What works for making changes
Stop trying to change things
I was leading a ‘visioning session’ with a church board, and frankly, giving them a lot of great ideas to try.
But each one I suggested - fewer committees and meetings, thinking about subscription over ‘stewardship’, using church management software - led to interest, but also resistance.
‘We can’t do those things,’ they’d sigh. ‘Norma wouldn’t like it. Charles doesn’t have email. The altar guild ladies would revolt.’
So I tried to offer them simpler ideas. They had complained about the bulletin - it was too hard to keep up with, too complicated to produce.
‘What if you just have a simple, one-page bulletin?’, I suggested.
‘Oh, we tried that once,’ they quickly replied. ‘A few people complained, so we can’t do it.’
I was starting to get a little frustrated with them, and in a flash of inspiration, I challenged them to change something.
Anything. Make it small.
Find one thing and change it, just for the sake of the exercise:
Can you change as a community?
Learn to 'Free Range' your ministry
After people ask me, ‘What is a Free Range Priest?’ (‘like the chicken?’), the next most common question I get is, ‘how can I be one?’…
This, they got excited to do!
They decided to change the size of the sign outside.
But then they started to discuss it….
Well, it turns out that a beloved parishioner had made that sign out there by hand, some 50 years before. It would not be respectful to change it or get rid of it, and some folks might get mad.
They could perhaps change the color, or provide some lighting, but they don’t really have the budget for it.
Maybe someone could volunteer to do that? But first we’d have to decide on the color, and the size and placement of the lights, and that will take a few months of meetings.
Pretty soon it gets put on the back burner, and eventually they forget why they were ever talking about it.