Leading Congregational Change Workbook: A Practical Guide for the Transformational Journey: 10 (Jossey-Bass Leadership Network Series) - Softcover

Herrington, Jim

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0787948853 ISBN 13: 9780787948856

Verlag: Jossey-Bass, 2000

Inhaltsangabe

A Leadership Network Publication

With this much-needed handbook, the authors brilliantly combine their experience guiding dozens of churches through the change process with both the study of Christian disciplines and the sophisticated understanding of such important business thinkers as John Kotter on leading change and Peter Senge on learning organizations. In this eminently readable book the authors have distilled their insights and practices into simple but powerful concepts for leading congregations, whether long established or recently formed, through profound change.

Leaders using this guide will also be interested in the companion Leading Congregational Change Workbook, which offers assessment questions, planning worksheets, activities, and case examples for each stage of the process.

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

JIM HERRINGTON is executive director of Mission Houston, an interdenominational, multicultural pastoral effort to transform the city of Houston. MIKE BONEM is president and cofounder of Kingdom Transformation Partners, a church consulting and training firm based in Houston. JAMES H. FURR is senior church consultant with Union Baptist Association and adjunct professor of sociology at Houston Baptist University.

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Leading Congregational Change

By James H. Furr

Jossey-Bass

Copyright © 2000 James H. Furr
All right reserved.
ISBN: 9780787948856

Chapter One

Learning to Lead Change A Transformational Journey

Many Christian congregations in America today need to experience life-giving transformation. If the need is so compelling, why are these congregations not embracing and initiating change? In fact, many have attempted to make adjustments. But their efforts often run into resistance or produce marginal results. When this happens, they may conclude that "we can't change-we'll just have to make the best of it."

There's good news! God is still eager and able to re-create both people and congregations. Furthermore, the principles of leading transformation can be learned by most church leaders in ordinary congregations.

Over the past decade, a group of churches in Houston, Texas, has passionately engaged the question, "How do we transform declining congregations into Christ-like bodies that display the power of the Gospel in our communities?" Today congregations everywhere are struggling with the rapid-fire changes in our world and the impact these changes are having on their ministries. How do churches respond to these changes and remain true to the core teachings of the Scripture?

These are questions that the churches of Union Baptist Association (UBA) have been addressing for more than a decade. This book presents the model and principles for congregational transformation that emerged from their journey. In sharing the lessons from our experience, we hope to encourage other congregations and to help them navigate their own tumultuous environments.

In this chapter, we relate the story of the model's development in UBA. The story actually unfolds on two levels-the transformation of a local judicatory and of many individual congregations. With the benefit of hindsight, we are able to tell the story in an orderly fashion. As we lived it, the actual experience was anything but orderly. Fueled by a passion for the local church, pastors and judicatory leaders prayed, studied, dialogued, and experimented. We learned as much from our failures as we did from our successes. We experienced conflict at many different levels. The process was both humbling and rewarding, two emotions that any change leader will ultimately experience.

How successful has the journey been? In the 1980s, Southern Baptist congregations lost ground, when compared to the overall growth of the population, in every county in the country. From 1990 to 1995, the Southern Baptist churches in Houston grew by 19.2 percent while the county grew by an estimated 12.9 percent. Baptisms increased by nearly 50 percent, and giving to the association increased dramatically. A clear and compelling vision is shared among this group of denominational churches in a day that proclaims the death of denominational loyalties. This book is not about denominational revitalization, but we do advocate that congregational leaders learn and draw support from others to navigate the waters of change successfully.

The church in America is at a crossroads. We share our story to offer hope to churches across the country-hope in a practical, proven process that can help create a renewed sense of vitality and impact. Though it is written by three church consultants, this is the story of courageous pastors and congregational leaders who allowed us to learn with them as they embraced the journey of change.

Two Defining Moments: Catalysts for Change

Our story begins in the fall of 1989. The UBA staff team experienced two clarifying moments that set the course for a decade of learning about change leadership. The previous spring, I (Jim Herrington) was called to serve as the director of this association of five hundred Southern Baptist churches in the Houston area. The two colleagues who coauthor this book joined the team almost immediately. James Furr became a member of the staff team, serving as a consultant to local congregations. Mike Bonem served as my personal consultant in the effort to clarify UBA's mission and vision for the future.

A Fresh Look at the Trends

The first defining moment grew out of a statistical analysis. James profiled the membership, attendance, and giving trends for all our churches as a group from 1950 through 1989. The graphs reflected generally positive growth in all the categories. My immediate response to this picture was "This looks good. We've done well over the past forty years."

