Change: Learning to Lead It and Living to Tell About It

 

“Change is Inevitable. Manage the Transitions” is the name of the article on this page in the February 2005 issue of this newsletter. It brought numerous requests to reproduce.

Further insights about change in congregations can be obtained from Rev. Jock Ficken in his book, Change:  Learning to Lead It and Living to Tell About It (Fairway Press, 1999).

Dr. Ficken has been pastor of St. Paul Lutheran Church in Aurora, IL since 1983. The change he led started a second campus further out from the deteriorating downtown of an old city founded in 1830, with a population now of 50,000 located 40 miles west of the Chicago Loop.

Three Keys

Rev. Ficken presents three keys to open the door of change: hope, discontent and leadership. He observes:  “If there is no hope, there will be no future. Where there is no discontent, there will be no movement, and a church content is a church with its future spent.”

Change tends to be so hard for congregations because church represent a zone of stability for many people, especially now in a time of rapid change around us. 

It takes a lot of work to prepare for change. Expect a long time between recognition of problems and final action on changes to address them. He calls this lag time. The longer the lag, the fewer the options a church has.

 

Watch for Burnout

Basic to the lag are the different rates of adoption or acceptance by members. A proposed change starts with a few Innovators, followed by perhaps 15 % of the members who are Early Adopters. Change cannot really get going until there is an additional Early Majority of perhaps a third of the congregation. When another third, the Late Adopters, come on board the change is ready to happen effectively.

One common difficulty is that the Innovators and Early Advocates tend to get frustrated and burn out or leave. According to Dr. Ficken, “The innovators and early advocates of change need to bathe their diligence with large amounts of patience with others, while safeguarding their own level of enthusiasm for the time when others can share the conviction and can partner in effectively implementing the change.”

Basic to bringing about change is careful analysis and planning. Rev. Ficken demonstrates how various models can be used.

Earn Trust

Convinced that church leadership is a team sport, he offers advice about setting up the team. The roles of catalyst, solution giver, process helper and resource linker are important to fill carefully.

Most important is to remain credible.  Be honest at all steps. He says, “Credibility and trust are gained the old fashioned way. You earn it!.”

Copies of this book can be obtained directly from the author at 555 E. Benton St, Aurora, IL  60505.       E-mail: JFicken@saintpauls.net                          

DSL