Church transitions are like airplane crashes. When things go wrong, it’s good to look back and see what decisions were made when. A congregation is unhappy with their new pastor. It is tempting to say, “Oh, they just chose not to accept her.” But, if you pull out the little black box you can often find places where the group could have been taught to make better decisions. Good group decision making is a learned behavior. Congregations need to be better informed about the available options and how to make those decisions with transparency and an openness to the new future that the Holy Spirit is providing for them.
Take another example; Old Memorial Church is in changing neighborhood. The white working class that used to live within a mile of the church, doesn’t. The diminishing faithful few, no longer know their neighbors. Most on Memorial’s role book drive across town to continue to support the cause. A transitional expert or intentional interim minister would view their task of adverting this train wreck as a series of group decisions. These decisions need to be made prayerfully and with a consensus process involving as many of the congregants as possible. Following the right process will be more important than any one decision.
What does the decision making process for church transition look like? While every situation is unique, I think there is a general pattern:
Transition is initiated or discovered when a crisis, trauma, or leadership change brings business as usual to a halt. This forces the whole congregation into its first decision. Note that what follows involves the whole church and produces a collective attitude that is either open or closed to change.
Decision 1: React or Reflect Here the congregation decides whether they will knee jerk and do some kind of quick fix or will they establish study committees and prayerfully take their time to respond to the crisis, trauma, or leadership change in a non-anxious fashion. Having a transitional leader who is a non-anxious presence is big help in getting people headed in the right way at the this decision point.
– Reaction can take the form of denial, destructive anger, bargaining (yes, Kubler-Ross rules), debilitating nostalgia, adversarial thinking (black-white, no gray), and the unproductive desire to blame others. Unless reaction is reversed, the crash will happen and someone will need to pick up the pieces.
– Reflection leads to Decision 2, involving the implementation of a discernment process.
Decision 2: Honor or Betray Reflection always needs a process to exist within. This process can be provided by a book such as my own Reality Check 101 or the Church Transition Workbook. It can also be a packaged resource, such as, Natural Church Development or the L3 Leadership Incubator. It can even be a more tailored transitional process led by a trained consultant or interim minister. Whatever discernment process is chosen, it will lead to a decision. The congregation will choose to honor what their small groups have discovered or to betray it.
Betrayal leads the congregation back to the maladjustments of reaction described in Decision 1. Congregation who refuse to accept what their discernment process recommends, often end up in the “Blame Box.” This is an attitude where we see others as the problem. When a church betrays the pastoral selection/appointment process of their denomination, they often blame the denominational leaders or the people of the local committee who entered into the search process. This puts them in a blame box from which they can’t respond in a healthy way to the new pastor no matter how hard that person works to win them over.
Honoring involves mapping out a plan for change. Usually other people need to be invited into the process to enable implementation.
Decision 3: Implementation The congregation is not out of the woods yet. There are three directions that churches go at this point, two of which can be seen as bad decisions.
– Spiritualize This is a decision to think good thoughts but not act in any tangible way. The implementation plan may require funding and the church will fail to enter into a stewardship campaign to raise the funds. There may be actions, such as starting a new worship service, that break with the congregation’s sense of tradition. It is easy to study and not act.
– Legalism The quickest way to derail an action plan is to question whether church policy permits it. Funding needed for implementation may be tied up in an endowment fund whose rules are being narrowly interpreted. People often the elevate the local customs of their congregation to the status of great ethical principles.
– Discover a New Mission in Context This is the final destination of all healthy transition. A congregation discovers anew its particular mission in its context. Their new pastoral leadership won’t help them do what they’ve always done. They will come to respect that new pastor if they can start doing together the new mission that God has revealed to the small groups that led through the discernment process. Changes in the neighborhood will no longer be a problem if the church can discover its new mission. The trauma that destroyed their building or scattered their financial base will seem a blessing, once they begin to implement their new plan for being in mission.