creating culture, part 1

I've been thinking a lot about what it means to create culture.  I work in a church, where a lot of my job is working on the programming and staffing of the ONE hour we get with kids each week... do you realize that's less than 1% of a kid's week? 1%, that's it.  If kids are exposed to God thru church only 1% of their weekly time, it's got to be a place they LOVE to come.  We have to create a culture that screams loudly the things we want kids to walk away with, and one that doesn't forget the importance of impacting parents.  After all, those parents (and kids' peers/teachers) get way more than 1% of a kid's time.  If there's anywhere to create culture, it's in kids ministry!

I love talking/studying leadership, but I've never spent much time looking at it from this angle of culture shaping.  EVERYTHING we do in leadership is either creating/shaping a culture or letting culture shape us.  Recently I stepped into a certain specific culture as an outsider... a culture that had no doubt been created by strong leaders -- where people know what to wear, how to act, what to say, even key phrases to repeat.  It was a bit scary, but fascinating to see this!  

As cool as this is for me to see and ponder, I realize that we have to be super careful in creating culture.  Leaders can leverage their influence to change behaviors in a number of ways, and it scares me to thinking about working hard to create a culture and it be the completely wrong or even more so, the not God-honoring culture.  More to come on this...