputes and discord. The dream for a renewed church was under threat. Zinzendorf stepped in personally to restore harmony. He moved out of his mansion into the village. He held endless meetings seeking to heal broken relationships. He introduced a degree of structure to build community. Zinzendorf devoted himself entirely to the service and welfare of the exiles. He drew upon his own financial resources to meet their needs.

3. Encounter
On August 13, 1727 the Moravians experienced what can only be described as a Pentecostal outpouring of the Holy Spirit during a celebration of the Lord’s Supper. The Swede Arvid Gradin, who became a Moravian, later recounted how “Their hearts were set on fire with new faith and love towards the Saviour and likewise with burning love towards one another, which moved them so far that of their own accord they embraced one another in tears and grew together into an holy union among themselves, so raising again as it were out of the ashes, that ancient Unity of the Moravian Brethren.”

The various factions were no more. Manifestations of the Holy Spirit continued, including divine healing. The community was organised into small bands to confess their sins and pray for one another that they might be healed. Night watches and prayer vigils were established. Soon a continuous volume of prayer was being offered up around the clock, seven days a week, either in groups or in private prayer. This prayer vigil continued uninterrupted for over a century.

4. Commission
Herrnhut became the model for many similar Moravian communities throughout the world. Zinzendorf’s aim was not to set up an independent Moravian church but to promote the ideal of gathering all Christians as into one wide and open and equal “Community of Jesus.” Zinzendorf saw the Moravian movement as a missionary community and all Moravians as “soldiers of the lamb.”

5. Mission
Under Zinzendorf, the Moravians became an intense but highly mobile missionary order. The rapid deployment of many young missionaries around the world in the space of a few short years, is one of the most remarkable Moravian achievements.

The outreach was made possible by a relative lack of concern with training, finances, or structure. A Moravian missionary received from the church, enough money to get to the port. The missionary was then responsible to work for passage across the ocean. On the mission field, the missionary took up whatever occupation would provide the bare amount of food and clothing.

The Moravians had an impact on the existing church as they brought renewal to thousands of formerly nominal Christians throughout Europe. This was achieved through the work of itinerant Moravians sent out from Herrnhut in twos and threes. Through the outpouring of the Holy Spirit in 1727 and the life and ministry of Zinzendorf, one of the most dynamic missionary movements came into existence. In the next 150 years the Moravians sent out over 2,000 of their members overseas. They tended to go to the most remote, unfavorable and neglected areas. Many of them were simple peasants and artisans.

The impact of the Moravians did not end with their own achievements. Their example profoundly influenced both John Wesley, the founder of the Methodist movement and William Carey the “father” of Protestant missions.

Colin A. Grant, “Europe’s Moravians: A Pioneer Missionary Church,” in “Perspectives on the World Christian Movement : A Reader” (William Carey Library Publishers)
“Signs of the Spirit: How God Reshapes the Church” (Howard A. Snyder)

“Zinzendorf, the ecumenical pioneer;: A study in the Moravian contribution to Christian mission and unity (Christian lives)” (Arthur James Lewis)

“History Of The Moravian Church” (J. E. Hutton)

Movements cannot be manufactured or controlled. Those most open to empowering spiritual experiences are those who sense their need of God. They are often found on the fringes with little investment or confidence in existing structures and means. Those with the greatest investment in how things are do not long for major transformation.

In his study of Catholic religious orders, Cada (Shaping the Coming Age of Religious Life) describes this process of transformation:

“Contained in the transforming experience is a new appreciation of the message of Jesus which leads to innovative insight concerning how the condition of the Church or society could be dramatically improved or how a totally new kind of future could be launched. A new impetus to live the religious life in all the totality of its demands is felt and a new theory emerges that is at once a critique of the present, an appropriation of the past, a compelling image of the future and a basis for novel strategies.”

A five stage pattern is discernible in this spiritual encounter:

1. Dissonance
There is a growing awareness by a key founding individual or group that something is not right. A desire grows for a deeper experience of God or his power or forgiveness or truth. There is a hunger for something more, both individually and in the life of the church.

