Redemptive Scale

What if… ·      Government partnered with Christian leaders to help people change self-destructive behaviors ·      People who care for others could overcome a culture of indifference and suspicion ·      Christians could help eliminate institutional waste and corruption ·      We could find community that welcomed us as we are and made us better people ·      Leaders from other faiths asked Christians to teach their people because of the love they brought ·      There was a compelling way to bring the gospel to millions of people who live within sight of a church but have never experienced the love of Jesus It sounds like a fantasy, or at least a wish list for a world other than the one we live in today. But these things are happening, and I don’t just mean in isolated pockets or one-off anecdotes. An entire nation is being transformed, and others are following its lead. This is transformation at scale! A True Story When I say scale, you may expect to find a big-name organization or well-known leader. That’s what scale looks like in our everyday experience. But I’m talking about a different organization that you’ve probably never heard of. And if you look for the visionary who started it, you’ll only encounter his spirit, which lives on in many unexpected ways. That visionary is a doctor from Cincinnati, Ohio, who followed Jesus. The nation is not America but a small country in Africa. At this organization’s heart is physical healing from disease. This healing doesn’t happen through a miracle but by simple actions such as bringing clean water and good hygiene to some of the poorest places in the world. Yet great faith has been required to perform these acts, and only the love of God can account for its impact. Yet this is not another program to dig wells or bring medicine to remote villages. Rather, it is an organization in which local people empowered by God’s love solve their own problems. This organization is Sustainable Medical Missions, founded by Dr. Mark Snyder, and its unique approach to scale created a movement that has changed millions of lives. Scale vs. Movement One of scale’s most powerful effects is creating movements. In a movement, people do more with a product or service than even the original developers had in mind. Particularly successful products and services start cultural trends that both drive demand and raise expectations. Movements: ·      Grow exponentially and draw energy from sources outside the group or organization that started it ·      Form when people take ownership of an idea and use it for a greater purpose ·      Are powerful and cannot be controlled Scale: ·      Can be controlled ·      Works when key steps happen ·      Has the power to transform lives for the better ·      Can be a catalyst for movements My focus is not merely on making scale work but on how it can be a force for good by creating movements. As we delve deeper, we’ll discover how scale triggers cultural, individual, and community changes, all of which are integral to the formation of movements. With the right understanding of scale, we can consider how God might use scale to start movements for his glory. What Good is Scale? We live in a world of scale. Scale is the phenomenon of an organization growing exponentially. In its simplest form, growth is addition, but scale is multiplication. Many businesses and organizations are no longer content with the standard growth-by-addition of days gone by. They now want the multiplication promised by scale. We’ve become used to products that grow quickly from nothing to massive success or individuals who go from invisibility to notoriety overnight. We seem to have proven we can scale almost anything. But should we? Our experience with scale is mixed. We can make the mistake of forgetting the improvements brought by scale in the past and only focus on the latest set of problems it creates. We understand scale in economic terms because of the financial value it creates, but Scripture does not measure our work that way. God most values people who are created in his image. So how do we scale something truly good that cares for people and doesn’t just make life easier? Why can’t these methods accomplish something that will transform people’s lives for eternity? To apply scale to accomplishing good, we must understand what makes it happen. In particular, we must identify the type of scale that becomes a movement for what the Bible defines as good. I call that Redemptive Scale. The story in this book illustrates how God can scale the impact of someone who values people as he does.