This is a guest post from Pastor Joshua Finley, Lead Pastor at Elim Gospel Church in Lima, NY. I ran across this post on his blog this morning and felt it appropriate to share with you (with his permission, of course). Enjoy.
Values, more than vision, shape a culture.
Having a lack of vision is bad, really bad. Without vision people are stuck, literally immobilized and eventually perish. Having skill and competency is so important. Without a skill-set matching your role, you and those around you will be frustrated and ineffective.
Having the wrong values is deadly to a culture.
Every leader is a “cultural architect”, one who actually shapes external environments by their internal reality. Cultural architects without vision are stuck. Cultural architects without the right skill set are ineffective. Cultural architects without an aligned value system are destructive.
It is one thing to be ineffective and a totally another thing to be destructive to the environment that is being built. Misaligned values bring toxic emotions and cancerous growth to a culture. Values, more than vision or skills is what shapes a culture.