2. Struggle
There is a time of uncertainty and grappling with God regarding the satisfaction of that hunger. God tests and shapes the heart of a leader or emerging movement. He refines motivations. God may appear to be distant and unresponsive—even hostile. Motivations are refined and commitment to God and his agenda is galvanised.

3. Encounter
There is a deeper experience of God, his character or power, Biblical truth, his heart for mission or the Church. Either as a crisis or series of experiences. The founder/s enter into the reality of a truth that God wants to restore to the wider church. Often innovative strategies are embraced.

4. Commission
This encounter provides a sense of legitimacy and motivation to implement the desired change. In order to break with the status quo and institute a new state of affairs, movements must have some sense of legitimacy or authority for what they do. The encounter with God provides a sense of legitimacy in the face of resistance to change.
?Without the conviction of spiritual authority and the experience of spiritual power, efforts to change religious systems will not be successful.

5. Mission
The spiritual experience of the founder/s is shared by others, providing them with a sense of legitimacy, meaning, commitment and empowerment. The experience of encounter with God creates the faith to believe the world can be changed and energises people for action. It empowers people at every level, especially those normally excluded for positions of power in existing structures. Members are bound together in united action. Individuals and groups are empowered to take action. There is central guidance without central control. Members have the faith to believe they can change the world and the zeal to sustain commitment at every level. The preferred future is more real to them than current reality.

Breathing strange utterances and mouthing a creed which it would seem no same mortal could understand, the newest religious sect has started in Los Angeles. Meetings are held in a tumble-down shack on Azusa Street. . . and the devotees of the weird doctrine practice the most fanatical rites, preach the wildest theories and work themselves into a state of mad excitement in their peculiar zeal.

Los Angeles Times, 18 April 1906

In order to deal with the challenge of its success, Pentecostalism must learn from its formative years and continually renew itself by making “an innovative return to tradition.”

God gives every movement for the renewal and expansion of the Church a “founding charism” or gift of grace for the whole church. It is a movement’s unique expression of the Kingdom.

What can we learn about Pentecostalismâ’s unique identity from the formative years of the Azusa Street revival?

1. Power
At Azusa Street they met daily from ten in the morning until late into the night. Worship was spontaneous and emotional. Singing in tounges, falling to the ground under the power of the Holy Spirit was common.

Harvey Cox argues, Pentecostalism succeeded because it rejected institutional religion and the modern gods of rationalism and spoke to the spiritual emptiness of our time.

2. Urgency
Early Pentecostals were convinced they were experiencing the last great revival before the imminent return of Christ. Their urgency, spontaneity, commitment and zeal were fuelled by their encounter of God through the Holy Spirit and the expectation of the end of all things that left them unattached to the things of this world.

3. People
Led by William Seymour, a partially blind African-American preacher, a son of former slaves, its followers were poor domestic servants, janitors, and day workers— both black and white. The Spirit was present powerfully and could use anyone for ministry regardless of race, education, gender or social status. Women became the primary carriers of one of the fast growing religions in the world.

4. Mission
Hundreds came from around the world to Azusa Street and returned home with the “Baptism”. Missionaries were sent out from Azusa Street to China, India, Japan, Egypt, Liberia, Angola, South Africa. Within six months 38 missionaries had left. Within two years 25 different nations had been reached.

5. Innovation
According to Grant Wacker, Pentecostalism flourished because it held together two competing drives. “Primitivism”—a return to the first century where the Holy Spirit reigned; and Pragmatism — a freedom to do whatever is necessary to achieve the movement’s aims.

This enabled the movement to combine a clear and universal core mission with great flexibility. Almost instantly Pentecostalism became Russian in Russia, Chilean in Chile, African in Africa. Today two thirds of Pentecostals are in the Majority World and only a quarter of them are white.

Pentecostalism’s freedom in the Spirit has created grass-roots movements that are at home in almost any context.

Final words. . .
From its humble beginnings at Azusa Street, Pentecostalism has become a global movement of massive proportions.

To Pentecostals and Charismatics your challenge is to take this movement into a new millenium by remaining true to your God-given heritage as you continually allow Him to renew you in response to a changing world.

To those who will remind me of the shortcomings of this movement — ”don’t miss what God is saying to you about the nature and mission of the Church through Pentecostalism.