Telling your story

Last night I read an interesting perspective on change.  The author was discussing how when most leaders begin to change their organization they begin with structure or systems.   For churches that often equates into wanting to change the worship format.  We want to move from traditional worship to contemporary or we want to install a projector or we want to replace the organ with a praise band.  Other churches want to change their constitution or their board structure.  All of these things may need to be changed, but the problem is that after those changes are made we often find that nothing except the structure of the church has changed.   The church itself remains unaffected.  To compound the problem, the organization constantly tries to revert back to its old familiar structure so the leadership must continually fight the battle to maintain the surface changes that have taken place.

The author of the book I was reading insisted that the only way to truly introduce change into a church is to begin telling a new story.  Individuals, families, and organizations, including churches, are greatly impacted by the stories we tell.  Smaller churches often struggle with a poor image of themselves because they have over the years believed certain things about themselves.  Do any of these sound familiar to you?  "We are too small to accomplish much for the Kingdom of God."  "We can't keep a pastor here for more than two or three years because pastors want to move on to a larger church for more salary than we can afford.  I guess God has called this church to be a training place for student ministers."  "We don't dare dip into our savings.  That's our rainy day account, and we never know when we might have an emergency and need that money."  "The problem with this church is that the young people have no commitment."  "The denomination doesn't care anything about us.  They're just interested in the big churches."  I could go on and list dozens of more stories smaller churches have told themselves for years. 

It matters little what kind of surface changes we make in our churches; if we continue to tell ourselves these same stories our churches will remain stuck by the limitations we have imposed on ourselves.  To experience real change in our churches it's necessary to catch a fresh vision from God for our churches and begin to tell stories around that vision.  Furthermore, it's important that we not stray from that story or allow others to sidetrack us from our story.  When others come along with stories that contradict the story behind our vision we have to stop them and repeat over and over again the new story.  Until that story becomes ingrained in people's minds and hearts and it becomes their story, nothing of any real substance will change in our churches.

What story defines your church?  Is it a story that lifts your church up or is it one that is holding your church back?  Who created your story?  Was it someone who wanted the best for your church or someone who had other motives?  Finally, if you need to do so, how can you develop a new story for your church, and what would that story look like?