“Culture eats strategy for lunch” — Peter Drucker (1909-2005). As a pioneering management consultant, educator, and author, Drucker was convinced that no matter how great your strategy is, a plan will fail without a company (or organizational) culture that encourages people to implement it.

At Trinity, we do not want to offer you merely ideas or events. We want to invite you into a culture. So that presumes that you even know what Trinity’s culture is.

At our most basic, as a Church of Jesus Christ, we are believers in Him, and as such, we are His people. By His Word, the Lord sets our mission and priorities as His people and representatives.

Define the word “family.”  Now, how would you define your family? Surely there are things every family has in common, while inevitably, there are those things that mark you off as unique. At Trinity, we hold in common with other churches many theological pillars of the Christian Faith. And at the same time, there are those peculiar things that mark us off as unique. Our values at Trinity are both a mirror and a window — they reflect who we are, and yet we also view the details of our work through them. (We have articulated what makes us distinctively who we are, and you can read those Values on our website here)

You can assess any person, group, family, or even a community for what they value from their behaviors. For instance, you may regularly practice a sport with a team; you may rigorously work out or practice a musical instrument. All of this is because, undeniably, regular meetings and practices help maintain a skill. They also build a culture.

So the key question for you is, what are your values? What are your practices and habits? What makes it onto your calendar, and what never does? What gets your undivided attention, and what never crosses your mind (like the cricket scores in the Indian Premier League)?

You may like Trinity’s values. We may assure you that God loves you and has a wonderful plan for your life. But no strategy that we offer will influence you for long if it does not solidify into a habit or if you do not believe that you participate in a bigger story — that you are part of a culture.

So let’s go to the very foundation of EVERYTHING we know and love. Of all the things that shape our beliefs, practices, values, and culture, nothing offers more promise than God’s Word. If we can influence a human to do anything that offers the highest and most enduring benefit to them and others, it would be to help them to develop the habit of reading God’s Word every day.

If you haven’t signed up yet for the Seeing Jesus Together training this weekend, please consider it. During either of the worship services or at 3:00 pm this Sunday afternoon, you can attend a training seminar. It is designed to help you in one of the most enduring ways that we can help anyone — by getting you better positioned to read God’s Word every day so that you can know, trust, love, and obey the God Who made you and came, in Christ, to save you.

This is not just a strategy. This is the very foundation for all of our culture.