Leading Congregational Change Discipline 1
One of the best courses I had taken in college was on Managing and Sustaining Change within an organization. We used a textbook by James Furr and Mike Bonem entitled “Leading Congregational Change”. In that book they outline the Four Disciplines for leading change and the Eight Stages in that Change Process. I have found that just about every Revitilization method or program that is used have these key principles that book identifies. That includes the “Refocus” tool currently being used by IBSA.
In this post I want to briefly identify and define one of the 4 Disciplines that are involved in leading congregational change. Lord willing, I will outline the other 3 Disciplines as well as the 8 phases in the Change process in a later posts.
Discipline One: Generating and Sustaining Creative Tension. “Tension is generated when the gap between reality and the vision is made clear. Without this sharp contrast tension will not occur.” Notice that their a real gap between the vision of preferred future and where an organization is in its current reality. A leader needs to use wisdom in this discipline. Too much tension and the pull to the Vision will snap, and too little tension will have no pull at all. Tension ALWAYS involves a degree of discomfort with the way things are. People will try to relieve that tension in one of two ways. The first way is to adjust and move towards the vision. This is the result that the leader is looking for. However, the second way people relieve the tension is to move the vision or “dumb it down”. They don’t adjust themselves to meet the vision, they adjust the vision to meet them. Any time they feel tension they will dismiss it so that they will not have to change. Unfortunately, change is taking place but they won’t acknowledge it.
For example, I had a friend who was an alcoholic who told me he “was drunk for 17 years”, until he had a doctor told him to enjoy the upcoming Christmas season for it will be “your last”. My friend asked him what he meant by “your last”. The doctor informed him that his liver was so damaged from drinking that he would most likely die within that year. Immediately tension was created for my friend. Something had to change or he would be dead. My friend already knew that he had an unhealthy lifestyle but the doctor simply confronted him with this reality that my friend could no longer dismiss. So he did something about it. With the Lord’s help and the help from our church he made the change. He abandoned his “old playground”. He lived!
So, this tension is key for any kind of change to take place. It can a personal level as well as an organizational level. With MPBA there is tension between of our Vision and our Current Reality. Our Vision is a Thriving Church in every village throughout West Central Illinois. There is a lot of tension as we think of our current reality. There is one of two choices that we can make. We either continue to think of the vision and try working towards it OR we dismiss it and settle wherever current reality will take us.
