Leading Change in the Church - Lesson 1

Well, welcome to this third of four courses in this leadership certificate. This subject is leading change in the church. I don't know what kind of emotions that title invokes in you. For some people, the term ‘leading change’ or just ‘change’ invokes excitement, invokes eagerness; oh, boy, we're going to experience some change; we get to see a new landscape, experience new things. For others, it invokes an emotion of dread or ‘here we go again.’ And some of that depends on personality, some of it depends on experience, what your personal journey with change has been. I can tell you that my journey with change has been both; it has been both exciting and dreadful, and in some respects, I've been the protagonist of both in my life. In other words, I've been the reason for both, and so I want to share with you during this course some of my own journey with this subject. 

I think this issue of leading change in the church is one of those things that I wish that every person preparing for ministry in the church could master and learn, because as I travel and work with churches and with church leaders around the world, I find that that our ability to deal with this in a godly way is really impacting, either positively or negatively, the church in so many parts of the world today. So, I'm excited about this subject, and I hope to share that excitement with you, and I'm sure that this course will elicit a lot of response and even emotion within you as you reflect on the change initiatives that you've either participated in or you've led in the past. So, we're really dealing with a number of issues in this course.

By way of overview, let me just start and tell you kind of where we're going with this. We’re going to start with looking at some dynamics of change. What does the scripture say about change? What is this thing of change all about? How does this fit within God's design for us and for his church? How is the church different? Oftentimes the church, for better or worse, has adopted secular or business strategies within the church to bring about change, and we're going to talk about the uniqueness of the church in that process. We're going to talk about change as a leadership role and look at why that is and why that's important. So, we're going to look at the dynamics of change, and then we're going to really focus in and give some significant attention to the effect of change on people. 

One of the things that I have noticed in all my study of change is that oftentimes, this is something that's looked at last, not first; we look at how it affects the organization and what we're supposed to do in terms of analyzing the power structures, and how many people we're going to lose, and all that kind of stuff, but as I have worked with people over the years, as we sensitize leaders to what happens to people when they go through change, it begins to affect how we perceive our role as Christ-centered leaders in this process. So the effect of change on people is very, very important, and, of course, the effect of change on churches, and we'll look at that in some depth, and then we'll go into change strategies. Once we have a good handle on how this dynamic of change really affects us as people, as God's people, then we're going to look at some key change strategies and hopefully get very practical about bringing about effective Christ-centered change within the church. 

So, let's begin with looking at some scripture verses, and I've got them written out here, so you needn’t look and take your Bibles, but they're right here. The first one is from Isaiah chapter 42, and it says, “See, the former things have taken place and new things I declare; before they spring into being I announce them to you.” That’s the Lord speaking through the prophet there. What does that verse say to you about change? What does it imply about change to you? 

STUDENT: It’s God doing it. 

Okay, God's initiative is implied in that verse, right? What else? Anything strike you? It's going to happen. So, there's something foreordained about this change reality in our experience, right? 

STUDENT: God feels the need to announce it in advance. 

Yeah, so it's going to happen to you, folks; get ready. Right. Then over in the New Testament, one of the most powerful verses that is familiar, probably, to many of us: “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come!” What does that say to us about change? 

STUDENT: Definitely the old is gone and new is coming, and we're changing, and I think the positive thing there is it's in Christ, that he's doing this, making us a new creation. 

STUDENT: Through Christ we are new, changed from the old. 

STUDENT: And if you're in Christ, you better expect to have something be different. 

So there's something fundamentally core about this issue of change that's built right into the Christian experience. We cannot get away from this reality of change that is right within the fabric of what it is to follow Jesus. It's a powerful thought as we think through that. But here's the flip side. from Malachi chapter three: “I the Lord do not change.” I think that means that he does not change. So how do you put these things together? If we're trying to come up with a picture of this encounter with God, what are these three verses put together; what do they mean? How do you web that together? What does it say to you? 

STUDENT: Well, I think if we had perfect organizations that were 100% built on God, then we wouldn’t want to change them, but they're not, and we have a model to work towards, but just like we're not perfect ourselves, so neither are organizations, and so we can't expect them to say, okay, now this is going to stay the same because God always stays the same, so we’re going to leave our church the same; it doesn’t work. 

There're probably some churches that feel like they're pretty close to God - very seriously - that's part of why churches resist change, sometimes, is because everything's about if we change, we're abandoning God, we're abandoning this reality that that God is in our lives, and so that gets a little mixed up at times, I think. What else do these three verses as they are woven together, how do they strike you? What is it saying?

STUDENT: it says that the Lord is the author of change in our lives, if we give that over to him, but he already knew from the beginning; he's not taken off guard by the changes that he causes in our lives. He's the author and the finisher, not to panic because of life changes; get to know the Lord; he's the one in charge of the changes. 

