How Will Your Church Change?
“While change is vital to the life of a church, it’s one thing to want to change – it’s another thing to know how.” Innovative Transitions — Galloway and Bird
An insightful person once said, “Until the pain is bad
enough, few of us are really motivated to change.” Truthfully,
most of us want to keep everything the same, the way we’re
used to having it. While my faith-filled side wants to disagree
with that statement, life experience forces me to agree. (I
remember the last time I had to go to the dentist.)
The subtitle of the new book from Beacon Hill Press,
Innovative Transitions, is “How change
can take your church to the next level.”
Authors Dale Galloway and Warren Bird
include interviews with 15 different
pastors of growing congregations - four
of them are Church of the Nazarene.
They review a wide variety of challenges
and changes required for missional
growth. While the gospel message always
remains the same, how it’s communicated
will always need to adapt in relevant
ways. Some things need to change.
The authors conclude after these
exchanges, “These pastors and churches
are authentic. They are the real deal. God
has done something special in their midst
– and continues to do so.” Each story is
unique, in how they had to address
issues of change to move their ministries
forward. While their situations were
different, they all needed to address the
will and the commitment to change.
Every chapter also concludes with a list of transferrable
principles for other leaders and churches to apply to their
own situation. This approach seems the next best thing to
having a cup of coffee with these 15 missional pastors, while
having a top researcher and consultant at the table to guide
your discussion. There are far too many practical lessons in
these 160 pages to describe in this brief review, but here are
just a few samples of their suggestions to whet your appetite
to study this helpful resource.
The time to respond is now. For too many existing
congregations, they dare not wait many more months to
address needed changes. “Missing people” need to hear the
Good News; hurting people are looking for the answers. If we
would dare to change, the gospel would dramatically change
their lives.
One of the Nazarene pastors interviewed said as their
church leaders began to research to understand their community better. They were shocked to learn 87% of their
county was unchurched. In their own words “The brokenness
of our community is staggering: about one-third has
experience as a broken family, the divorce rate is 14% higher
than the national average and there are higher-than-average
financial struggles.” While all of these hurting people wanted
to have healthy families, they just don’t know how to do it.
Our church family could be a positive
change agent for them.
Tremendous possibilities exist in your
church. Galloway points out “without
the transitioning of history-rich churches
to a new generation of ministry, those
churches die too. It’s a big loss for the
kingdom of God.” The influence and
impact of every congregation is needed
to extend the kingdom of God. We
change because we care.
On every district in the USA and
Canada, even more new churches are
needed to fulfill their mission. And, no
church or pastor ever “arrives,” where
they never need to adjust and adapt
to the changing world around them.
Every church experiences change: some
intentionally initiate changes to be
missional in their ministry context, while
others slowly coast into irrelevancy. But
all churches experience change, we can
decide for the good or bad.
You can become part of the solution. The authors
described a sermon by Pastor Aguiar Valvassoura in their visit
to Campinas, Brazil, as he observed none of us are immune to
gravity. “People all over the world tend to settle in, becoming
content with where they are spiritually … satisfied with the
status quo, not stretching to new heights of faith because
we give in to gravity’s pull to sit still.” So, are you willing to
change, and help your church transform your community?
We change so they can change.
Like Galloway and Bird, we pray as you finish their
book, and read through the stories in each issue of GROW
magazine, you’ll find yourself deciding “There’s no reason
God couldn’t touch our church - and my life - in a similar
way.”
Jim Dorsey
Editor, GROW