Then James finished the story. On top of the trend lines for the association, he laid a graph of the growth of the city for the same period. The message was startling. It showed a gap between the growth of the churches and the growth of the city that grew wider every year. In business terms, we had been losing market share for forty years. At the annual meeting of our churches each fall, we would congratulate ourselves for an increase in resident membership, while failing to acknowledge that the city had grown significantly faster during the same year. We had actually lost ground. With few exceptions, this pattern had repeated itself for forty years.

Feedback from the Front Lines

Determined to discover the causes of this trend, we convened a series of seventeen listening sessions with pastors around the city. This produced the second defining moment. A total of 176 pastors participated. They represented congregations of all sizes, of the inner city and the suburbs, and of eight different cultures.

On a Tuesday night in September 1989, we convened a listening session at Faith Memorial Baptist Church. Sixteen pastors attended, and several brought their spouses. As the meeting unfolded, a pastor named Dave decided to give us some painfully honest feedback. "I never open any mail that comes from the denomination. You guys don't have a clue what my world is like. You keep sending me standardized programs with promises that my church will successfully reach the community, if I just use the program the way you designed it. When I say that it's not working, you tell me that I'm either doing something wrong or that I'm not working hard enough."

He paused and looked at the floor. When he looked up again, there were tears in his eyes. "I'm working harder than I've ever worked, for less results than I've ever gotten. My health is failing and my family is falling apart. And I feel abandoned by my denomination. I want nothing more than to see my community embrace the Gospel. But one thing is clear to me. Working harder at what we've been doing is simply not the answer."

That night we gathered around Dave and prayed for him. I thanked him for the courage to be honest. Then came the clarifying moment. I looked at the other pastors and said, "It would help me to know how much Dave's experiences mirror your own."

We did not leave the room until after midnight. These men and women poured out hearts of frustration and confusion. They knew, long before we did a statistical analysis, that we were losing the city. They knew that their best efforts were not producing the results that they desired and that their communities needed. They were brokenhearted over the lack of impact their churches were having. And they were frustrated that their training had not prepared them for this world. It was clear that they were looking for credible guides to share the risks of navigating this new world, and none were to be found.

As I drove home that night, I found myself talking out loud to God. I asked him for wisdom. I made a promise that if he would show the way to help pastors and congregations have an impact on our city, I would follow no matter what the cost. At that time I had no way of knowing the full significance of this covenant. In retrospect, I wonder if I would have been so quick to make that promise had I realized what was ahead. I did not understand the power of a paradigm. I could not foresee the resistance to change that would come. I did not anticipate the personal attacks or the sense of abandonment that I would feel at various points along the way. I now know that these are common experiences for every change leader. As I began the journey, the clich, "ignorance is bliss" contained more than a grain of truth.

Changing Our Association Before We Could Help Others

These two defining moments produced a sense of urgency that drove us to prayer, to dialogue, and to a commitment to learn. (See Chapter Three about the role of creating urgency in successful change processes.) We readily acknowledged that we were guilty of offering only standardized, denominational programs. And it was clear that the results of these programs were overwhelmed by the scope of the need in our city. The only conclusion was that the association would need to make radical changes.

But not everyone in the organization agreed. Despite compelling evidence, many pastors and UBA staff members still wanted us to hold tightly to the traditional ways. For nearly two years, we ran on two, parallel tracks. On one track we continued offering standard denominational programs and support.

It was from the other track that the new vision ultimately emerged. This was the track of generative learning-of seeking new solutions to the challenges we faced. It only became a "track" in retrospect. In the midst of the moment, it felt more like fighting our way through a dense, deeply forested jungle. We continued listening to pastors, building relationships with them, and earning their trust.

We also found Henry Blackaby and Claude King's Experiencing God to be very helpful. The authors describe that God is always at work around us, and that he invites us to become involved with him in his work (1990, pp. 19-20). (See Chapter Five on the ongoing challenge of alignment.) We began to take small groups of pastors away for one-day prayer retreats. We prayed for God to show us his activity in our world. We made covenants with him and with each other that we would make adjustments to join God as his activity became clear. (See Chapter Two on spiritual vitality and Chapter Three on personal preparation.)

We read extensively from both Christian and business literature about healthy, effective organizations. We were deeply influenced by Bill Hybels and Rick Warren and the successes of their congregations. We also saw many applications in Peter Senge's The Fifth Discipline (1990) and in John Kotter's Leading Change (1996).

