Leading a Congregation through Change

Gil Rendle
Vice President of Program, The Alban Institute

One of the most freeing and empowering opportunities for leaders who are addressing change—including changes in worship practices—is to be aware of, and help others understand, what is normal healthy personal and organizational behavior. Using the lens of general systems theory it is possible to identify normal behavior that is more often viewed as problematic. Not needing to see it as a problem requiring an answer (which is often, in fact, nonexistent) frees leaders to experiment with other paths and strategies. Leaders need help to see and interpret what is normal.

When you meet resistance in response to innovation, realize that resistance was already there before you introduced the new idea. More than a reaction to the innovation, the resistance was already a part of the system for some very normal, natural, and important reasons.

Every living system has an upper and a lower control limit of change or adaptability that it will allow. If it didn't, the system would be threatened. For example, as living systems, we have an internal body temperature of 98.6°F. On a really hot day we perspire—the moisture on our skin evaporates, which causes the blood to cool down. On a very cold day we shiver, and the muscles stimulate the flow of warm blood through the body. These are examples of what systems theorists call resistance feedback loops. All systems have built into them controls that do not allow them to be threatened.

If you are responsible as a leader to help transition your church, you need to be aware that the natural response of the congregation will be to protect itself. That protective reaction has nothing to do with you. Don't take it personally! The congregation is behaving normally.

When you as a transition leader encounter resistance, it's likely not coming to you as opposition (unless other relational factors are already present) but as information. The resistance is a feedback loop—the congregation (or subgroup or individual) is trying to tell you something. What they're trying to communicate is that there is something going on that they fear. They may not realize it; even if they realize it, they may not be able to verbalize it.

One of the roles of transition leaders, then, isn't so much coming up with the right answers but being able to listen to people (without insecure, anxious reaction). You get resistance, which begins to feel like opposition, and since you're the leader, your normal next step is to defend your position. In our culture, leaders are trained (formally or informally) in the art of persuasion. If you don't agree with me, I explain my point to you again; if you still don't agree, I explain it again using other terms (possibly even with the support of "expert" opinion). If when we meet resistance, we push back, the resistance will come back even harder. If that cycle continues unabated, eventually the system will push the leader out.

Your ministry is not about you, so don't take resistance personally. Your ministry is to help the congregation you serve discover and obey the will of Christ for it. Your response has more to do with helping the system learn than with helping the system change.

We leaders try to be problem solvers. We've been trained to identify problems. Often, if what we're working on isn't actually a problem, we will reformat it in such a way that it is a problem. We do it because if we've been trained as problem solvers, we know the first step is to define the problem. So often we try to get people to agree that there is a problem and that this is the problem, knowing that simply agreeing on what the problem is takes you two-thirds of the way to the solution of the problem itself. The next step we take in problem solving is to explore options (brainstorming). After that, we make decisions, which leads us to action. This process works well—it's one of the quickest ways of taking a group from a problem to a solution.

The dilemma is, much of what we deal with in resistance to change is not a "problem." For it to be a problem it must have an answer. Often what we're dealing with has a path, and a purpose, but it does not have an answer. It may actually be about difference in preferences, and whether or not they are aware of it, committed church people usually have reasonable theological grounds for what they prefer (e.g., celebrative worship—Psalm 150; orderly, formal worship—1 Cor. 14). Often in such cases, compromise isn't a helpful idea. Both sides of some disagreements can be right (at least in part), and answers are elusive. If an answer is forced, it can easily disenfranchise some of the people involved (possibly even get some terminated).

Sometimes problem solving is the best way to deal with an issue, but it should not be the only tool we have. There's an old saying: "If all I have is a hammer, everything else looks like a nail." We need other tools for addressing challenges in our churches.

Maybe instead of trying to solve the problem, we need a different course of action. We need to stop looking at every indication of resistance to change as a problem that needs to be solved. It may instead present an opportunity for deep and rich theological conversation. It can become a time for the entire congregation to grow and learn together through hearing one another. (For example, "worship wars" can often be opportunities for people to discuss in a much deeper theological sense what worship means to them and how they form community around worship gatherings.) What they need to help make it happen is a leader who doesn't try to fix the "problem," but one who helps them think and talk through what it all means, bringing everyone to a deeper level of understanding and openness.

