Drifting Back In
It has been a while since I surfed over here. Brian, thanks for the email to check up on me. For you guys who don't know me, I pastor a small "turn-around" church in Westminster, Maryland. To be honest, I don't care for the term "renewal" because it is so vague...; the church has been around since the 1920's and for the last 25 years we have been between 50 and 75 attendance.
Anyway, I have been soaking up the conversations on here for the last couple of days. The post on Joiner made me do some deep thinking. Though I would not be 100% convinced at the immediacy of radical change, I wonder how much time, energy, resources and opportunities we waste because we say we should move slow in change.
Where we are facing challenge is in leadership development. The church is governed by an antiquated structure that has at the present time 29% of the church's attenders sitting on the council. We have started to evaluate and work on things using the NCD paradigm.
In the last two months we found out that two families who contribute to the leadership of the church (especially our children's work) are moving out of the area.
One of the struggles is that a few of our leaders have read stuff by Dan Kimball and Reggie McNeal and Reggie Joiner. And though they see where we need to change, some of them are not willing to change at all. The attitude is "I agree with the conclusions, but I don't see the need for us to change anything."
So I am trying to help our leaders grow and work on helping others grow into Godly leaders.
What have you guys been doing to deal with the issue of leadership development? What has worked for you? What hasn't worked for you?
posted by PD at 9:17 AM
2 Comments:
Dan,
I agree entirely and passionately that unwillingness to change is our greatest problem. Ever wonder why the OT prophets' constant call was to "turn?" Or why John the Baptist, Jesus and the Apostles all began their ministries with the command, "Repent!"
In many cases the New Testament call to repentence wasn't in the past tense, implying the need for one dramatic moment of change. Rather, often it was in the present tense, which defines repentence as an ongoing state of mind--an attitude with which we encounter our existence.
Without the willingness to change, we will have no life in the Spirit.
I would take it as a great sign that anyone in your leadership has read Joiner or Kimball or McNeal.
Radical change is dangerous and it seems like Joiner's call for radical change may be overstated, depending on where the church finds herself and what the issue is.
If you have leaders who have identified the issues, but give you the firm indication that they are not going to accept any changes, then it might be a time for a radical change of leadership.
You might consider approaching your denominational leadership, tell them there is a need for a serious change but that it is going to be a painful one, and see if they are willing to hire an outside consultant like McNeal to come in and help with the change.
There are a lot of consultants. I'd get one from outside the denomination. They can help with the painful decisions, take a lot of the personal conflicts out of the equation, and suggest constructive ways to make the hard choices.
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