Intentionality. Why?

In between meetings with people, you’ll usually find me at a fast-food restaurant.

 

Bear with me for a minute.

Over the years, I’ve modified Maslow’s “hierarchy of needs” to something a bit more, uh, specific. Starting at the top of my triangle is Jesus—that’s kind of obvious for a former pastor, right? Then next is family: my wife, two amazing daughters, and a gaggle of grandkids. Next is friends: how can you beat a circle of friends in a cozy pub with some Old Fashioneds?

Then it gets a little embarrassing: next comes my MacBook—which contains nearly every single detail of my life and work. Following that is the intrinsic need for WiFi, and, hence, my favorite fast-food restaurant with the best internet connection ever and Coke Zero refills: McDonald’s.

Prove me wrong and don’t give me that judgy look.

It is there that I pull out my MacBook and get busy with whatever I’m working on. And while doing that the other day, as an Enneagram 5 on the ADHD spectrum, I was suddenly struck with this serious wonderment: why do almost all fast-food establishments use brown napkins?

This, of course, led to a Google search and a simple Ai answer: “Brown napkins are often made from secondary post-consumer waste (like old corrugated cardboard and phonebooks) rather than virgin tree pulp.”

Of course. Because profit margins are so tight in the food industry, skip the bleaching process and save manufacturing costs.

Everything in the fast-food restaurant of my choice is intentional, based on decades of franchise operations and research. Reality check: without intentionality, any endeavor has a short shelf life of effectiveness.

And in the circles I run in, I am regularly puzzled by the lack of intentionality in churches. Especially because any efforts toward intentionality begin with the question: Why?

As in, “Why do we do this?” Or, “Why do we do this this way?” I cannot stress enough how important intentionality is and why all our methodologies should be deconstructed from time to time. Everything we do as leaders—or as basic humans—should be formed by intentional behaviors rooted in why.

Jesus was incredibly intentional. John’s fascinating account of Jesus’ last few hours is breathtaking. In John 13, just before Jesus washed the feet of his disciples (including the one whom he knew would betray him), this remarkable text was captured:

Jesus, knowing that the Father had given all things into his hands, and that he had come from God and was going back to God, rose from supper. He laid aside his outer garments, and taking a towel, tied it around his waist.   JOHN 13:3-4

In that simple passage, all three of humanity’s primary questions were deftly handled by Jesus:

• Why am I here?

• Where did I come from?

• Where am I going? 

Those why-questions enabled Jesus to perform a remarkably curious act in his final instructive hours with his mentees: wash their feet. It was intentional.

Instead, I often observe churches doing the same things week after week without a hint of intentionality beyond simply pulling off the task.

What would happen if we asked our leadership team, or elders, or whoever, to explain a deeper why to the things we do every week? Or just as revealing, why we don’t do certain other things? When we know the why, we become intentional with everything we do.

Intentionality is a critical leadership behavior.

And this all started with brown napkins.

Dave Workman | The Elemental Group

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