The Challenge of Change: Overcoming Human Nature to Build a Vibrant Church Culture

Progress. Advancement. Growth. Movement. Change. All of these are four-letter curse words in overly stagnant cultures. In the words of the Management Guru Peter Drucker, "People in any organization, including bureaucrats and politicians, are always attached to the obsolete; the obsolescent; the things that should have worked but didn't; the things that once were productive and no longer are."

Why?

Why is losing weight, cleaning the house, bettering our mental prowess, eating right, and improving our organizations tricky? The easy answer is that we put a disproportionately higher value on the short-term than the long-term.

Put another way; it is exponentially harder to have hope and create a movement for a better tomorrow than to accept the tepidness of today's circumstances because we are naturally short-term thinkers.

Over the last few weeks, I asked numerous people if they would rather receive $200 today or $202 two days later. The vast majority chose to get the money today because there was "no guarantee that tomorrow would come," "that I could change my mind," and the classic "a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush." To them, waiting was a risk that wasn't worth taking.

In 1981, Richard Thaler, a behavioral economist, asked people to choose between $15 at that moment and the promise of a larger payment in the future. He asked how much larger the future amount would need to be to justify the wait. If the delay was ten years, people generally said $100, but if the payment was one month later, then $20. The absurdity of this exercise displayed that people unconsciously applied an annual discount rate of 19 percent with a ten-year perspective but 345 percent with a one-month view.

People disproportionally overvalued the short-term versus the long-term.

What does this mean for the rest of us?

Combined with our propensity to avoid loss, this is why it is so difficult for a change to occur in people's lives, especially within the context of a stuck or struggling congregation. Intentionally risking a loss of what we have today for the possibility of a gain tomorrow is a profoundly unappealing prospect, even if it means death. This mentality is the direct result of fallen human nature.

The bigger question is, how can we overcome these natural mental barriers to breakthrough?

The interdependent parts that comprise the whole body of Christ must possess an inner vision of the narrative future into which God is pulling our congregations.

When a congregation possesses a decentralized internal understanding of the future into which God is pulling her, regardless of who is sitting in the leader's chair, the people know how to carry out the mission of God of making disciples in the places where they live, work, and play. Each member owns their part of the team and trusts their fellow co-laborers working toward the same objective.

Leadership must clearly understand God's unique disciple-making vision for a specific body of believers and not allow "good" ideas to detour "God's" plans.

As the overseers care for the congregation, they are rightly positioned and expected to say "no" in a healthy way to the various ideas they're approached with. But more than that, they can empower leading disciples to consider how possible opportunities fit underneath the umbrella of God's disciple-making vision for that body of believers. More often than not, they rally the people to reframe possible future ministries to fuel the existing relational disciple-making methods through more personal means.

The church culture must operate with a healthy ethos of Process+Collaboration.

Most churches have suitable governance but do not possess a culture of process and collaboration. Many people will approve a motion as long as it doesn't require a movement. However, in a church where there is a transparent, collaborative process for decision-making, where genuine dialogue, the divergence of facts, and decision-making dynamics that promote dialogue and divergence at every stage of a decision-making process take place, there is a critical difference in whether items are executed well or not. In a study of 1,048 investment decisions: collaboration and process had six times more impact than analysis alone. What does this mean? It means that your congregation's involvement and collaboration are more critical than their approval.

If you desire to see legitimate movement in your congregation, then you need more than a fancy mission or vision statement; you need more than a leadership team that has reached a consensus; you need a Holy Spirit-infused movement that lifts the heads of the interdependent parts of the whole congregation out of the fog of today's status quo and into seeing the magnificent vista of a brighter and more beautiful tomorrow.

Are mental barriers holding your church back from fulfilling its divine purpose? We're here to help leaders and congregations embrace a shared vision of where God is working in your unique context. Together, we can help you discover how your congregation can best join Him in that transformative work. Start a Conversation