Leading Through Constant Change

by Jason Locke

 

Change is an unavoidable part of life. People buy new clothes. They swap jobs. Kids graduate from one level of education to another. Folks switch homes or move to a new city. Someone gains weight, opts for a new hair style, or finds themself with a new boss. Constant changes face not just individuals but organizations of all kinds. Churches are no exception.

Leading through this kind of constant change is nothing new. In recent decades, a common term has been sustainability—how to build systems that can maintain themselves. Valued leaders were often those who knew how to uphold stable, tried-and-true systems in the face of life’s constant changes.

Sustainability, however, isn’t always possible. In addition to life’s normal changes, we live in an age of unforeseen, non-linear, and unprecedented change. We face challenges for which there are no road maps. While still confronting all the normal changes of life, good leaders struggle to stabilize the systems they lead in the midst of the unusually disruptive changes of our age.

In his book Resilience, Andrew Zolli tells this helpful parable. Imagine, he conjectures, that a car filled with smart people is hurtling at high speed toward a cliff. One group in the car is shouting, “Hit the brakes! Turn the wheel! At least take your foot off the gas!” These are sensible things to say. They are aimed at risk-mitigation. Under normal circumstances, we appreciate leaders who say such things because they can maintain the health of a system and prevent catastrophe.

But imagine that the calls to stop go unheeded. At this point, another group begins to speak. Realizing that disaster appears inevitable, these voices speak up for adaptation. They say, “Since it appears we will soon hurtle off a cliff, we need to assemble some parachutes and air bags.” This now feels the sensible thing to say since this strategy provides a potential path for survival.

This is an important truth about leading through constant change. Some are capable of leading in a way that avoids danger during ordinary operation. Others, however, are needed to help organizations be resilient in the face of unprecedented, transformational change. Churches typically have plenty of the first type, but they are now desperately in need of leaders in the second category. 

Churches will always want leaders who can mitigate risks and sustain congregational health by managing well. Whether these are elders, ministers or simply good managers, you need these folks to lead through the basic ongoing changes that are natural and common within a church. 

But we live in an era when skilled management is not enough for a church—or pretty much any organization. The threats to life “as we’ve known it” are real. The world has become an uncertain place. And while people in the past have turned to their worshiping communities as places of comfort and stability, many churches today are declining and face the real possibility of irrelevance and death. How do churches navigate such difficulties?

This is where churches desperately need the second group of leaders who can speak up about the need to build parachutes and air bags. Risk-averse managers have their place, but they are the wrong ones to lead when catastrophe is imminent. You can’t sustain health in a body that has cancer or has lost a limb. This scenario requires adaptation and improvisation. It requires resilience.

To be clear, adaptive change in a church is not about adding an instrumental service, rebranding the church, or installing female deacons. Those may be big steps for some, but they are not adaptive changes. An adaptive challenge for a church is one where its resources, habits and imaginative abilities are not furthering the church’s mission, and so the church must either adapt or die.

Andrew Zolli refers to the need for translational leaders who help activate (or translate between) unused parts of an organization and build the capacity to become a more collaborative, adaptive system. Tod Bolsinger, in his book The Mission Always Wins, speaks of adaptive or transformational leaders. These understand that, while win-win scenarios are ideal, some situations cannot be navigated without disappointing key people.

Churches have traditionally relied on the first set of leaders who maintain the system as it is. Yet most churches today are also in dire need of the second set who can help their churches adapt to meet the mission. Sadly, many traditional leaders fail to recognize that they are often inadequate to face these challenges alone.

Of course, some churches have managed the basic things poorly. These failures cause broken trust and gridlocked systems. In these circumstances, church leaders may need outside assistance to restore trust and unfreeze basic processes. Hope Network has consultants who can help.

Many other churches, however, are facing adaptive challenges where skilled management is not enough. The leadership groups of these churches could typically benefit from outside help to build the awareness and the capacity for adaptive change. Hope Network also has folks (such as myself) who have led their congregations down such paths and can advise yours, too.

Change is a given. But our ability to address change and adapt to a changing world involves more than steaming ahead on cruise control. They require us to plan carefully and enlist the right people for our ever-changing communities and ever-pressing mission.