So, what do I do about it?
Reading about the lifecycle can be pretty depressing. It’s fine if your church is in the first few stages. But discovering you’re leading a church that’s in the latter years of its organsiational life is about as fun as swallowing cod liver oil.
My topic today is “What do we do about it?” My argument will be that leaders can turn their churches around if they acknowledge that there’s a problem, look deeper at their church’s particular stage in the lifecycle, and get some help.
There are some consistent qualities in leaders who’ve managed to do this. I’ll look at the qualities of change leaders in my next post.
1. Acknowledge.
Like gravity, the organisational life cycle exerts its influence. Its pattern occurs whether we notice it or not. Like gravity, too, though, the life cycle can be counteracted. Aeroplanes and hot air balloons negate the force of gravitational pull. But they do so because their inventors first understood how gravity worked and then found a way to counteract its force.
Many church leaders want to counteract the decline occurring in their churches. Acknowledging that their churches are in the latter stages of the life cycle is an important step. This is to see and accept the forces that are at work.
There are two steps of acknowledgement, and both require substantial courage.
The first is for the pastor to admit that there is a problem. The second is for the church itself to admit that there is a problem.
While it might seem wise to stop after the first acknowledgement (“I don’t want to cause alarm”), in reality, it prevents other leaders and the congregation from waking up from their work avoidance (or, to use the language of Kurt Lewin, allow for survival anxiety to be felt). Going public with this kind of information will cause tension, but it’s a tension that must be felt for the congregation’s own good.
Herrington et al. write: “Creative tension is exercised when change leaders paint two pictures clearly. The first picture is of God's vision for the congregation. The second is an accurate depiction of current reality… Out of this tension, the energy to drive the change process is produced.”
If it’s common knowledge that people don’t like change, it’s also commonly understood that usually it is pain that drives change. It’s a toothache that makes us go see the dentist; back pain that sends us to the physio; looking honestly in the mirror that finally motivates a visit to the gym; and a big blow out with a spouse that prompts a visit to the counsellor.
When we front up about decline to our leaders and congregations, we allow them to feel the pain, too. If we prevent them from feeling this, it is unlikely, further down the line, that they will be open and receptive to making change.
2. Look closer.
Being aware of the lifecycle is good. Fronting up to your people about decline is good. Neither is enough, however, to understand what’s causing the problem. If it’s tough for a leader to admit that stagnation is occurring, it’s usually even harder to take a good look under the bonnet to see what’s really going on.
Alice Mann, using construction imagery, argues that prospective change agents must first excavate before attempting to build. (Build here, meaning attempting to fix the perceived problems).
In other words, before you run ahead in an attempt to fix what you think is wrong, have a good look at your congregational culture.
She writes:
“A congregation's culture (or cultures, since more than one distinctive culture may be manifest within a single congregation) can be explored by studying various cultural products such as worship, buildings or other physical artefacts, and mission activity and the local context.”
Amongst other things, some of the rather unsubtle questions she recommended church leaders wrestle with are:
Is your congregation primarily in the fellowship business? Is your congregation primarily in the social action or social service business? Is your congregation primarily in the historic preservation business? Is your congregation primarily in the business of calling people into discipleship and forming them in a life-changing faith? Ouch.
3. Get help
Change is so hard for people that some will resist it even if they are aware that the status quo isn’t working. In fact, the longer that your church has been drifting towards decline, the more likely it is that opposition to necessary changes will occur.
Bringing about church change will require inside and outside assistance. Church change experts recommend a range of ideas for both types of help.
Inside:
Congregational change isn’t for lone rangers. You need support from within the congregation. So, carefully select people who can help you think and pray through potential changes. If your vestry or eldership board is up for this, great. If they are too focused on the work of governance, set up another group for this purpose.
The need is for a team to help you lead the congregation in learning, develop a vision, and soak the change process in prayer.
Learning. For Alice Mann, learning is the most important thing. You need to find out 1) why it is that your church is missionally stagnant, and 2) where is God at work in your community. So serious is she about the importance of this that she recommends the process begins with the development of a learning covenant.
Paul Borden and Herrington et al. agree with this but place the term ‘vision’ where Mann has ‘learning’. The job of the group is to corporately discern God’s vision for your congregation. Both authors also recommend developing a prayer group to pray first for the development of vision and then for the implementation of change.
Alan Roxburgh has a slightly different take. Yes, learning and vision are necessary, he claims, but none of this will work if the learning/vision group are not innovators or early adopters. So, 1) figure out which of your congregants are early, middle, and late adopters, and then 2) gather together a team of early adopters (which he reckons will be roughly 10-15% of the congregation). The vision of change will emerge from these conversations. In Roxburgh’s words, “Cultivating the missional imagination of God’s people is the core strategy.”
Outside:
External help for change comes in two forms: support for pastors and interventions for the church.
Mentoring, coaching, and peer support are all good ways to get additional help. Mentoring would come from a current or former pastor who has successfully led a church through change. A coach's job is to help their client reflect on their situation, find clarity, and then set future goals. I’m a big fan of the Community of Practice peer support model. I run these 6-weekly. To use Mann’s learning terminology, this multiplies the learning. Participants learn from their own change journey as well as the experiences of other pastors around Aotearoa.
External support for the church (which does not exclude the pastor) is to call for a more substantial force for change. Options include Redemptive Family from Love Your Neighbour, City to City’s revitalise program, and Pathways. Some of the authors I’ve listed, including Borden and Roxburgh, have their own programs as well. Personally, (surprise, surprise) I’m a thorough Pathways convert. This beauty is its flexibility; it begins with what is working well, and the church leader remains fully in control of how fast (or slow) the church moves.
In summary, if your church is in the latter stages of its organisational life, all is not lost; we serve a God who came back from the dead, after all.
But counteracting the work of decline takes careful and deliberate work; no church has ever drifted towards renewal. You will need to acknowledge that all is not well, take a good look at your congregational culture, and get some outside help.
Sources: Alice Mann, Can Our Church Live?: Redeveloping Congregations in Decline; Herrington, Bonem and Furr, Leading Congregational Change: A Practical Guide for the Transformational Journey; Roxburgh and Romanuk, The Missional Leader: Equipping Your Church to Reach a Changing World; Paul Borden, Hit the Bullseye: How Denominations can aim the congregation at the Mision field; Ken Morgan, Pathways: Local mission for all kinds of churches.