Change is hard for many people, both individually and collectively. As a pastor, one of my roles is to help people amid significant life changes: weddings, funerals, illnesses, and job changes, to name a few. People look to the church to make sense of a world that changes at an ever-increasing pace. Each person has to deal with feelings of loss in change, even when the change is exciting or welcomed. Groups, organizations, and nations have an even harder time with change. A pastoral colleague of mine used to joke that his church’s motto is “Steadfastly resisting change since 1875.” Since change is so hard, some even wonder if it is worth the trouble. But change is a natural part of what it is to be alive! In nature, the only things that don’t change are already dead. 

To resist change is to deny the reality of a changing world. Successful organizations can sense when change is needed, even when things are going well. The church I serve is celebrating the fortieth anniversary of its founding this year, and we are taking this occasion as an opportunity to reflect on the past while planning for the future. The first step in building the capacity for change is to attend to what is true about our church (or organization, nation, etc.). As we see pictures from the past and share the stories of our history, issues and themes emerge that we may need to address. The more intentionally honest we can be about our history and current circumstances, the more ready we will be to accept that change is necessary and think creatively about the changes we must make.

Attending to our current situation will bring to light some challenges we face. Some of those challenges are easy to address, and we already know how to solve them. Other challenges are more difficult to understand, and we might need outside help to address them. These challenges are what Ronald Heifetz and Marty Linsky call adaptive challenges.^[1] One of the fundamental mistakes we make is to try to address adaptive challenges by using technical solutions and easy answers. Our adaptive challenges require new learning and experimentation, a continuous cycle of planning, acting, and reflecting on the action.

Leadership in organizations, communities, and nations facing adaptive challenges is a unique challenge. Traditional long-term strategic plans are often not very useful when things change quickly, and leaders can feel reactive and behind the change instead of being proactive and ahead of it. As a pastor of a church with adaptive challenges, my role is to name our reality, interpret that reality through the lens of the gospel of Jesus Christ, and create an environment where the collective wisdom and experience of the church can inform our planning, action, and reflection. My leadership responsibility is to equip the church with what it needs for learning, growth, and change. Then, I remind the church of our place in God’s story, helping everyone see how God is still at work. When we share the responsibility for the change, our mutual commitment makes the change possible.

The apostle Paul writes in Romans 12:2, “Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will.” In a world that fears change and is anxious about the future, the church can play a significant role in leading the way of transformation. For all of the adaptive challenges we face as a nation, there is hope for the future as long as there is a church that can help us all attend to our current reality and help us see a pathway forward together. With the Holy Spirit as our guide, our shared responsibility for change and renewal can come to fruition. What has happened in the past has gotten us where we are today, and with outstanding leadership, we can find our path to a better tomorrow.

^[1] Ronald A. Heifetz and Marty Linsky, Leadership on the Line: Staying Alive through the Dangers of Leading (Boston, Mass: Harvard Business School Press, 2002), 13.