A helpful, alternative course of action is to "find a creative path." Our objective is not to install change, but to nurture it. John Scherer writes: "In order for change to be birthed, there have to be two parents present." The first parent is pain. Pain must be present in order for a system to change, because otherwise the system is comfortable. Comfort stifles the sense of a need for change. How much time do you as a leader spend in comforting the congregation? One of the ways we judge our own value as a leader is in whether or not everybody is happy with us and with what we're doing. This is one of the ways a system colludes to not change. Be aware that leadership that moves against this natural collusion to introduce motivating pain is not easily rewarded by the people you are trying to lead.

A lot of systems remain stuck because they have tied rewards to the wrong things. For example, Personnel Committees charged with evaluating clergy have the impossible job of making judgments when they can't possibly have enough information to do it responsibly, so they resort to the easy question: "Are there any complaints?" That assumes "no complaints" means everything is as it should be, a status quo, which is then rewarded. So the church floats harmlessly along, disengaged from its culture.

You don't want to inflict pain on people, but you do want to help them become aware of the need for change: something is not right or an opportunity has been missed. You bring it to the surface so they can begin to feel uncomfortable about it. An effective way is to help people see the consequences of their current path.

Systems are notoriously adept at colluding around answers that will not make a difference. Congregations faced with an obvious need for change in what they are doing in ministry (e.g., membership is declining) will sometimes remain in a state of denial and may even find a way to talk about how their future will be better, even though they do not plan to change what they are doing. So the task of bringing the need for change into a level of consciousness is very important. Effective leaders find the appropriate pain and try to keep people there (instead of seeking to solve their perceived problem). The church needs to recover the role of helping people become uncomfortable with their inappropriate behavior.

Keep them in their discomfort and ask them to learn more about it. If you hold the system in a state of discomfort, there is energy that can be channeled in productive ways (it's hard to steer a parked car). Those involved in the discussion will at this point likely want to treat the issue as a problem and try to solve it (i.e., form a committee). Interrupt that movement and steer them toward "learning more about this issue so we can see where to go and grow next."

People with a value system from the GI or "builder" generation have a cultural predisposition to organize around their discomfort. So they will form petitions before you know they're upset. When this happens, the leader needs to help them become uncomfortable with their discomfort. For example, when seniors are upset about the new kind of music used in worship, ask a line of questioning like the following: "Do you have grandchildren? Do you love your grandchildren? Would you sacrifice a great deal for the sake of your grandchildren? Would you be willing to learn a new kind of music so your grandchildren would be willing to be involved in church?" At this point, their discomfort has shifted from a concern about form to a missional concern, and their discomfort is focused on themselves, not on the fact that you haven't solved their problem for them.

If, as Scherer asserts, there have to be two parents for change to be birthed, and the first parent is pain, the second parent is possibility. There has to be a sense of possibility of what could be in order for people to want to move ahead. Too much pain and anxiety in the system can cripple it. Possibility balances out the pain, keeping the system open to response. So after they become aware of the need for change, they need to begin to get glimpses of "what could be" (not "answers"—here the leaders must be careful not to attach possibilities to pain as if they're answers that will "solve the problem").

For example: A church's governing board is discussing the large number of inactive church members. After some time, one of the members moves to instruct the future Nominating Committees to involve two inactive members on each committee so it would motivate them to get active in church life again (which is an attempt to provide an answer to the problem). The other members seem ready to go along with it (they can feel better because they've done something and they themselves don't have to change; and even though the idea won't work, it's not an illogical idea). This is what happens when a "pain" comes along and we prematurely attach a solution to it. Instead of going that route, during the "painful" discussion, throw out one of the following possibilities: "What would we be like if people actually wanted to be a part of what's going on here?" or "What would it be like if we threw out the concept of membership and focused our attention on the variety of relationships we as a church could have with different groups of people?" There won't be any quick, easy answers to a question like that, but now the system is poised to learn something.

