Developing Leaders in the Small Church - Lesson 12

Glenn Daman
Developing Leaders in the Small Church
pc108-12
The Board as Change Agent
Lesson Transcript

[00:00:01] When I look back at last. 40 years and farming. I know you guys like to hear farming stories. I grew up on a farm and I think back and when I was growing up in the way farming work back then, there was small farms in our area. There was probably 12 to 13 different farmers that farmed in that valley. A large farm was maybe 1000 acres. The typical farm was 3 to 400 acres and. Very low tech. There was not a lot of business planning. You just went out and farmed and at the end of harvest you would take your crops in. And usually they would sell them within the next month because that's when they needed the money to pay off the bills and try to continue for another year. I contrast that now to way farming is today. I go back to my family farm where my brothers still farm and in that valley instead of 13 farmers, you basically have about two farmers. A typical size of a farm now is around 3000 acres. My brothers have a. Sprayer that is has a GPS in it. It's got a computer on it. And so you make the first round around the field. And then from that point on, the GPS does the steering for the machine. When you come to a corner, you make the corner, you line it back up with the computer screens, it shows you where you previously went and where you are now. And so you line it up and then you let go of the steering wheel and then the tractor automatically drives itself. Before they sell their crops. They spend many hours watching the market. They will buy futures. They will offset and try to offset some of the volatility of the market.

[00:02:20] And so it is now a multi-million dollar business. Where if you are not spending a great deal of time and careful planning, you will quickly go out of business. Farming has radically changed since when my father farmed to now when my brothers farm. And that's true of life. As we look around us, we can see massive changes going on in our society, even in rural communities. There is massive changes going on. But sometimes when we think when we enter into the church, that this church is should be one place where change doesn't happen. But as we compare the church to today to the Church of the New Testament era, we see that there are a massive amount of changes that have occurred even in the most traditional church today. If you were to walk into that church today, that is strive to avoid any changes in the last 40 years. They're very traditional. They're very much do it the way we've always done it. If you compare that church to how the early church runs, there would be a massive difference. In fact, you would hardly recognize if you were to look at them and say that they're of the same religion and faith. Not that the doctrine has changed, the doctrine hasn't. But how we do church. We come to church today and the early church did not have pews. They did not have a church building. They did not have an Oregon or a piano or a guitar or drums. They did not have worship teams. They did not have announcements. Or maybe they did. But we don't know that they didn't have Sunday school. They didn't have all the different things that we got going on today. They didn't have they had different things.

[00:04:32] And we recognize that that's okay because we are not the early church. And if we tried to do it like they did it back then, it wouldn't work. Because people change. Society changes. But we need to recognize that even today, that if the church is to. Exist. It has to be continually changing, not in its message. Now, don't get me wrong, the message of Scripture, this book doesn't change. This book remains the same. Our message remains the same. The Gospel of Christ remains the same. Sin remains the same. What was sin back in the time of the apostles is still sin today. That doesn't change. What changes is the form in which we do ministry and how we go about doing ministry. And so we need to recognize that as a church and as a board, we need to be the ones that both. Orchestrate change as well as govern how the changes take place. And so that's what I want us to talk about in this session. Is the board as change agents within the church? Because if the church continues to do things the way they've always done things, they will eventually die. Why? Because society changes, our situations change, and as a result, our ministry needs to change if we're going to be effective in reaching people. But this is not new. In fact, this really is from the very pages of scripture, for we find that God is in the business of making change. Salvation itself is a radical change. Before we accept Christ as our Savior, we are controlled by sin, and if there is no change in that person, then we will continue to be controlled by sin. We see that in Psalm 55, verse 19 and Matthew 18, verse three, that we have to change.

[00:07:01] From being controlled by sin to being controlled and governed by our relationship with Christ. We see in first grade things. Chapter 15 versus 51 inches 52 that the final and ultimate change will occur at the moment of our death when we put aside this broken down body in this mortal body impulses. And then we are changed to the immortal. So change is integrated as a part of our DNA, our spiritual DNA. If we don't change, we die. If we don't change, we don't grow in our relationship with Christ. So change is an integral part of God's redemptive plan. God himself is the ultimate change agent. Now, as we look at the changes that he make, those changes are not just superficial changes. They are substantial changes. Now, obviously, we think of in the redemptive work that Christ does within our life as being the ultimate of substantial changes. In fact, it's so radical that Paul said we are now a complete new creation. It's not as if go God comes down and just kind of rearranges our lives and makes them superficial changes in our life at the moment of salvation so that we can conform, we better conform to his image that it's so radical of a change you needed. And so God comes, enters into our life, and He completely recreates us. To be like his son. That's radical change. But we also see it in terms of just his dealings with his people. Think with me for a moment. The changes that occurred on an organizational level from the Old Testament to the New Testament. We see the change of the ceremonial law in the Old Testament. God use this the ceremonial law, as a way to point us in point the Old Testament believers to the person of Christ.

