Adaptive leadership in the church

 Church leaders are asking why the changes they are attempting to make are not actually producing results. One reason is that we are trying to make things happen that are not going to happen. A church consultant shared something online this week that goes along with what I've been writing about for some time. We have been lying to ourselves saying that people will come back to the church. We said that when our young people started leaving the church. We said it when Covid kept people from attending the services in person. At least then we could point to the numbers of people who began watching online, but many churches now report they are seeing those numbers decrease, and it's not because these folks have returned to the live service. Some have learned they can get by very well without attending church very often, if at all. Most of them will not come back. We can keep trying to make changes in the hope that people will return to the church, but the likelihood is that they won't. 

The second reason our change efforts are failing is that we continue to make technical changes when adaptive changes are required. We make technical changes when we try to tweak a system we already have with things we already know. We might change the times of our worship service, change our committees into teams, change the music in our services, change the format of our services, make changes in the way we present our sermons, etc. In other words, we do what we already know what to do but we dress it up a little different. Technical solutions are fine if our problems are technical in nature, but the challenges I'm referring to are not technical. As you may have already learned, you can do all these things and nothing has really changed in the church.

If we want to respond to the challenges facing today's church we have to adapt to the reality of today's culture. We have to be willing to go on an adventure we had not planned on taking and find new ways to be the church in a new world.

Let me give you an example from outside the church. Last year our state banned public gatherings for about 3 months or so due to Covid. Even when that was lifted limited numbers of people were permitted to gather. When I resumed having auctions it was not uncommon for there to be no more than 20 people attending. That is not good for an auction! A friend of mine told me he was making a shift to doing his auction online. At first I was not interested in doing that. I love auction day. There is an excitement associated with auctions that I felt was not possible online. But, the people were not coming back. Prices were lower than they should be which wasn't good for me or my sellers. Something had to change.

I could have made technical changes. I could have changed my auction day from Tuesday to Thursday to see if people would come back. I could have increased my advertising or held special promotions. However, none of those would have made a difference. So, I adapted to the new reality and began conducting my auctions online. I signed up with an online company and had to learn their program. I had to learn new ways of presenting the items I have for sale at auction. I had to convince some sellers that online auctions were a good way to sell their items. I had to learn new marketing methods and how to effectively ship those items that were not purchased locally. The truth is we are still learning. The adaptive changes I made worked, and this year we will do more auctions than we've done the previous three years combined and new people from across the country sign up for every auction. It has been very successful.

Churches can beat their heads against the wall trying to get the people back who have left or we can accept the fact that most of them are not coming back and renew our focus on fulfilling the Great Commission in our communities. We can become worshiping, praying communities reaching into our neighborhoods to offer healing and hope to those who have been broken by life.

What will this look like? I don't know. What will the adaptive changes we need to make look like? I don't know. I don't believe anyone knows. Let's not wait until someone finds out and offers us a conference. I don't think there is time for that. Instead, let's take risks, let's trust God and launch out seeking to be on mission with Him. No doubt there will be some failures on the way doing that, but it's better than trying to do the same things that haven't been effective in decades.