Lance suggests that change is hard, really, really hard.
Below the copy of my comment I'll add some observations I believe to be of a prophetic nature about what I've written.
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Lance,
Yours is an informative and academic post, the sort of writing I enjoy and which is provocative to me and I thank you for it.
I’m somewhat familiar with Deutschman’s, CHANGE OR DIE, and, so, I think I can guess where you will go with your next post.
However, I want to fold into the recipe, one ingredient that is normally left out when organizations, or institutions, like ours attempt to shift direction and move forward.
It is this:
There is a type of change that is not hard. In fact, that sort of change is accomplished so easily that is next-to-inevitable.
In the CGGC, we are already changing. As statistics published during General Conference sessions make clear, we have changed again in the past three years. There are fewer of us. Those who remain are older than our people have ever been. Across the body, our spiritual vitality has diminished to a new low.
More to the point, the characteristics that were at the core of our existence in our first days as the Church of God have changed very radically…and not for the good.
For example, our fierce, white-hot obedience to the Bible as our “only rule of faith and practice,” which could once be taken for granted among people in the Church of God, has disappeared.
The conviction that we should be taking the gospel into the world, once an essential conviction for us, has been replaced with an internal focus.
We have changed dramatically.
And, no one had to master the literature of leadership gurus to create the change that has taken place.
Others before you have been struggling to introduce, to our body, a different sort of change…the change that is hard…for at least 30 years.
I believe that they have, instinctively, been attempting to apply Deutschman’s three step approach, since before he even wrote the book.
Yet, without success.
What we have ignored to this point, I believe, is the reality that what the CGGC is now is rooted in a very sophisticated theology…even philosophy…of church.
You and I reject that way of thinking, of course.
What we can’t do, however, is pretend it away.
Our people do what they do because of what they believe. They believe what they believe about church because of what they were taught years ago by the men who were sitting behind the desk you use, in the office you occupy.
As you attempt to lead the change that is hard, you will be leading a battle over what is true.
You will be fighting against truths once embraced by the people in our body who possessed the highest institutional authority.
You and I may disagree with what most people in the CGGC believe about church but we have to respect the reality that many, even among the CGGC clergy, have very strong and settled beliefs about church and that what they are doing today is the fruit of those very real convictions.
You are not writing on a blank slate.
I believe that you are going to have to find the substance that will erase what’s already been etched in CGGC stone.
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Here are some comments on my comment:
1. Change is not hard. In fact, it is inevitable. However, two types of people have nearly always failed to bring about positive change among the people of the Kingdom of God: First, institutionalists, second, people gifted to be shepherds operating a parish-priest dominated culture focused on church, not gospel.
2. As I note, attempts to bring about good change in the CGGC have been taking place for about thirty years. All of those attempts have failed...as statistics published during the recent General Conference sessions make clear.
3. Change for the good is hard, next to impossible, for institutionalists. On the other hand, bad change, what the CGGC institutionalists have been leading for decades, is, actually, very easy for institutionalists...as our history proves.
4. One thing all failed CGGC attempts at good change in the past three-ish decades have in common is that they were the genius of institutionalists focused on the parish-priest dominated culture, sincerely hoping, yet failing, to move CGGC people not connected to the institutional hierarchy.
5. Led by the people in power in the institutional hierarchy, the CGGC body has been operating under a theology of church that, first of all, is distinctly different from the understanding of church put into practice by our founders in the day that we were being blessed, second, came into dominance in the 1930s, and third, has driven the CGGC's numerical decline and spiritual decay.
6. Change in the CGGC is taking place at this very moment and it is real! We are changing. We have changed compared to three years ago. We have changed from what we were at our beginning. Change in the CGGC is not hard to bring about. Change comes easily. For us, it also has come disastrously.
7. In the last 30 years or so, the people who have attempted to bring about the change that is hard failed were sincere. But, they all failed because they ignored the reality that the battle for change is a struggle between competing notions of truth. Shepherds, of course, are weak on truth, by virtue of their spiritual calling. They are strong on relationship, and, while relationship is important in bringing about change...as Deutschman observes...without foundation in truth, or principle, relationship doesn't help us in the current crisis.
8. False notions of truth don't simply disappear at the convenience of the leaders of an institution. They fight tenaciously for dominence. Lance is not writing on a blank slate.
9. If Lance is going to lead the change that is hard, he will have to confess his own past (if it is, indeed, past) belief in a false truth...the corrupt theology of church. He will have to beg the body for forgiveness and be very clear about his conversion to a new truth.
9. Lance will also have to call past leaders to repent of their service to the false truth, something that will be hard for him, and for them, even with a heartfelt commitment.
10. Those past leaders who won't confess, will have to be disciplined lovingly, but harshly and publicly, if they won't confess their sin.
11. The battle for the change that is hard will have to go through a time in which past error is exposed and condemned.
12. Only those who turn from error and come together loving newly discovered truth will be able to share in the benefits of the change that is hard.
One note about what I often think but rarely say.
ReplyDeleteIn order to cut through the many layers of cynicism that has paralyzed the CGGC for years, and has forestalled ANY action about ANYTHING at all is that, for anything positive to happen among us, there will have to be confession of past error and sin, in addition to repentance.
The repentance I often speak of is, primarily but not exclusively, between us and the Lord. The confession that must happen, which may cut through the layers of cynicism, is among members of the body and will include past and present leaders acknowledging decades of misguided and failed ways, along with the begging of forgiveness.
One example would be current leadership's acknowledgment that it talked big about disciple making after the 2016 General Conference gathering but DID nothing to follow up.
Another example would be for past leaders to beg for forgiveness that it didn't implement, for instance, the Mission Statement it created a decade ago.
Who's going to believe in the current Strategic Plan without confession?
No. Cynicism will continue to be our guide.