[00:09:27] But when the Christ came in, the New Testament church started. They no longer did the ceremonial laws. They no longer did the sacrifices. Why? Because the old was done away with. Because Christ became the final fulfillment of that. That was a massive change. If we don't appreciate that today because we're 2000 years removed, but if we are in that time period, the whole concept that we no longer had to go to the to the temple to perform the sacrifices that we now could could do away with that, that was a massive. Change in terms of the way they operated. We see the change of the priesthood that the second major change that God orchestrated was the change in the priesthood in the Old Testament. In order for a person to gain access to God or commune with God, they had to go through the priest and not just any priest. They had to be from the specific tribe of Levi so that the other tribes where we go re required to go through the priests in order to commune with God. But in the New Testament, we see this shift again occurring. So now all of us are called priests of God. Every single one of us now have access. And to the very presence of God. We're all priests. And then the change of the inward person that God changes us to be like him. So. So we see God in his redemptive plan. Even building in a change with what he's doing. We also see that change is required because when sinful behavior hinders the church, not only does God demand an orchestrated change on a personal level, we also see him doing it in a corporate level with this whole people. In Nehemiah Chapter 13, we see in Nehemiah bringing about the final reforms when he confronted the people of God and the people of Israel with the reading of the law in their presence, and even though they were commanded not to intermarry with the Americans at the mall, but they had done so.

[00:12:00] And so as a result, Nehemiah was required to take drastic action to exclude them from the from the people of Israel. In Ezra, we find Ezra facing the same thing in chapter ten that's so radical of a change was needed because they were starting to slip back into the idolatry and back into the paganism that had led to their captivity to begin with. And because of that, that they were starting to go back into it. Such a radical change was required that they had to separate themselves. From their godless wives. You see when sin is present within the church. We as leaders of the church need to make radical changes. We need to institute necessary changes to bring the people back into fellowship with God. And we need to understand that that is, we look back in church history, we see that there's this natural tendency of the church to slowly drift away from God. We see it with the people of Israel. We see it historically with the church. And so we need to recognize that our natural tendency, even as a church, as an evangelical church, our natural tendency, because of sins present still in our life, our natural tendency is to slowly start to drift away from God. And when that happens, we need to continually be examining as leaders. We need to be continually examining the health of the church so that we're continually making changes to bring the church back where they need to be. And if we're not if we're not continually examining the health of the church and intentional in bringing the church back, it will slowly drift away. And in another 50 to 100 years, the evangelical Church of of America today could easily be the dead church of Europe that we see today as well.

[00:14:12] And so the change is required. And so God orchestrates change to keep us. We also see that the apostles were change agents. Paul makes it clear that his calling as an apostle was to orchestrate changes in the lives of people. Colossians Chapter one. Class is chapter one. Those verses that we have looked at before, he says. We proclaim him admonishing, teaching everyone with all wisdom so that we may present everyone perfect in Christ. That's change. Paul says at the heart of my ministry is leading people into change and in this case, spiritual change. In fact, he says that's so important is this. He says, To this end, I labor struggling with all his energy, which so powerfully works in me that Paul recognized his ministry was about leading people in the process of inward change to become more like Christ in Philippians Chapter three versus 12 to 14. Paul makes that point regarding his own life as well. He says this Not only that, I've already obtained all this or have already been made perfect, but I press on to take hold of that which Christ Jesus took hold of me. Brothers, I do not consider myself yet to have taken hold of it. But one thing I do, forgetting what is behind and straining towards what is ahead, I press on to the gold to win the prize for which God is called me Heavenward in Christ Jesus. Other word, Paul saw himself in a continual state of change, continually seeking to change from the immature person that was graciously saved by by the grace of God to the person who becomes fully like Christ. And so we see that that at the core of scripture is change, not only on a spiritual level, but it's also needed on an organizational level.

