Leading Change in the Church

One of my favorite things to do is to help churches create alignment and momentum within their staff and leadership to move their church towards multiplication. In order to do just that, change needs to happen. There’s no other way around it.

Unfortunately, most pastors and leaders struggle with change management. This is because many forget to think through who all and what all is going to be affected by this change. As a result, people are overlooked, feelings get hurt, and easy wins are lost. Inevitably this results in unnecessary conflict that could have and should have been avoided.

Your mighty plans for change are then lost in the mire of relational trouble and politics. Nothing changes. Your church stays on the same course. And the next time you try to change something, you experience even more opposition and skepticism than ever before.

If only there were an easy step-by-step process to guide people through leading and managing change in the church.

Leading Change

John Kotter’s 8-Step Process outlined in Leading Change has heavily influenced the way that I process, think through, and lead change. I’ve implemented his 8-steps through precarious times and important shifts in churches, like when I helped my previous church make the shift to becoming more missional.

Here are his 8-steps, as now updated in his recent book, Accelerate:

• Step 1: Create a Sense of Urgency
• Step 2: Build a Guiding Coalition
• Step 3: Form a Strategic Vision and Initiatives
• Step 4: Enlist a Volunteer Army
• Step 5: Enable Action by Removing Barriers
• Step 6: Generate Short-Term Wins
• Step 7: Sustain Acceleration
• Step 8: Institute Change

Leading Change in the Church

These 8-steps are a proven system for change management and they can certainly be contextualized for use in the church, which I’ve personally done, but it’s definitely not a perfect fit.

This is why I’m so excited that the President and CEO of LifeWay, Thom Rainer, wrote this book, Who Moved My Pulpit: Leading Change in the Church. 

Rainer draws from his decades of church leadership and consulting to present a contextualized church-based framework to lead change in your church:

• Step 1: Stop to Pray
• Step 2: Confront and Communicate a Sense of Urgency
• Step 3: Build an Eager Coalition
• Step 4: Become a Voice and Vision of Hope
• Step 5: Deal with People Issues
• Step 6: Move From an Inward Focus to an Outward Focus
• Step 7: Pick Low-Hanging Fruit
• Step 8: Implement and Consolidate Change

On the surface level, while there may seem to be many similarities between Kotter’s 8-steps and Rainer’s, they are in fact quite different.

Rainer’s process is unique and focused on leading change in the church.

I deeply appreciate the way that Rainer starts with prayer and makes the process of leading change easy to understand and implement for church leaders. He contextualizes principles and shares the nuances of change management that are unique to the church. For example, he gives wisdom and advice on how to build the right type of committee in your church that will serve to facilitate change, rather than resist it. He also shares the importance of developing a strategic vision to help guide change in your church. This strategic vision is not merely a statement, but it is a narrative that serves to motivate and encourage everyone through the process.

Every chapter has diagnostic and study questions to help you process change for your church. In fact, you can even download a free change readiness inventory for churches and a change leadership matrix from his site here for free!

Rainer says it well when he illustrates the dire need for churches to better manage change:

You are in a church, a church you would like to see change. You know that some level of change is needed because you should be reaching more people with the gospel. You want the church to have a greater impact on your community. You would rejoice if most of the church members acted like true disciples of Christ…But there is something about people like you and me. We want to see tangible results right away. We want to be active as possible. Leading change for us means moving forward…That might be the biggest mistake you could make.

So the next time you need to lead change in your church, don’t get at it from the dark, and don’t just take it as you go. Instead, intentionally walk through Rainer’s 8-steps, and you’ll see change stick, people get on board, momentum build, your church grow, and ultimately and most importantly, see lives change. Then the next time you need to lead change, repeat the process—again and again.

Let me end with this powerful quote from the book,

It takes courage to be a change leader in the church. Opposition and resistance often come frequently and fiercely. But too much is at stake to do otherwise…The choice is simple: change or die.

Pick the book up here.