As the process continued, a vision for the future began to emerge and gain clarity. The vision had its roots in our very first feeble attempt at drafting a vision statement for the organization. (See Chapter Four on discerning vision.) Over time that vision became clearer and ultimately was expressed this way:

UBA's vision is healthy congregations changing the world from the inside out.

This was a very stressful period. Our staff team was composed of highly competent professionals who set high standards and were accustomed to knowing the answers. Our own image of leadership made it difficult to be in the role of learner. There is a certain vulnerability that comes from acknowledging that we don't know what we need to know to succeed. Yet in today's rapidly changing environment, leaders are increasingly required to be learners.

We also experienced resistance to change from those who were primarily involved in the association's ongoing services. As the vision gained clarity, we began to ask what changes we needed to make. This created an increasing level of anxiety among those who were committed to our traditional track. This anxiety was expressed in hundreds of different conversations and decisions along the way.

Our stress was compounded by the absence of an adequate process for leading change. Our collective experiences were with incremental approaches to change. Only in retrospect did we realize that we were engaged in a paradigm shift. (See Chapter Eight on mental models.) We operated more from intuition and from a willingness to risk failure in order to learn. And we were sustained by a deep commitment to Jesus Christ and a conviction that change was absolutely necessary.

Understanding the Dynamics of Change

The pursuit of God's vision for UBA led us first to assess the planning processes that congregations were using. At that time, our denomination used a long-range planning process that was based on a set of standard programs. Churches assessed the strength of their existing programs, without ever asking whether these were the right programs. They followed this assessment by setting goals for increased participation in each area. The message from our pastors, however, was that standardized programming was no longer effective.

Emergence of the First Part of the Model

In the spring of 1991, UBA team member Robert Sowell initiated a pilot project to test the impact of a different planning process. This strategic planning process differed from long-range planning in several critical ways. (The planning process for change that ultimately emerged is described in Chapters Three through Five.) Ideally, it began with a thorough assessment that included internal measures-attendance, giving, membership. But it also required congregations to assess external factors, such as demographic trends and community needs.

Second, the strategic planning process included the development of a mission and vision statement that congregations could use to guide and assess their progress. Rather than measure progress against itself (did our attendance increase compared to last year?), the congregation would begin to measure progress by its impact on the community. Third, it guided congregations to identify the key priorities that would enable them to make the most progress toward achieving their mission and vision. These priorities became the focus of new activity in the life of the church.

Ten congregations enlisted in the pilot project. The pastors of these congregations participated in a two-day retreat where the strategic planning process was described. We offered to serve as consultants to the churches as they engaged in this planning process. All ten pastors signed on for the project.

Only one of the congregations in the pilot project had a highly successful experience. Hoi Thanh Tin Lanh Baptist Vietnam, pastored by Khanh Huynh, experienced significant long-term growth. From a congregation of approximately forty members, it is now a healthy, vibrant congregation with an average attendance of three hundred fifty that is making a significant impact in the Vietnamese community of Houston and beyond.

In every other congregation that seriously engaged the process, a common pattern emerged. The strategic planning process began with great enthusiasm. The congregation developed a clearer sense of its situation and its environment and eventually established a vision. Then as the vision-based priorities were implemented, significant conflict emerged.

Learning from Conflict

In retrospect, this conflict should not have been surprising. It paralleled what was happening in our association. As we used the strategic planning process and pursued the vision for the association, the old ways of doing things were challenged. This resulted in an accelerating level of conflict. As new financial resources became available, they were budgeted, almost exclusively, to the new priorities identified in our planning. This threatened those who had a vested interest in the way we had always done things. We experienced passive and direct resistance from some staff members and from pastors in the association. Usually the conflict was behind the scenes, but more than once our deployment of resources to the new priorities was challenged in open meetings.

Over time and through hundreds of conversations we came to recognize that change does not happen without conflict. As we reviewed the biblical patterns, every time-without exception-the people of God began to make adjustments to join God in his activity, conflict emerged. Blackaby and King (1990) call it "the crisis of belief."

I would like to say that the conflict was civil and was conducted at the philosophical level. Often it wasn't. In the midst of change, the best and the worst of human nature emerges. On many occasions, the conflict became very personal. Our motives and character were questioned and challenged many times. Sometimes in the heat of the conflict, our motives were indeed suspect. On more than one occasion, we contributed to the destructive nature of these confrontations.

Continues...

Excerpted from Leading Congregational Changeby James H. Furr Copyright © 2000 by James H. Furr. Excerpted by permission.
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Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Jossey-Bass
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2000
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 0787948853
• ISBN 13: 9780787948856
• Einband: Tapa blanda
• Anzahl der Seiten: 126
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: Nicht verfügbar