LOOKING AT CHANGE AND TRANSITION
Individuals, institutions, and churches
tend to have little or no influence over cultural change. Change is driven by
many factors. Just to name a few. Knowledge is growing exponentially. Information
technology is transforming everything from the way we do business and
communicate, to fomenting revolution. Our society is becoming increasingly
secularized, and societal values are being modified.
Church members live in society, and their
daily lives are being impacted by all of the changes. By default, they bring
that change into the Church. The issue,
then, is less about change itself than the Church’s response to it.
Relative to the shifting complexities of
culture, the Church has tended to move slowly. As the speed of changing cultural
norms and personal preferences has increased, that stance has become less and
less tenable. One way this attitude is expressed is the tendency to create
programs designed for members. Such programs are defensive in nature, and tend
to disconnect the church from its community. Several reasons can factor into such
a reaction. Here are a few:
1. They don’t want us.
It is a fear generated by a perceived hostility of the predominantly secular
culture,
2. We don’t want them.
The observation that an increasing percentage of people in the neighborhood are
not “like us,” and
3. We don’t want to dilute the gospel.
A fear that if we change the methods and structures, we will be changing the
message.
One important reason why such a defensive
response is faulty is that it contradicts the Great Commandment to “go.” An emphasis
on sending missionaries to other countries, while commendable and right, tends
to ignore the command to go to our Jerusalem and Judea. It assumes they are
Christian. In the long run, if Jerusalem and Judea are no longer viable, there
will be no resources for Samaria and the whole earth. A balance needs to be
established.
Change
and Transition
One distinction that helps us to manage
change is to understand the relationship between change and transition. Historically,
most change has occurred gradually. In the last three or four decades it has happened
at an increasing pace. Almost all change develops without our involvement and
is beyond our control.
Transition, on the other hand, is characterized
by a response to change. Change tends to be external outside our control;
transition tends to be internal within our control. We can determine, to a large
degree, the path transition takes. It helps us cope with the “tyranny” of
change. If we choose to bypass transition, we choose to allow change to pass us
by.
Most churches operate within a, more or
less, authoritarian (top-down) church structure. Decisions are made at the executive or church
board level, and are implemented from that point. Both now, and increasingly in
the future, decisions made in such a fashion will find resistance not only to
programming, but also to the person or board that introduced it.
As we have seen, transition happens
internally. It would make more sense to:
1. Articulate
the problem, and the possible solution,
2. Break
down implementation into transitional phases,
3. Begin
education early,
4. Provide
literature,
5. Solicit
further input, and
6. Give
the phased out method a respectful goodbye.
Constructing a well thought through transition
can build consensus, minimize despair, and put the church in charge of managing
change. What experiences have you had with introducing change by using a
process of transition? If it is positive, would you be willing to share it with
us? [1]
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