Churches Challenged To Adapt

A full house, which included members of over 100 MACUCC churches, listened to author and lecturer Ron Heifetz offer words of inspiration to help with the challenges of being part of a church with a long history.

More than 350 people traveled to the Wellesley Village Church in October to hear Ronald A. Heifetz, an author, scholar, lecturer, and cofounder of the Center for Public Leadership. Heifetz’ presentation focused on how to help people face reality and to mobilize them to make a change – a message that was well received by the enthusiastic crowd that gave Heifetz a standing ovation.

Susan Dickerman, Associate Conference Minister for Leadership Development, said the Pastoral Excellence Program sponsored the event because so many church leaders find it difficult to introduce modern changes given that their institutions are several hundred years old.

Leonard Ezbicki, the Financial Secretary at Edwards Church in Framingham, wondered what words of inspiration would help with his challenges of being part of a church with a long history. “Small churches like ours have a problem staying alive, and in order to survive we need to do things differently,” he said.

Ron Baser, moderator at Maple Street Congregational Church UCC in Danvers agreed. “We are running short of leader volunteers because of a generation gap,” he said, “and I’m hoping to learn tonight how to develop leadership within the church.”

Heifetz addressed the issues of the unprecedented crisis of leadership. He believes the leadership problems stem as much from members’ demands and expectations as from any leader’s inability to meet them. “Making change is painful,” explains Heifetz, “especially since many of the MACUCC churches have long histories. Coupled with that problem, many people in authority feel a pressure to give a technical solution to an adaptive problem. But to adapt to the changing times, leaders need to make adaptive changes.” As Heifitz describes them, technical solutions are those which can be provided to the congregation by an expert – for example, a new committee structure or a software program. Adaptive change requires learning and responsibility on the part of members.

Those adaptive changes include deciding on which DNA – the history, programs, and solutions of the past – to keep or discard, and then trying to innovate and create new DNA, and marry it to the best of the old. The goal is to bring the best into the future, “but you can’t bring it all,” he explained.

The biggest problem clergy leaders encounter while making change is resistance. “People are afraid that they will lose something that’s worthwhile,” Heifetz explains. “They're afraid that they’re going to have to give up something that they’re comfortable with. People want leaders, especially their clergy, to protect them from those painful adjustments.”

“It’s the role of the leader to first help people face reality and then to mobilize them to make change. If you want to lead, you want to encourage people to try different things and experiment. An innovative idea may come from anyone in your community. At the same time, clergy need to feel an enormous compassion for the negative feelings resultant from change. Despite the potential gain, think about what it is going to cost the individual who has invested so much of his or her time in the life of their church. There are real costs in loyalty, heritage and the way they’ve lived.”

“When doing adaptive change, you’re involving people in loss. Leadership is about mobilizing people to do adaptive work. At the highest level, the work of a leader is to lead conversations about what’s essential and what’s not. You need to identify what you want to preserve. Ask your members to list which values and operations are so central to their core that if they lost them, they would lose themselves. And which assumptions and policies are subject to radical change. Correctly form the questions; don’t give the answers. Ask what’s precious, what’s expendable, what’s innovative. That will help carry the best into the future.”

Rev. Dr. Michael Penn-Strah, Associate Conference Minister for the Northeast Area, hoped that church leaders would take away and interpret to the congregations the differences between technical and adaptive changes. “One of the greatest problems faced among the church leaders today is trying to correct, or tinker with core problems and make changes,” he commented. “Hopefully everyone here will learn from Ron’s experiences of adaptive change, and relay the information back to their leadership.”

“Ron is a wonderful motivational speaker,” Laura Lee Kent, Associate Conference Minister for the Central Area, commented after the program. “I think the ‘buzz’ afterwards has been even more important than the event itself. People are talking about and reflecting on many of the things he said.”

John Tontiss, a member of the Governing Council at the Plymouth Church in Framingham, agreed with Heifetz that it was hard to be a leader within the church because “patterns of years gone by don’t work well these days.” Jack Kraft, another Plymouth council member reported that his church has been going through organizational changes and “getting people to embrace a new leadership structure and see its advantages has been a challenge.” They both planned to take back the information they learned at the event and help their members adapt to their recent changes.

Ken Landin, pastor of Waqouit Congregational Church, is a member of the search committee for a new Minister and President of the MACUCC. “We’re excited to call a new leader, and be involved in change. Our objective is to promote vitality and life within the conference and we are eager to draw from Heifetz’ perspectives outside the church to help accomplish that goal within the Conference.”

Heifetz’ last piece of advice was to make sure leaders don’t scrap everything and try to start from scratch. “Begin with all the good things and go from there,” he recommends. “Remember, from generation to generation, God doesn’t do zero-based budgeting.”

Massachusetts Conference Edition

Churches Challenged To Adapt