When change initiatives fail (and they do so more often than not) they rarely fail on technical skills (hard skills), they fail on the people skills... People are people—carbon and water… It’s important to recognise that managing change is about upsetting people only at a rate that they can tolerate.
David A. Shore
I spent 2023 reading, thinking, and writing about congregational change for a Master’s thesis. Why congregational change? Because, in my experience, David Shore’s disheartening quote is accurate about church-related change. Change is hard, and sadly, many church change initiatives fail to fulfil their stated purpose. Perhaps even more tragic is the church leader who puts up with their church's deficiencies because they know how unpopular making necessary changes could be.
Rather than looking at failed change, my investigation explored why and how changes had succeeded.
I read dozens of organisational and, specifically, congregational change theories. Then, I conducted case studies of three congregations and 39 participants who had undergone recent changes. Lastly, I brought the theory and practice together, asking which theories best illuminated the experiences of my interviewees.
The answer to the first question (was there a pattern in people's experience of change?) was reasonably straightforward: often, people find change very difficult. The answer to the second (what could be learned?) was that successful change leaders are simultaneously determined, flexible, and empathetic.
Not everyone hates change. The assumption that one hundred percent of people resent change wasn't true in the cases I examined. In fact, of my six focus groups, four were almost exclusively positive about the changes that had occurred.
Being optimistic about change that has already happened, of course, is not the same as being positive while going through change. Each group noted that part of the change process had been stressful and that it had evoked deep emotions in some congregants. Across six focus groups, people confessed to feeling fear, anxiety, sadness, anger, and excitement in the face of change. In two focus groups, participants spoke of the deep sense of loss they felt when deeply meaningful worship practices came to an end.
In case you’re wondering, yes, age and the struggle to change did seem to correlate. Although that said, this was not absolute; some older people were thrilled that change had occurred and frustrated that other older folk couldn’t seem to get on board with this.
In all three churches, the minister was directly responsible for determining that change needed to occur. Though, in each case, they worked very hard to bring key leaders on the change journey, the urgency for change came from the top.
Bruce, minister of St. Jude's,2 argued that the change experience is good for people’s spiritual health.
I'm always trying to change everything but keep it the same... We're creatures of habit. And if we get into a pattern, we’ll end up just stagnating… That's what it's like to be a Christian. It means you keep changing.
For Michael, vicar of St Phillips and St Thomas, change needed to occur for a number of reasons: the quality of one of the services, the lack of genuine community between congregants, but most of all, the churches’ lack of missional fruitfulness; change needed to occur because the churches were not seeing community folk come to faith.
You might be thinking that these change initiatives will surely end in tears. Surely, the dislike of change on the one hand and a determination that change is good and helpful on the other must be polar opposite positions. How did these change initiatives not turn into a hot steaming mess? The answer is the ways in which these leaders went about making change.
Not all of the St Jude’s congregants appreciated the changes that Bruce and his team have brought about. Despite this, everyone I spoke to trusted him. Changes had been discussed openly and had taken place gradually. Bruce had consulted widely, sought consensus, been open to listening, and been willing to back down.
A fascinating comment was made by someone who held rather different opinions from Bruce about worship styles and yet trusted him deeply:
It's always a balancing act. If a leader gets people onside, you're willing to compromise on some things to support the person. You put your relationship with the person and support of the person above your own individual preferences.
The people of St Thomas and St Phillips commented similarly about their change process and Michael’s leadership. Forums had been held, things had happened slowly enough to keep anxiety levels low, and changes had been trialed and then voted on. Michael had created a vision team to help him think through the changes. The fact that it was the team rather than him personally who wrestled with and then proposed changes meant that he was able to be (in his own words) "relaxed about the outcome", unworried about the exact shape changes would take. As with Bruce at St Jude’s, both congregations expressed deep trust in Michael. Once again, though, the fact trust existed did not mean that the changes had not evoked deep emotion and, in one case, faced deep opposition.
What does this research mean for church leaders to want to see change in their congregations? It means that to manage change successfully, one must simultaneously be determined, flexible, and empathetic.
Change begins with determination. Leading change is hard work, and even attempting it requires "guts and gusto", as one of St Phillips’ key leaders put it.
Leaders must also be flexible. Bruce and Michael built trust, consensus, and goodwill by being willing to let go of their own personal vision for change and being flexible about the specific details and timeframe of change.
Lastly, change leaders are empathetic. They realise that people often struggle with change. Therefore, they are unsurprised when change taps into deep emotions and don’t take offence when those emotions are directed toward them.
Of the dozens of change theories and models I examined, Noel Pearse's Effective and Ineffective Leadership Patterns best explained the actions of my change leaders. Pearse is a South African researcher who developed his model to explain the activity of church leaders attempting to transition their churches from traditional to cell-based models.