[00:16:32] As we think about the church organization, we think about our ministry as a church. We need to recognize that change is required if we are to stay in touch with God's plan. Now, again, we go back to the early church in chapter two. We see a major shift occurring not only spiritually as the church, as we move from the the Israelites being the focal point to the church now being the focal point. But we see radical shifts occurring in terms of the organizational structures. We see that this change in terms of the theological perspective. In terms of the old Tesla with his focus upon going to God through the ceremonial laws which pointed them to Christ to now where we go to God by the person of Christ in His grace. But we also see a change. For example, in the day of the week that they worshiped. In the Old Testament. It was the seventh. It was the the seventh day. In the New Testament, it was the first day of the week. That's why we meet together on Sunday and no longer on Saturday. There is a change in terms of the organizational structuring. In the Old Testament, the organizational structure evolved around the priests and the priesthood, and you had this hierarchy of priests and they were responsible to do all the work of the ministry within the temple to now where everyone is regarded as priests. We see changes in terms of the focal point from the synagogues to now. We have house churches. So there were a number of changes that took place in the the Book of Acts. Read through the Book of Acts. And just just note how many times there was changes occurring because of God's redemptive plan.

[00:18:37] And yet we can look back now and we can see the whole plan. We can see how the all these changes that took place from from the Garden of Eden to the establishment of the law, to the ceremonial laws and the rituals and how that how all that was really part of one plan of God did, even though there was these massive changes, they were not arbitrary changes. They were part of God's plan as he fulfilled his purpose in his people. And so we need to recognize that the same is true for us today. God is continually at work. And is is plan is to continue to to set and establish the direction of the church. And so we need to continually be making changes to make sure that we're part of that plan. Change is required. Secondly, when circumstances and opportunities change. Paul, It's interesting to note his life, how many times he approached his approach and methodology changed because of the people he was serving. His message is never change and change, but how he communicated that message, we see significant changes, whether he was talking to a Jewish context or to a Greek or a pagan context. In fact, he says that in versus first Corinthians Chapter nine versus 19 to 23, that he was continually willing to make changes to adapt himself, his culture, his setting, so that he could effectively communicate the gospel. So we need to recognize that there are changes going on in our communities, that the circumstances in our in our communities are changing. The the needs of our communities are changing even in rural areas. Now you go back to where I grew up, where I grew up in our valley, there was. I'm not sure how many people there.

[00:20:45] There was about 13 farms, but there are many homes beyond that and many of those. The vast majority, if not everyone within that valley, either were farm related or logging related businesses. They either worked in the fields or they worked in the woods. Now you go there and there's only a few that would be farmers and only a few that would be loggers or even involved in those type of industries. The majority now will either maybe retired or they work and they drive to the neighboring cities and they commute into the 30 miles to Iowa, to Moscow, Idaho, or to Spokane, Washington, to work there. And so now you have commuters that live. Changes. Those people will react differently. They don't have any cultural mindset. And so we need to recognize there are changes going on that the society is a continual state of flux, continual changes, and we need to be recognizing to that so that we adapt our ministry as as our communities change. And to be effective, change is required when the church is hindering God's work. We see that in the Book of Acts as they were struggling with all the changes. There were those in the early church that did not like all those changes. They thought that we still needed to be doing the ceremonials and there was a large segment of the church that kept arguing that we need to keep with the sacrificial system and all the ceremonial laws of the Old Testament should still be in place. And as a result of that, it began to hinder the ministry of the church, because now that the church was starting to exclude the Gentiles, because that's what they did in the the the Jews did. They started instead of the seeing themselves as as those designed to reach out and reach the Gentiles, they saw themselves as trying to exclude them.

[00:22:49] And it became such a problem in Acts chapter 15 that they finally had to gather the church together, and all the leaders stood together to address the issue, to make the changes necessary, some major changes so that they could start reaching the Gentile community. You know, there are things in our churches. There's small churches there, there are cultural issues. There are traditions that we have their attitudes. There are programs that can begin to even hinder the ministry of the church, in the ministry of the church, in the community. And when that happens, we are obligated. By Scripture to make changes so that God's work will continue. Change is required when the church start struggling to survive. Again, we go back to Nehemiah. For 70 years, the city of Jerusalem was in ruin. It was demoralized because of it. And so Nehemiah came back and because of the crisis there, some major changes had to take place. He had to make some changes organizationally. He had to make some changes in terms of the attitudes of the people. Significant changes he had to bring about. Why? Because if he didn't. The city of Jerusalem was in ruins. And the same is true oftentimes in a small church. When we're faced with the struggle to survive, that's when we need to take a hard look at ourselves. And it's uncomfortable to do this, but we need to ask ourselves, why are we doing what we're doing and what are we doing, and how are we supposed to be doing it? And how can we make those changes that will help us to start being more effective in reaching our community, because otherwise we're just going to hasten our own death. We need to recognize also that change is required when needs are not being met.

