Why so many changes in the church fail

For the past few years our denomination has offered pastors and churches the opportunity to receive excellent training on various aspects of ministry with the hope that we will see some of our churches make some changes that will help them be more effective.  This multi-year training begins with the pastor receiving some individual instruction, and for the final few sessions a leadership team from the church is encouraged to attend with the pastor.  I personally know a number of pastors who have attended this training, and with few exceptions not many of their churches have experienced any real change.  The pastors and the leadership teams who attended the events returned to their churches excited about new opportunities to do ministry, but in many cases they ran into the same mindsets that have kept those churches in decline for years.  Some of these pastors eventually gave up and accepted the status quo or sought new churches to serve.

In my 30+ years of ministry I've seen this scenario played out time and again.  Denominations and other groups develop training for pastors and lay leaders that gets these people excited about new possibilities only to have their new ideas rejected by the church when they return.  I think we've been missing an important piece to church transformation.

I don't believe we can transform our churches simply by teaching church leaders new information and giving them new ways of doing ministry.  It does little good to train a person and send him or her back into a system that isn't willing to change.  It is also true that it usually isn't helpful for a church to be ready to be transformed if the pastor is stuck in the same old ways of thinking about ministry.  Both the pastor and the congregation needs to be on the same page if we want to see real change occur in our churches.  Otherwise, we will continue to see pastors become frustrated with ministry to the point of abandoning it completely, and we will continue to see churches stuck in decline because their pastors are unwilling to try new ways of doing ministry.

One of the best training events I attended as a pastor ended up making a big difference in our church because about ten other people from the church attended with me.  That is a high number of people for a congregation of 50-55 people.  Essentially, someone from nearly every family in our church attended that event, and when we left there that evening we were all on the same page as to what we needed to do as a congregation.  One-fifth of our congregation were immediate advocates for the changes we needed to make as a church, and none of those changes were resisted.  As a congregation we were ready for change, and a large enough group of people from the church learned together how to begin to implement those changes.  By the way, this is often done more easily in the smaller churches bivocational ministers are likely to serve.  It takes fewer people in such churches to convince others to accept the change.

I often encourage pastors to never attend continuing education events alone.  Always take as many from your congregation as possible so everyone can hear what you hear exactly as you hear it.  When you return to your church you will find you have a number of people ready to promote the changes you want to make.  You will likely find there is less opposition, and if there is you have a number of people to advocate for the changes you recommend.