Pearse argued that change necessarily destabilised an organisation's "sense of community", which was why it so often provoked organisational resistance. The key to successful change initiatives was the leverage of accrued social capital (or trust). Leaders gained social capital when they demonstrated effective leadership and lost it when they used an ineffective pattern. The three effective leadership patterns are Free-Wheeler, Reflexive Accommodator, and Focused Pioneer. Each pattern demonstrates determination, flexibility, and empathy but in slightly different amounts.
If there currently exists low organisational inertia (or resistance to change), the church was already moving toward the appropriate change. This means the church’s leadership could do whatever they liked so long as the momentum continued. This is the Freewheeler leader pattern.
If there is less openness to change (high inertia), change must be pursued more carefully. The Focused Pioneer is leaning into her determination, perhaps by reminding the church of its vision or pointing out inconvenient truths. In doing so, she is working to keep change processes alive.
The third effective leadership pattern is the Reflexive Accommodator pattern. This leader is currently leading with empathy by allaying his congregants' concerns. He has noted that his people’s anxiety levels are unhelpfully high, so he is listening and seeking to understand rather than working to convince.
Pearse writes:
The leader has to manage the delicate balance between pushing ahead with change and thereby compelling the church to fulfil its perceived purpose and slowing down the pace of change to accommodate member’s needs.3
Of course, there are ineffective leadership patterns, too. These push determination, flexibility, and empathy too far. The Popular People Pleaser is so flexible to congregational needs that the change initiative loses all momentum; the Rigid Combatant’s drive to bring about change destroys the group’s sense of community; and the Static Non-Leader is so free-wheeling that the congregational grows confused where the church is heading.
So what do I do with that? I hope you’re wondering. Well, I think there’s good and bad news here.
The good: if you’re a church leader, I guarantee you’re naturally determined, empathetic, or flexible. You might be naturally gifted at two.
The bad news is that you’re unlikely to be naturally gifted at all three. If your natural bent is towards empathy, then on a good day, you’ll look like the Reflective Accommodator and the Popular People Pleaser on a bad one. And if our natural tendency is towards determination, it’ll be Focused Pioneer (good day) and Rigid Combatant (bad).
The only real answers here are self-awareness and internal work. Figure out which pattern you need to work on and ask for God, your team, and your family's help to get there.
Oh, and a local mission coach might come in handy, too.
1David A. Shore, interview by Mary Sharp Emerson, “7 Reasons Why Change Management Strategies Fail and How to Avoid Them.”
2St Jude’s, St Thomas, St Phillips, Bruce, and Michael are pseudonyms.
3Pearse, Noel J. “Effective Strategic Leadership: Balancing Roles during Church Transitions.” Hervormde Teologiese Studies 67, no. 2 (2011): 63–69.
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We have invited these writers to share their experiences, ideas and opinions in the hope that these will provoke thought, challenge you to go deeper and inspire you to put your faith into action. These articles should not be taken as the official view of the Nelson Diocese on any particular matter.
When change initiatives fail (and they do so more often than not) they rarely fail on technical skills (hard skills), they fail on the people skills... People are people—carbon and water… It’s important to recognise that managing change is about upsetting people only at a rate that they can tolerate.
David A. Shore
I spent 2023 reading, thinking, and writing about congregational change for a Master’s thesis. Why congregational change? Because, in my experience, David Shore’s disheartening quote is accurate about church-related change. Change is hard, and sadly, many church change initiatives fail to fulfil their stated purpose. Perhaps even more tragic is the church leader who puts up with their church's deficiencies because they know how unpopular making necessary changes could be.
Rather than looking at failed change, my investigation explored why and how changes had succeeded.
I read dozens of organisational and, specifically, congregational change theories. Then, I conducted case studies of three congregations and 39 participants who had undergone recent changes. Lastly, I brought the theory and practice together, asking which theories best illuminated the experiences of my interviewees.
The answer to the first question (was there a pattern in people's experience of change?) was reasonably straightforward: often, people find change very difficult. The answer to the second (what could be learned?) was that successful change leaders are simultaneously determined, flexible, and empathetic.
Not everyone hates change. The assumption that one hundred percent of people resent change wasn't true in the cases I examined. In fact, of my six focus groups, four were almost exclusively positive about the changes that had occurred.
Being optimistic about change that has already happened, of course, is not the same as being positive while going through change. Each group noted that part of the change process had been stressful and that it had evoked deep emotions in some congregants. Across six focus groups, people confessed to feeling fear, anxiety, sadness, anger, and excitement in the face of change. In two focus groups, participants spoke of the deep sense of loss they felt when deeply meaningful worship practices came to an end.
In case you’re wondering, yes, age and the struggle to change did seem to correlate. Although that said, this was not absolute; some older people were thrilled that change had occurred and frustrated that other older folk couldn’t seem to get on board with this.
In all three churches, the minister was directly responsible for determining that change needed to occur. Though, in each case, they worked very hard to bring key leaders on the change journey, the urgency for change came from the top.
Bruce, minister of St. Jude's,2 argued that the change experience is good for people’s spiritual health.