[00:24:55] In chapter six, verse one, we find that there are those within the church that were not being that were not being ministered to. The Christian widows, the widows that were coming from more of a Greek culture. And as a result of that, they had to make some changes. And so when when ministry, when there's ministry opportunities in our community and their needs within our community that we can meet, but we're not doing it, we need to make changes now as we think to about change. I think there's several question and the question is how do we identify what changes are needed? And secondly, how do we know when the changes are needed? That's the struggle. Now, there are two types of organizational changes. We need to understand this. There are two types of changes that occur. First of all, there's intentional change. Intentional change is when we intentionally start doing something different. We look at the situation. We recognize that we need to be doing it differently. And so we deliberately start to alter what we do to be more effective. And really, it's based upon what we're trying to accomplish. And so we look at our goals. We look at what God's calling us to do, and we look at and say, okay, we're not we're not doing that right now. And so we intentionally make those changes. The second kind of change is passive change. Passive change is when we don't deliberately initiate change, but rather it simply continues to happen. We simply allow the church to function and as a result, change occurs. But instead of being proactive, it becomes at best, haphazard and arbitrary. Now, in some cases, as we think about passive changes, they can be positive because certainly God is over all this and and God is moving us in ways that sometimes we don't even recognize that he's making changes when we don't even see it.

[00:27:08] But the danger is oftentimes that when we just allow the church to passively go along, it will change. But it will change in the wrong direction. It will become more focused upon itself and inward. It will become more focused on institutions rather than ministry and mission. So we need to recognize and ask ourselves what are the intentional changes that we need to be making? Second is the type of organizational changes or how we go about doing it. There's first of all, incremental changes. Now, incremental changes are small changes that we make over a course of a long period of time. No words. Instead of one making one big change, we make a series of small changes to bring about a different ministry. The advantages to this is that they're they're easier and quicker to implement because they don't require as much work to implement. They don't require as much. Risk, It minimizes the risk, and people are more accepting of a small incremental change than they are of a drastic change. And also incremental changes are easier to repair. Let's face it, sometimes we implement a change and realize it was not the right decision. Well, if it's an incremental change, it's easier to take a step back versus a drastic change. So, for example, we come into our sanctuary here and we decide we want to remodel, but we begin just by painting one wall and we find out, well, we didn't like that color, so it's not a big deal. We just go and buy some different paint and repaint the wall versus a wholesale model where we're bringing in an excavator and completely tear down the structure and then all of a sudden realize, oh, that was a mistake. We shouldn't have done that.

[00:29:07] Drastic changes are more difficult to repair if it was not the right decision. So incremental changes. But there are the second things. The first is incremental. The second is the drastic or the radical change. That's the wholesale large scale changes that we implement. They're designed for rapid transformation of the church. Now there's times when that's needed. First of all, when a church is in crisis. In other words, if we're in a crisis moment, if the church is is declining and we're we're no longer able to function, then we've lost all of our membership. We're down to just a handful. We're at the point of of death of the church. Radical change needs to take place. Something needs to happen because otherwise the church will die. And so that's the drastic type of changes. And then there's the focus of change. There's two types of of the focal type of changes. The first is changes that are transformational in nature. In other words, these are changes that deal with our core values. They're there. They're core issue type of changes versus the secondly, the superficial type of changes, which are easier to do and deal more with superficial issues, programs, policies, etc.. Now. In in the slide there, there's a a matrix and you see a little matrix there that you have the, the drastic radical change and the increment incremental changes, and then you have the transformational change and the superficial change. The more drastic the change, the more transformational the change, the higher the risk and the higher and more intense the response will be. The. More superficial. The change. The more incremental the change, the lesser the risk, and the less people will respond emotionally against it. So part of our goal as leaders then, is to recognize that the higher the risk.

[00:31:34] The more emotional the response will be. And as a result of that, the more initially the greater the the opposition, the more radical the change. Yes. The more it will have a. At greater risk, you will have a greater opposition. So we need to try to as we think about change, we need to want to minimize as much as we can the risks and the impact, because the more we minimize the risks that are involved in the impact in the lives of people, the more likely they will be to accept it. And the best changes are the ones that maximize spiritual growth and minimize negative impact. So also, as we think about change of what we're trying to accomplish. And so one of the best ways is to do that through the more incremental change, the more radical the change, the more we want to try to minimize that risk by making it more incremental. The change. Now, sometimes radical change in a high degree of transformational change is necessary. But that's going to be the the when the church is in a point of crisis, when there's a problem, maybe a major conflict, or just that there's something going on that the church is no longer being effective in ministry. And it's at the point of death and it takes a radical. Surgery, if you would, to bring it back to health. But normally what we want to try to do is minimize. We want to lead towards transformation. But the best way to do that is to do it by incremental ways. So how do we how do we implement change so that it has the greatest positive impact and the least negative? Impact. So it leads towards transformation and it minimizes a negative impact.