If we can get people to stop trying to solve problems and instead get them to talk about the possibilities of what could be, then we are at the threshold of change.

The third way to help people change (according to Scherer) is by broadening their horizons, helping them move beyond their assumptions. You do that by giving them articles, showing videos, sending them to conferences, etc. You move them into learning about something else, something not already a part of their world, so they can then think differently about the situation needing change. Industry calls this "benchmarking"—sending a team to observe another company's process, not so they can come back and try to plug that foreign process into your system, but so they can apply their learnings to your situation, having had the benefit of having thought about things in new ways.

Who do you involve in the discussion? Don't seek to make the whole congregation deal with the pain of sensing the need for change. Normal distribution patterns in a healthy organization show that in a typical congregation, 2 percent of the people will think a suggestion (whatever it is) is a good idea, and another 2 percent will think it's a bad idea. These are positional thinkers—they are locked into their reactions. Leaders tend to spend far too much time worrying over and trying to persuade the negative positional thinkers—whose minds are already made up. When that fails, leaders tend to run next to the positive positional thinkers—who will agree with anything they want to do. The problem is, this is the 4 percent of the congregation who can't help. But there is another 12 percent of the congregation who will cautiously agree ("this sounds like it could be a good idea—it makes sense—I'd like to hear more"), and another 12 percent who are thoughtfully doubtful ("it doesn't sound like it would be a good idea, but I'm willing to hear more about it"), and these people comprising one-fourth of the congregation can be easily interested and yet remain open without taking a premature position on the issue. This quarter of the congregation (which will likely correspond closely to the 20 percent of the people who do 80 percent of the work) is the group that needs to be involved in the discussion. Statistically, the other three-quarters of the congregation will not likely become interested or want (or need) to get involved.

As leaders your responsibility is not to supply all the right answers, but to make sure the right people are asking the right questions, and then to make sure they do the work. (One of the prime rules of consulting is that no matter what the client "serves" you, always hit it back over the net to them. Never take responsibility for what belongs to the client. Reframe whatever they give you into a question and hit it back to them.) In order for this to work, we must accept discomfort ourselves. A leader in a changing system will find it difficult to be comfortable. You can't be nurtured by a system you're trying to change. Leaders then need to find support from outside the system. Outside the system you can get honest, objective feedback. It can't happen inside the changing system, because the system is uncomfortable.

Seeking support from outside the system need not (and should not) mean isolating yourself from the discomfort others within the system are feeling. You can't lead from outside the system; you can't have adequate support from inside the system. Edwin Friedman (Generation to Generation) says when you're dealing with change in a church system, you must always stay in touch. Always stay in touch with everyone in the system—even the naysayers—always listen to what they have to say. Friedman goes on to say: after listening to them, give them your reasoned position and then expect sabotage. That is normal for resistance movement within systems. You can expect it. But what you must never do is lose touch with any part of the system, because if you do, you can't lead it. So if leaders are protecting themselves to take care of their own pain, they are in effect no longer leading. Admittedly, this process is a lot harder than just solving peoples' problems.

Ron Heifetz—in Leadership without East Answers, probably the best leadership book I'm aware of that speaks to this particular time in our culture, a time of adaptive change—says that a primary skill of leadership is to learn how to get up on the balcony, to get out of the daily work long enough to figure out what's going on and get the big picture. The opposite approach is reactive space. The more you live in reactive space (driven from one task to another, without even taking time to assess priorities), the harder it is to keep hold of what's important. So as a leader, get up on the balcony, and get others up there with you.

Gil Rendle was in parish ministry for 15 years as an ordained United Methodist minister. For the past 16 years, he has been consulting with local congregations and regional church bodies, using his background in ministry, organizational development, and systems theory. He is the author of Leading Change in the Congregation: Spiritual and Organizational Tools for Leaders and Leading the Multi-Generational Church: Meeting the Leadership Challenge.