Leadership Journal

A pilot and his mechanic kept driving each other crazy. One day the pilot turned his plane into the shop with a complaint, "Unfamiliar noise in engine." The next day the plane was back in service. The pilot checked the log book to see what problem had been found.
The entry read, "Ran engine continuously for four hours. Noise now familiar."

One of the greatest barriers to change in the church is becoming so familiar with the "noise" that the congregation no longer recognizes it as trouble. The pastor is often more sensitive to the knocking need for change. How can a pastor help a church hear the need for change and respond?

I have observed seven steps.

In my first pastorate in Cape Cod, Massachusetts, I was visiting a woman who was a long-time member. At the church for almost a year, I was beginning to feel at home.

The homey feeling evaporated when, with a steely cold New England gaze, she said, "Young man, you are not a Cape Codder, and you never will be a Cape Codder!"

Unfortunately I believed her; rather than committing myself to know the Cape Codders, I withdrew. I did what I was gifted at and most comfortable doing: preaching and leading. But I discovered that my gifts lacked full potency if cut off from people. The intervening dozen years have underscored the value of committing my time and energy to the knowledge process.

In coming to my current pastorate, I publicly promised to spend time with as many people as possible, as quickly as possible. This helped build trust in my leadership. The more people feel they know me and the more I make an effort to know them, the more they will be receptive to change.

I also read every document I could find on our eighty-five-year history. I asked questions of everyone from past church members to the village barber. Now I've even surprised staff and long-time members with information about the church they didn't know or didn't remember.

The time spent in the knowledge process deals with two major obstacles to change. It calms people's fear I will negate their past. And it calms people's fear I will push the church into something that doesn't fit who they are.

It was our first elders' retreat since I became pastor. As much prayer preceded that event as any I'd been part of. We were seeking God for answers to our future ministry, our declining membership, and our landlocked facility in Toronto.

...

Within weeks we began the intense, year-long process of prayer, discovery, and organization. The result was an overwhelming "no" from all three churches, but I couldn't have known the good that would come out of the process.

For years there had been attempts at significant change in our church. When I candidated, the elders told me that if significant changes weren't made soon, the church would die within five years. This dire, and probably unfounded, pronouncement was even made to the congregation. Yet it wasn't until we invested ...