In this post, I am going to focus on the leadership failure I see within churches: the inability to form leaders to be transformers of culture, not simply administrators or innovators. My sense is that I am describing a phenomenon occurring across industries, in that we prepare people to implement best practices or experiment with the newest trend, but we do not prepare them for the frankly spiritual task of transforming culture to integrate new practices into existing systems. If you are not involved involved in a church, I welcome your input on how you see this playing itself out in your field (you may be able to skip point #1). If you are involved in a church, I welcome your pushback on what I am missing.Point #1: Most churches are in need of more than simply "a few more young families" but wholesale transformation.
Point #2: We have prepared leaders to adopt best practices or experiment with the newest trend. This will not lead to transformation.
Point #3: Changing culture is linked with reforming best practices and embracing new business models, but requires a different approach and character.
Therefore: If we want to see the transformation of existing churches, we will need to speak more openly about culture change and design systems to equip and sustain leaders for this kind of change.
Point #1: Most churches are in need of more than simply "a few more young families" but wholesale transformation.
Subpoint A: Most churches, even when clamoring for growth, do not want change, or at least, real change.
Most churches, especially those within mainline denominations, are experiencing decline. We could reveal this using all sorts of metrics. Typically when you ask people within these congregations how they can move forward, the answer is something like:
- We need more X: young families, kids in Sunday School, money in the bank
- We need cooler Y: a praise band, screens in worship, less formal vestments
- We need social change Z: Prayer back in school, no sports on Sundays, Wednesday night church time
To put it in terms of a business, the people within declining congregations typically look for change in one of three ways- We want customers who used to like to return to us
- We want to employ practices of firms whose skill set is entirely different than ours
- We want society to bring back the time when consumption of our products was supported.
Perhaps I am framing this too uncharitably or setting up an unfair strawman! I admit I've thought and said most of these things over the years. Furthermore, wanting a praise band or less formal worship style may be helpful in some contexts. Many congregations would be helped significantly by cosmetic and incremental changes. Lastly, at least some such comments acknowledges that some sort of internal change is necessary. Yet I have almost never heard a congregation say: "In order to stop this decades long trend of decline, the way we've done things must fundamentally change, which will require our hearts to be transformed by God's Word and encounter with our neighbor."
Subpoint B: In the Bible the church grew because it underwent a transformation grounded in prayer and study of the word.
In the book of Acts, the church grows rapidly. It did not have great marketing techniques. It did not have a culturally sophisticated worship style. It enjoyed no cultural advantages. Yet somehow, this group of Galilean peasants launches a movement that transforms the entire Roman Empire. Obviously the Spirit leads the transformation; let's take a closer look at what happens:
- A group of fairly inward looking, yet very pious Jews living in Jerusalem (Acts 1) spend time in prayer waiting for the Holy Spirit. They are overcome by fear and joy at the cross and resurrection.
- The Holy Spirit comes and blows them out of their comfort zone and they are transformed into an open faith community that welcomes Jews from all over the world (Acts 2).
- They spend time listening to God, each other and the neighbor (Acts 2).
- They preach and embrace the reality of rigorous discipleship as preached earlier by Jesus (Acts 2-5)
- As the community grows, they must address internal growing pains (Acts 6) and external social pressure (Acts 8).
- Finally, they are led to preach and find Jesus outside of their city (Acts 9 and 10).
- This culminates in official "doctrine" of the church codifying a new way of engaging the outsider (Acts 15) in a way that forever orients the community toward the broader world and paves the way for incredible expansion.
I realize that one could summarize the first half of the book of Acts differently, but it is fair to say that the growth of the church happens as a result of the insiders undergoing a change of their hearts to embrace new people, new practices and new policies. We cannot expect congregations (or firms or non-profits) to grow, after years of decline, without undergoing such a similar transformation of their hearts.
Point #2: We have prepared leaders to adopt best practices or experiment with the newest trend. This will not lead to transformation.
Subpoint #A: The American church grooms its leaders into one of two types. My sense is that there is something similar within the business world that happens.
We tend to foster future congregational leaders to have a chaplain and/or innovator mentality.
- Chaplains: People who are excellent at providing care within their settings. Many of these people also have strong skills in administration and equipping of others for the care-giving task. When it comes to leadership, these people can be very wise at setting up processes to ensure broad participation. They also tend to be people who can get "into the weeds" and are willing patiently to address concerns people have. They can study best practices at other churches and will implement once they perceive that the kinks have been worked out.
- Innovators: People who have no time for shifting deck chairs on what they perceive as the sinking Titanic called the church of the Western hemisphere. They want to seed new ministries that will help reach out to the ever-growing number of people who have tuned out or are turned off to formal religious expression in the USA. They likely have a love-hate relationship with the churches and denominations they are in and lots of other leaders are bit jealous, terrified and yet hopeful for them. Denominations often shine a spotlight on the ministries of innovators because they show great promise in their infancy and hope that others can adopt what works from these inventors. When it comes to leadership, they thrive in "adaptive" leadership, that is, situations in which they are willing to experiment, fail and try again.
