by Ken Morgan | Nov 12, 2024 | Uncategorized
Church leaders are anxious for their churches to grow. Staying the same is effectively going backwards as congregations age, become more insular and less flexible. Anxiety’s effect on our thinking is narrow our focus and shorten our planning horizon. Anxious thinking makes us vulnerable to casting about for simple solutions that promise quick results. Just run this training package from a mega-church, copy this program that’s working across town, get in a bunch of consultants to diagnose the malaise. Any or all of those options may be useful – but unless they address the underlying culture, they run the risk of just consuming time and energy with little sustainable outcome. Programmatic interventions sometimes promise cultural change, but by themselves are relatively impotent. Culture is personal – based on deeply-held presuppositions that are rarely recognised and even more seldom questioned. Culture is reinforced by hundreds of decisions and behaviours that have often become presumed and habitual. People can undergo training, run a new program and read a consultant report, nodding in enthusiastic agreement while simultaneously perpetuating a counter-missional culture simply by their unchanged, everyday actions. We may spend money, time and effort trying to change, and all too often find ourselves stuck in the same groove. Leaders have a disproportionate influence on culture. Those leaders may be paid ministry staff, members of a leadership team, or longstanding gatekeepers. It’s not unusual for gatekeepers to exert seemingly insurmountable influence on church culture. Sometimes a pastor’s efforts at culture change are swiftly and elegantly extinguished by well-entrenched...