Last Thursday through Saturday I was at the Music Road Hotel in Gatlinburg, TN for the 4th annual Our Generation Summit. I learned so many great truths I look forward to sharing over the next few weeks. In preparation for my courses on Luther Rice and An Overview of the World God placed some ideas in my heart about what I can do for the cause of world missions in the first quarter of this year.
Zappos is a third part shoe company located in Kentucky. There are so many things I like about this innovative company. Not the least of them being that they are located in good ol’ Kentucky. Reading about their policy of offering new employees money to quite reminded me of the message my pastor preached at the Summit.
Pastor Austin’s message from Revelations 12:11 to me was the “summit” of the Summit. We had beautiful music on the Lamb, preaching on Jesus, then a wonderful skit on missionaries through history who had packed their luggage in caskets. The skit ended with “May the Lamb that is slain receive the reward of His sufferings”, the great Moravian missions cry.
About Zappos (taken from here)
After a week or so in this immersive experience, though, it’s time for what Zappos calls “The Offer.” The fast-growing company, which works hard to recruit people to join, says to its newest employees: “If you quit today, we will pay you for the amount of time you’ve worked, plus we will offer you a $1,000 bonus.” Zappos actually bribes its new employees to quit!
Why? Because if you’re willing to take the company up on the offer, you obviously don’t have the sense of commitment they are looking for. It’s hard to describe the level of energy in the Zappos culture—which means, by definition, it’s not for everybody. Zappos wants to learn if there’s a bad fit between what makes the organization tick and what makes individual employees tick—and it’s willing to pay to learn sooner rather than later. (About ten percent of new call-center employees take the money and run.)
Lesson taken aware for youth ministry.
I am thankful for a great dedicated team of youth workers. I am currently working with a team to help rearrange some positions in one of the ministries of our church. Just as important as it is to get the right people on the bus, it is equally as important to keep the door open so that people who didn’t want to be there could leave. I know commitment to a shoe company and life long service to the mission field are tremendously different. However, on the mission field, in a shoe company, or in youth ministry we will always do better with people who are sold out completely on what we are doing!