For those familiar with the terms technical and adaptative change, I am arguing that we produce pastors who are ready to implement technical change and/or adaptive change. Technical change is a change in which the problem and solution can be identified and implemented beforehand. Adaptive change is a chance in which the problem and solution can only be discovered by trial and error. For example, a technical change might be moving a choir rehearsal from Wednesday night to Sunday afternoon to acknowledge that the aging choir does not like night driving. An adaptive change might be experimenting with models of integrating youth into adult ensembles after years of separate youth choirs. The adaptive change likely requires a number of iterations to get it right. The technical change likely works, if it is well communicated and those effected are on board. Adaptive change, even when well communicated and with the supportive of stake holders might not work.
Subpoint #2: This will not lead to transformation.
To be clear, I believe we need congregations to engage in adaptive leadership. We need innovation as the existing model isn't working. However, innovation is not transformation. I argue that successful innovation requires transformation. To put it another way, adaptive change requires cultural change. For example, let's say that we start having youth work with adult choirs This starts changing the whole way a congregation things about youth no longer as a silo (the dominant way of thinking for nearly two generations). What kind of possibilities or push-back does this produce? In order for youth to sing with adults, this is not simply going to require some changes in scheduling, but a change in heart of how people in the congregation relate across generations. It might also require the congregation to break down barriers it had around style of music to find something that works for all ages.
Another example: We started worshipping outside during COVID. This blossomed into a favorite part of our congregation's life. Now we have people from the neighborhood who will not join the main group of people for worship, but will sit outside of their apartments and listen from a distance. We have been very slow as a congregation to embrace or reach out to them. Why is this? We innovated by adding outside worship. Yet our culture still says the people that matter are the people whose butts are in front of the pastor on a Sunday morning. What culture shift will be required by us to view those worshipping from a distance as part of us?
Point #3: Changing culture is linked with reforming best practices and embracing new business models, but requires a different approach and character.
Culture change is not something that just happens. It actually requires
- Time in prayer and study, listening to God, each other and the broader world
- Identification of culture change that is desired by leadership
- Implementation of technical change to support that culture change
- Openness to adaptive change that this makes possible
- Leadership to hold strong when resistance is encountered
Going back to the example of the outside worship, we have generally a culture that is open to others entering into our space, but likely expects them to come into our space. It will require leadership to recognize this as a challenge and lean in. However, it will also require technical change - we need to, for example, knock on their doors the week before summer worship starts, invite them and then make bulletins available to them. But it may also lead into adaptive change. What happens when some of those folks start coming to worship and bring their hearts, concerns and stories of faith? It will also come with a pushback - "Why are we printing bulletins for people that don't pay in" or other such possible comments. (Frankly, I don't believe my congregation would say that, but I wanted to give an example of this). However, it should be noted, that if we hadn't gone through a huge culture shift - worship does not need to happen in our sanctuary - which was built on lots of technical changes - how to make worship outside work - we wouldn't be in a position to engage in adaptive change around engaging the stranger who does not come into our circle or our building. We needed the confidence of the successful move outside to begin the experimentation with our neighbors in this apartment complex.
Here is my summary of these three types of change
| Types of Change |
| Technical | Cultural | Adaptive |
| Changes | Processes | Values | Clients |
| Addresses | How | Why | For Whom |
| Builds on | | Technical Change | Cultural Change |
| Who must be consulted | Existing end-users | Whole community; Stakeholders | Audience outside/on-margins of system |
| Takes | 1-3 meetings to decide | 5+ years to accomplish | 3-5 years to prepare |
| Communication stops | Once new process accepted | Once new value accepted | Once new community accepted |
| To find solutions | Ask "end-users"; Examine best practices in industry | Align practices with values | Try stuff that builds on your existing skill set |
| To succeed | Follow transparent process and communicate | Ensure leadership is linked to endure pushback | Develop capacity for failure |
| Stance toward mistakes | Eliminate them | Forgive People | Embrace them |
| Leaders must be... | Thoughtful | Enduring | Innovative |
| Attending | Listening | Dreaming |
Therefore: If we want to see the transformation of existing churches, we will need to speak more openly about culture change and design systems to equip and sustain leaders for this kind of change.
To put this all together, I was educated in how to be a chaplain and how to be an innovator. But I was not equipped for the long-hard, gut-wrenching practice of changing culture. This really is a spiritual task because it does not simply involve failing, but it involves interacting with people whom you love with whom you find yourself in disagreements. More painfully, the disagreement may seem about technical change, but underneath, it is about culture change, and typically masking a great deal of grief about culture and loss of identity within a community.
If we are serious about revitalizing congregations (and this is actually an if), then I think we will need to equip ministers far-differently, preparing them to lead transformations of cultures within congregations so that they can eventually guide congregations in the messy process of figuring out how they can be the church for the next generation in a very different world than the one these congregation arose out of.
Lastly, I realize that any congregation who is in decline has heroic expectations on their pastor. (This was a glaring and intentional omission under point #1!) Congregations (and companies!) clamor for a leader this younger and yet more experienced, more caring yet more bold, deep and inspiring, and of course a traditionalist innovator. Impossible, right! I wonder though, how many say out loud, "We want a pastor who will change our hearts to embrace others outside the community who are different than us!" If you ever find a congregation that says this, take the call right away.