Yeah, I love that idea because it seems that these verses are saying to me that here's God as the pivot point that does not change, and as we move in our lives, as we change, we have that anchor; we have these terms of definition; we have a reference point, if you will, that that doesn't shift on us, and that's reassuring as believers. But with that, life and the walk of faith, the journey with Christ, is all about change, whether we look at the experience of the Israelites or we look in the New Testament at the life of believers. There is no such thing as static faith; it's all about becoming and ever becoming these new creations. What do you think about that? Reflections? 

STUDENT: God is the agent of change, and he brings it about, and he's the potter, we’re the clay. I think of that verse that talks about the king's heart is like the rivers of water; the Lord changes it to flow however he would. 

That’s a good thought. 

STUDENT: Well, it brings me a lot of hope to think that, you know, one day I will be like him, and that's our future, that's what our hope is in, and now we do see it darkly. and like somebody said to me the other day, I've been me a long time, you know; I think I'm pretty good but I know I'm not, you know there's a lot that the Lord needs to change; that's what we want to happen. 

STUDENT: The change is very hard, and as we experience change, that can be a difficult journey in the middle of it. 

That is so true.

STUDENT: I work with a colleague who's an athletic person, and she was a professional golfer and was pretty good. She tells a story that as she was looking to move up in her profession, she got some coaching that she needed to abandon her swing, and she had to start over, and she said that was the hardest year of her life, and afterwards, she could see the impact that it had, but the difficulty in stopping what she had done so well for 20-some years and then start all the way back was painful. 

Yeah, I've heard that. It's just these professional golfers that do that - it’s amazing; it’s enormous discipline it must require.

You know, I don't know about you, but I've always prided myself as being a person who likes change as long as I'm initiating it, but if someone is initiating it for me, I've a very different view of it oftentimes; I'm just trying to be honest with you and open, but I've been on the serving side of change, and sometimes it takes this re-sensitizing to recognize what it is to be on the receiving end of it. 

Well, as we look at this issue of change, then, I believe that producing change is 80% about leadership, and when I talk about leadership, it's really about establishing direction, it's about motivating, it's about aligning and inspiring people. And it's 20% management, producing change, which is planning, budgeting, organizing, problem solving. You know, much has been written about the differences between management and leadership. Maybe we could just stop a moment, and let me just ask you. There is no necessarily right or wrong answer about this, but as you think about those two disciplines, management and leadership, what is the distinction in your mind between those two terms? Thoughts?

STUDENT: So a manager is going to be more focused operationally; they might be more like a machine operator as opposed to the overall sort of tender of the people. You could use that gardener versus machine operator, not as a negative way, but just functionally, a manager is -- 

Okay, so when you think of management, you think of operations, a motif. Okay. Others? What do you think of? 

STUDENT: I am much more a manager than a leader, so I’m confessing I'm Brant, and I’m amanager. And I think in our culture today, we do too much of putting a divide between the two; we've got the coaches or the quarterbacks, we've got the team managers that are cleaning up quietly, and I don't see it like that; I think they're much more integrated, and I think that we have different callings and different roles and different strengths, but I don't see it as -- I'm looking forward to the discussion on the 80% / 20%. I think that you've got to have good what we are calling management, not necessarily budgeting, but problem solving early on; if we spend too much time brainstorming and have a lot of -- we've talked about this and some of the personalities and management styles in recent studies, but I think that management has a key role that's not just tactical; I think when we talk about problem solving, that to me can be visionary, but it’s a challenge we're addressing in the community, or in the culture. What are we trying to solve? And that can produce leadership that requires management and requires leadership; I think it’s very integrated. 

Well, I think that's well stated, and I hope and I encourage you to, as the manager among us, and there may be others as well, I encourage you to represent that well throughout this conversation, because there will be definitely places in which that management function is critical to this process of change in the church. 

So a lot has been written about this issue, and quite frankly, I agree with Brant that oftentimes in recent past I like to say that management is that discipline that leaders have liked to kick off the back porch; they just kind of treat them with the back of their hand, and I think that's unfortunate because there is an integration of these. Just by way of argument, both are critical within organizations, and furthermore, the disciplines of leadership and management do indeed overlap. 

And I would say one other thing. In many organizations, if not most, management and leadership functions are often performed by the same people -- that's very real. But I believe there are some distinct differences. Even though there's overlap, there are some differences. While the management role tends to focus on maintaining and improving systems to ensure organizational stability, the emphasis is on organizational stability, in the present tense, leaders ensure the future of the organization by being the catalyst for change. That's a very, very important difference between the two, at least as I frame up the issue of leadership. So if we could think of it this way, that leadership is primarily about change and management is primarily about stability. Now, obviously, you need both within an organization, and we're going to find that even in change initiatives, management functions are important. I'm interested in your feedback on that. 

Let me just say a couple of other words to set the stage. Unfortunately, in many organizations, even though I have stated that producing change is 80% leadership, 20% management, oftentimes what's happening is that in many of those organizations, those roles are flipped; the people that are supposed to be responsible for change actually have lead gifts in the area of management, and particularly in maturing organizations, that can be difficult because the focus is on operations and processes rather than bringing about the kind of focus on the future that's so necessary for the church and the organization to find its way into the future.