Anyone who has been in a church of any size understands how difficult it is for change to occur in a church. People say they want things to be different, but they don't want anything changed. As a pastor I tried to implement a number of changes in our church. Some of them were accepted while others were rejected. Sometimes my suggestions were rejected because wiser people than me knew our church better than I did and understood why those changes would not work in our situation. That was especially true in my earlier years at the church. Sometimes they were rejected because I had not been at the church long enough to have the influence it would take to effectively lead the change. (I did not understand that at the time but see it clearly now.) One of the principle reasons many of the rejections occurred was because I had failed to create a sense of urgency behind the reason for the change. John Maxwell is right when he says that people will not change until the pain of not changing is greater than the pain of the change. Likewise, Jeff Woods is right when he writes that "Change management is really pain management." Whenever a congregation hears of possible change they immediately begin thinking of how that change is going to impact them and what level of pain it might bring to the congregation. Change agents must manage that pain if they want the change to be accepted and successful. One of the most effective ways to manage the pain is to create a sense of urgency around the change. John Kotter believes that the single biggest reason most change efforts fail is because the leader failed to create that sense of urgency. He's absolutely right.
As leaders in a church we often spend great amounts of time studying particular issues in our churches. One day we find a possible solution to a problem, and we immediately want to describe some changes we need to make to our congregations. At that point we recognize they don't seem nearly as excited as we are, and, in fact, may speak up quite forcefully against our proposal. We forget they have not spent the days and weeks trying to resolve the problem like we have and wonder why they're not excited about our great plan to make things better. That's why we have to stress the why before we begin talking about the what.
In recent years a number of churches in my area have changed the way they are structured. In most cases they have moved from a two-board structure with monthly business meetings to a single leadership team and annual or semi-annual business meetings. This has been a major change for every one of these churches. The pastors who led the change most effectively were the ones who began the change effort by talking about how their old structure simply was not effective in the rapidly changing 21st century. As the problems of the old structures were pointed out to the congregations some began to understand the need for some type of different structure. By the time the church began exploring other structural options it had already been decided by many people that some change in the church structure was coming. Sufficient numbers of people became dissatisfied with the old structure that had served them well for many years that there was minimal pain associated with the change. There was a great deal of new learning that had to take place, and the transition to a new structure often took a few years to complete, but the transition was made easier because the leadership had created a sense of urgency around the need to make the change well before proposing what a new structure might look like.
Other churches have discussed making the same structural change but have not been able to do so. Some in those churches want a different structure while others want to preserve the traditional structure that has worked so well for them for many years. While they argue over the what, no one is talking about why a structure change might be needed. There has been a lack of urgency in those churches around any possible change, so no one feels any pressure to make the change.
It should be noted that I am not advocating that every church needs to make this particular change. In fact, if there is not a compelling "why" changes should not be made. Change for change sake is stupid. Changing something because of the belief that "if you build it they will come" is equally stupid. Change is too difficult to just be changing things for the sake of change. If you want to introduce some change into your church and you cannot find a compelling reason for the change then you probably should abandon that idea until you find such a reason. Trying to convince a congregation to make a significant change without a compelling reason is foolish and will do little but create conflict among the congregation. But, spending considerable time on the why will often lead to much less resistance to the change and make it much easier to implement.
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