Mar
23
2011

Leading Change in the Church

An article by Matt

Richard Florida tweeted a fascinating quote from Antonio Gramsci on Monday:

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While Gramsci’s writing was aimed at 1930′s Italy and the marxist uprisings that were going on throughout Europe, I see a great deal of application for the church in this day and age.

Three ways that I see this applying to church life:

As a ministry comes to the end of its’ life cycle a new thing can not be birthed out of it until it is allowed to die. As the ministry stagnates those participating in it shift their focus from an others focused ministry to an inward focused attempt to keep the ministry alive.
As a church ages and the world around it changes there comes a point in time when a tough decision must be made: do we redouble our efforts with the status quo, or do we embrace a potentially painful change and work towards reaching the current culture surrounding us?
As the next generations begin to join the ranks of church leadership the decision on whether or not to give them permission to lead must be made… even if it means that they do things in a different way than the generations before them.

I have heard the the process of giving birth involves a touch of pain. Being a man, I am not all that intimately acquainted with this process but I do know that the process of birthing something new in the church can be a painful process at times. The good news, in both situations, is that the pain is temporary and the new work that comes out of this temporary pain will allow a church to minister in ways not previously imagined.

So the question has always been, how do you lead a church to engage in the pain of birthing something new when they are happy with the status quo? Bill Hybels discussed this at the Global Leadership Summit this past summer saying that the first step in leading your church through change is not painting a picture of how great the destination will be, but by painting a picture of how bad the status quo is. His language was here and there, but you get the idea: in order to lead through change you need to remind your church of how bad the “here” is and then pain the picture of how great the “there” will be.

This is not always an easy job. When a church is on the leading edge of a culture shift not everyone will recognize the opportunity that lays before it. The status quo may seem as though it will last forever and “why do we want to go through the pain of change to fix something that is already working?” It is during these times that the relational investments made throughout a leader’s tenure in a church begin to pay off in the trust that is given to the leader.

What kind of difficult transitions have you been through as a church leader?
How did you lead your congregation from here to there?

Jeff Elkins

Lighting a fire (like Hybels said) in my experience has two very difficult aspect: confession and repentance. You have to admit there is a problem – something the institutional structure of churches is not designed to empower because the disenfranchised and angry often are pushed to the outside instead of heard. Once you can confess there is a problem, you need to own. A lot of times we will confess the church is broken, but then not take responsibility for being part of the problem. If we can’t own it then we can’t change our behavior.

It’s hard because nothing is ever all bad. There are a lot of good times mixed in with the frustrating ones. Separating them is rough.

Just my two cents.

http://www.churchthought.com Matt Steen

My experience has been that if the leadership of a church will confess that there is a problem and then accepts their collective responsibility for that problem people will follow. The best examples of leading through change have included celebrations of the historically good alongside confession of complacency and a desire to see a fresh move of God.

By the way, I am reading Gordon MacDonald’s who stole my church. Great book… I think you might appreciate it.

Anonymous

Excellent post -wish I could comment more. Love Richard Florida btw.

Agree with all your points, especially liked the third.

See you around Matt.