I'm always trying to change everything but keep it the same... We're creatures of habit. And if we get into a pattern, we’ll end up just stagnating… That's what it's like to be a Christian. It means you keep changing.
For Michael, vicar of St Phillips and St Thomas, change needed to occur for a number of reasons: the quality of one of the services, the lack of genuine community between congregants, but most of all, the churches’ lack of missional fruitfulness; change needed to occur because the churches were not seeing community folk come to faith.
You might be thinking that these change initiatives will surely end in tears. Surely, the dislike of change on the one hand and a determination that change is good and helpful on the other must be polar opposite positions. How did these change initiatives not turn into a hot steaming mess? The answer is the ways in which these leaders went about making change.
Not all of the St Jude’s congregants appreciated the changes that Bruce and his team have brought about. Despite this, everyone I spoke to trusted him. Changes had been discussed openly and had taken place gradually. Bruce had consulted widely, sought consensus, been open to listening, and been willing to back down.
A fascinating comment was made by someone who held rather different opinions from Bruce about worship styles and yet trusted him deeply:
It's always a balancing act. If a leader gets people onside, you're willing to compromise on some things to support the person. You put your relationship with the person and support of the person above your own individual preferences.
The people of St Thomas and St Phillips commented similarly about their change process and Michael’s leadership. Forums had been held, things had happened slowly enough to keep anxiety levels low, and changes had been trialed and then voted on. Michael had created a vision team to help him think through the changes. The fact that it was the team rather than him personally who wrestled with and then proposed changes meant that he was able to be (in his own words) "relaxed about the outcome", unworried about the exact shape changes would take. As with Bruce at St Jude’s, both congregations expressed deep trust in Michael. Once again, though, the fact trust existed did not mean that the changes had not evoked deep emotion and, in one case, faced deep opposition.
What does this research mean for church leaders to want to see change in their congregations? It means that to manage change successfully, one must simultaneously be determined, flexible, and empathetic.
Change begins with determination. Leading change is hard work, and even attempting it requires "guts and gusto", as one of St Phillips’ key leaders put it.
Leaders must also be flexible. Bruce and Michael built trust, consensus, and goodwill by being willing to let go of their own personal vision for change and being flexible about the specific details and timeframe of change.
Lastly, change leaders are empathetic. They realise that people often struggle with change. Therefore, they are unsurprised when change taps into deep emotions and don’t take offence when those emotions are directed toward them.
Of the dozens of change theories and models I examined, Noel Pearse's Effective and Ineffective Leadership Patterns best explained the actions of my change leaders. Pearse is a South African researcher who developed his model to explain the activity of church leaders attempting to transition their churches from traditional to cell-based models.
Pearse argued that change necessarily destabilised an organisation's "sense of community", which was why it so often provoked organisational resistance. The key to successful change initiatives was the leverage of accrued social capital (or trust). Leaders gained social capital when they demonstrated effective leadership and lost it when they used an ineffective pattern. The three effective leadership patterns are Free-Wheeler, Reflexive Accommodator, and Focused Pioneer. Each pattern demonstrates determination, flexibility, and empathy but in slightly different amounts.
If there currently exists low organisational inertia (or resistance to change), the church was already moving toward the appropriate change. This means the church’s leadership could do whatever they liked so long as the momentum continued. This is the Freewheeler leader pattern.
If there is less openness to change (high inertia), change must be pursued more carefully. The Focused Pioneer is leaning into her determination, perhaps by reminding the church of its vision or pointing out inconvenient truths. In doing so, she is working to keep change processes alive.
The third effective leadership pattern is the Reflexive Accommodator pattern. This leader is currently leading with empathy by allaying his congregants' concerns. He has noted that his people’s anxiety levels are unhelpfully high, so he is listening and seeking to understand rather than working to convince.
Pearse writes:
The leader has to manage the delicate balance between pushing ahead with change and thereby compelling the church to fulfil its perceived purpose and slowing down the pace of change to accommodate member’s needs.3
Of course, there are ineffective leadership patterns, too. These push determination, flexibility, and empathy too far. The Popular People Pleaser is so flexible to congregational needs that the change initiative loses all momentum; the Rigid Combatant’s drive to bring about change destroys the group’s sense of community; and the Static Non-Leader is so free-wheeling that the congregational grows confused where the church is heading.
So what do I do with that? I hope you’re wondering. Well, I think there’s good and bad news here.
The good: if you’re a church leader, I guarantee you’re naturally determined, empathetic, or flexible. You might be naturally gifted at two.
The bad news is that you’re unlikely to be naturally gifted at all three. If your natural bent is towards empathy, then on a good day, you’ll look like the Reflective Accommodator and the Popular People Pleaser on a bad one. And if our natural tendency is towards determination, it’ll be Focused Pioneer (good day) and Rigid Combatant (bad).
The only real answers here are self-awareness and internal work. Figure out which pattern you need to work on and ask for God, your team, and your family's help to get there.
Oh, and a local mission coach might come in handy, too.
Check out other articles in the
series below.
More articles in the
series are to come.
