Chapter 4: Missional Change Model
Systems analysis (62) "A congregation is made up of a series of relationships, traditions, and networks ceaselessly interacting and affecting one another."
Principal One: Focus on the Culture, Not the Organization (63) - only way things will change
"The culture of a congregation is how it views itself in relationship to the community, the values that shape how it does things, expectations of one another and of its leaders, unspoken codes about why it exists and whom it serves, how it reads Scripture, and how it forms a community"
Principle 2:Focusing on Culture Does Not Change Culture
Instead of viewing places and relationships as potential church growth, view them as places and people where God is at work and calling us to listen with love. In other words, be open to learning from culture, not trying to assimilate it to church culture.
Principle 3: Change Takes Time and Small Steps and Principle 4: Baby Steps
Principle 5: Starting with "Alignment" Is Not the Answer (64)
Lining up congregation's strategy, structure, staff, resources, etc in a common goal. Performative
Alignment is not something that we can plan. It has to emerge from experiments and dialogue.
(65) Changes throughout our culture since the end of the Cold War.
Post- September 11 world - insecurity and threat. Sense of being together in community is replaced by smaller group alliances that protect against those who appear different.
Job insecurity. Need for church to address the anxiety and confusion of people. Allow expression of these frustrations. People are losing orientation (66).
Bible used as a tool for people in their private lives. It is "colonized by narcissistic, private anxieties in the service of therapy" (67). Need to make this more communal. "People no longer have the language with which to articulate the meaning of their experience of discontinuity and anxiety except in terms of the private and personal" (69). We need to find ourselves in the larger biblical narrative. Importance of language in shaping how we see the world (72).
Missional congregations formed through the interaction between Christian narrative (passed down through generations) and listening to the people in their community (73).
We often masks our fear and anxiety in the wrong thing. Look for source (74). Paulo Freire- gave space and language for people to name what is happening to them and how God is calling them to action (specifically the oppressed) (77). Parker Palmer - teaching is creating space.
"Hospitality creates a safe place where people can risk expressing their experiences, emotions, and concerns about being the people of God today" (78).
Ch 5: The Missional Change Model
Change rarely happens in a straight line.
1. Awareness - start with where people are. (story of woman's pain - her children not in church)
"Giving something or someone speech, giving words to an experience or an unformed feeling, can foster relationality and transformation" (88). Amen! This process of naming experience takes time (90). 4-6 months
2. Understanding - using dialogue to integrate thinking and feeling. Goal - get beneath the surface of awareness to underlying questions and issues (tree metaphor). Time to gather additional information, try out ideas and receive feedback from others. (94) 3-5 months
3. Evaluate - examines current actions, attitudes, and values in light of new understanding. Questions on pp. 95-96. Not time for action, only evaluation. Process can create anxiety. 3-5 months
4. Experiment - risking some change (not all). Not tactical change - assumes same approach as used in past, rather adaptive chnage - design a new approach. (ex: seniors picking up trash, not assuming trust of multicultural community). 3-8 months
5. Commitment - signing on to new ways of being Church. Experimenting gathers new people and confidence grows. Being a missional church is not dependent on one person/leader, but the personality of the whole congregation.
Readiness for this movement is key. Timeline (104) for percentages of church that will be ready for change. Who to work with when.
Steps for Missional Leader: (1) Take Stock of What You Know (2) Know Yourself as a Leader (3) Listen (4) Focus on Key Areas and Issues (5) Develop an Action Plan (6) Commit
Again, this is really important to keep in mind when you are thinking about congregational transformation. I believe that one of the key tasks of a leader is the stewardship of the organization's culture. (Indeed, I just wrote a piece on this that was recently published in a book called "Not-Profit Leadership in a For-Profit World."
ReplyDeleteIt is really important to note that "change rarely happens in a straight line." There is so much of leadership around emerging paradigms of the church and around church transformation that can never be done "by the numbers." It just isn't that clean or easy. Leadership is an "art," which is one of the reasons why leadership wisdom is built over time--through experience.