What in Your Ministry Is Off-Limits for Debate?

I love this edition of the Andy Stanley Leadership Podcast. On the topic of introducing change, this is an essential listen! (See below to listen to the podcast)

There's a lot to digest in the podcast, but the section I listened to several times had to do with a quote about assumptions included in Andy Stanley's book, Deep and Wide. Here's the quote:

"The assumptions a team has held the longest or the most deeply are the likeliest to be its undoing. Some beliefs have come to appear so obvious that they are off-limits for debate.*"

The assumptions a team has held the longest or the most deeply are the likeliest to be its undoing. Some beliefs have come to appear so obvious that they are off-limits for debate. —Andy Stanley. Click To Tweet

Think about the implications of those two sentences. What are the assumptions that you've held the longest? What assumptions do you hold most deeply? What beliefs have become so obvious that they are off-limits for debate?

You could spend some very productive time working through those questions.

I've written about assumptions right here. Need more? See The Danger of Unexamined Assumptions, Testing Long-Held Assumptions, and Unearthing Underlying Assumptions.

*Although the quote is attributed to Richard Harrington on the podcast, I believe it is actually from Stall Points by Matthew S. Olson and Derek Van Bever. You can get many of their best ideas in an HBR article, When Growth Stalls.

Image by Ed Schipul