[00:33:39] Well, we need to do that. We need to understand the change process. Now, there are three elements in terms of the change process. The first is it begins with the point of discontent that there's something going on that we're not content with in terms of the church. We become discontent with the present. It may be in a program, it may be in the fact that there's something going on with the church, but people are starting to get disconnected, discontented with it. And when they become this contented, what happens is they become less resistant to change. And so that's where it starts if we even when change is necessary. One of the things we have to do is to show people why it's necessary. That's building a sense of discontent within within the present. The second is once we we see that we're discontented with the present. Then there's the transition. This is when we start to explore what we need to do differently and we start trying different things. And that's the point of flux. That's the point when when things are a little bit out of control. Why? Because we're we're in transition. We begin to experiment. We try possible ideas until we find the one that begins to help us accomplish our purpose. And once we do that, the final stage then is it becomes the established norm. Okay, so we get settled back in. But it's important to understand that between the point of disconnect and the establishment, there is there is a degree of being uncomfortable in the church. So how do we do that? Well, first of all, we identify developing a change strategy begins with the identification. It begins by challenging the present and comparing it with what we want to be.

[00:35:43] We look at Scripture and we see here's where Scripture is, is teach us. Here's where it says we should be. Here is where we are at. Now how do we get there? And that means we need to be honest in our assessment of the church. One of the problems we have in leadership is that we oftentimes can look at the church through rose colored glasses. And we kind of like things without turmoil and change brings a degree of turmoil. And so as a result, we we sometimes ignore problems rather than deal with them. So we need to recognize the challenge and then we need to take action and we need to begin to prepare. And that begins to communicate why the change is needed, because we're helping people to see why we need to be discontented with the present. The second step in the change process is in preparation. That is, preparing people for the change that begins with communication. Communicating what needs to be changed, why it needs to be changed and how we're going to go about doing it. So we begin to to communicate. We get their involvement in the the process so that they're becoming involved in terms of this process of identifying and coming up with ideas. Because the more they're involved, the more ownership they're going to have. So we communicate, we get their participation and their involvement, and then we we start to generate our new idea of where we're going to go. And so we start to implement. Now, there are three critical issues as we think about the implementation stage are three critical questions that we need to ask. The first question is who must support the change if it's going to occur? If we want to change the Sunday school program, but we don't have the support of the Sunday school teachers, it doesn't matter how many changes we try to implement, they're not going to happen.

[00:37:50] We need their support if the change is going to happen. So who must support the change if it's going to happen? Second, what is the timetable that the change will take place? How how are we going to orchestrate? How long will it take? What are the steps? And then third, who is responsible to implement the change? Who's going to be the one who actually does it Once the change is implemented? We need to evaluate it to make sure it's doing what we intended. Now, there's there's truth at times to evaluate. First of all, it's what I call the scheduled stops. And the higher the risk, the more we want to schedule stops. And the schedule stops are nothing more than those opportunities we have down the road to say, okay, we're going to stop at that point and evaluate and go no further until we evaluate to make sure we're on track. Okay, because that that minimizes the risk, because it gives us an opportunity to say this isn't working. And especially when we're trying something new ideas. People are much more open to try something. If they know that eventually down the road they can take a stop and say, No, it's not working, let's back up. So we do this several stops. If it's major changes, we want to do more of them where we where we evaluate it. And then lastly, there's the ongoing evaluation. This is something we do as leaders that ongoing continually. We should be evaluating the church periodically as a board. We just shouldn't have one board meeting where we just sit down and say, How are things going? Where are we going as a church? Word of God want us to go? Are we going that direction? Do we need to make changes to get there? You see, we need to be change agents.

[00:39:38] If if we're not the change agents, we will lead the church to its death, both spiritually and organizationally. And so we need to recognize an essential part of our role is to lead the church in the right type of changes. Changes will happen. It's a matter of are the changes that we're we're controlling and we are using to keep us on track or are they changes that will draw us away from our relationship with God. Change is a reality within the church.