Serving Three Masters

“RED is the new…red. Once a metonymic reference for communism, RED is now one of the hottest signifiers of capitalistic social responsibility (CSR) in the West. The brainchild of Bono and Bobby Shriver, the RED concept is centered on enlisting companies to create special ‘red’ products, a portion of whose profits — about 40% to 50% — is given to the global AIDS fund for its work in Africa. The first RED products were introduced in Britain earlier this year: American Express (Red Card), Nike (special Converse shoe), GAP (Tshirt line) and Armani (who hates all color in his clothes, so he’s going with sunglasses).

“Success is still to early to tell – but the real success is the recognition by major global brands of the consumer appeal and branding power of social impact.” [emphasis added]
(RED – Not Just for Communism)

This quote above comes from www.missionmeasurement.com, an organization whose mission is to assist organizations in measuring performance of the three component groups of Peter Drucker’s 3-legged stool — the for-profit corporate sector, the nonprofit sector, and the State. It is important to recognize that this nonprofit sector includes churches and mission organizations. Mission Measurement states:

“Whether you are a corporation, foundation, government agency or nonprofit organization, generating meaningful data can help you be accountable, demonstrate progress and learn what works.” [ emphasis added]

Quoting W. Edwards Deming (of Total Quality Management fame), “In God we trust, all others bring data,” this organization boasts:

“That’s the role of Mission Measurement. To help you measure your impact – the ‘return’ on the social impact dollars you are spending. Mission Measurement works with corporate, foundation, public and nonprofit clients to measure performance and analyze social impact. We bring years of client experience, thought leadership and measurement data to each client engagement. Our work usually starts where strategy leaves off – once an organization has determined its goals and priorities, we figure out how to measure their progress. Our measurement and dashboard reporting solutions deliver significant value to clients looking to justify and leverage their social investments.” [emphasis added]

Another organization that specializes in measuring performance of social sector organizations, in a webpage that actually defines the terms, describes their “vision for change”:

“If social sector organizations effectively measure their outcomes, they can better manage their performance. Once they better manage performance in a systematic way, they can continuously learn, thereby improving their overall social impact.”

Let us put this into plain English. Your church must “measure” your “outcomes” and “manage” its “performance” in a “systematic way” so that you can “continuously improve” and thereby result in a better overall “social impact.” This is a performance-driven system based on constant data collection.

This is Peter Drucker’s business model being applied to the non-profit sector, which includes the churches. Many thousands of pastors have been trained in this model via Leadership Network. Churches, non-profit agencies, charities, foundations and mission groups have been trained in this ideological framework so that it will become easier for them to comfortably merge with the other two legs of the 3-legged stool — the Corporations (via business, marketplace) and the State (via faith-based and community “transformation” activities). Each sector will be on the same page with the same mission, vision and values.

To underscore this point, check out just a few webpages:

***Peter Drucker’s “Prepare Your Nonprofit Organization to Meet the Collaboration Challenge” which includes worksheets to help your nonprofit organization develop “strategic alliances with businesses. Drucker’s stated mission for the nonprofit sector is “changed lives and changed conditions” — defined via these measurement tools described above.

***To see how this public-private 3-legged stool will apply to global health issues, read “Public – private ‘partnerships’ in health – a global call to action” by Sania Nishtar.

***Read about the United Nations Fund for International Partnerships (UNFIP) which encourages partnerships “that leverage the comparative advantages of Government, the private sector, foundations and civil society” so that they can “take advantage of synergies.” Why the current push for involvement with the private sector such as Bono’s RED campaign and Rick Warren’s Global P.E.A.C.E. Plan? This article states:

“For the UN Millennium Summit in 2000, Secretary-General Kofi Annan proposed and Member States agreed to forge new global partnerships with all sectors of civil society to meet, by 2015, a set of time-bound, measurable targets.” [emphasis added]

The partners in this UNFIP program include the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the Drucker Foundation, the Rockefeller Foundation, Rockefeller Brothers Fund, and the Aspen Institute. The Drucker Foundation was actually behind most of this activity towards forging 3-legged stool partnerships. It sponsored two conferences a decade ago which explored the creation of these social partnerships. Frances Hesselbein, mentioned several weeks ago in a series of Herescope posts, described these conferences, one of which was “Emerging Partnerships: New Ways in a New World” which was co-sponsored by the Drucker Foundation and the Rockefeller Brothers Fund. This conference is mentioned in a monograph describing the human ramifications of this new performance-based systems model.

This deal-maker partnering is the focus on a vision of shared values. Vision is defined as:

“The stated dream of what an organization wants to be, where it wants to go, or what it wants to stand for. For a vision statement to be meaningful, it must be achievable and measurable.”

How is a vision to be measured? Who determines whether success was achieved? By whose values? Whose standards? To whom will you be held accountable? By whose performance-driven criteria?

When one partners with the performance-driven crowd (otherwise known as purpose-driven), one must perform.

The Truth:

“No servant can serve two masters: for either he will hate the one, and love the other; or else he will hold to the one, and despise the other. Ye cannot serve God and Mammon.” (Luke 16:13)

“Be ye not unequally yoked together with unbelievers:…” (2 Corinthians 6:14a)

“Then the word of the LORD came unto Jeremiah the prophet, after that Hananiah the prophet had broken the yoke from off the neck of the prophet Jeremiah, saying, Go and tell Hananiah, saying, Thus saith the LORD; Thou has broken the yokes of wood; but thou shalt make for them yokes of iron.” (Jeremiah 28:12-13)