PRACTICAL WISDOM FOR LEADING CONGREGATIONS
 
Report after report reveals this difficult truth: church attendance is going down.

Many leaders are considering what to do with congregations that are in the midst of dramatic decline.

While church planting offers hope, is starting new churches really the only answer? Is congregational rejuvenation possible?

As someone who has both planted a new church and entered into the rejuvenation of another, experience has taught me that disruption, though difficult, can be the key to breathing new life into a stagnant system.

Ultimately, a church is a group of people who have come together to form a worshipping community, and this community inevitably (and properly so) creates a system to maintain their communal and missional lives together.

This system is maintained through a complex microculture of language, values, beliefs and habits.

When a system is not thriving, most of the time it is because the system has accumulated an excess of bad habits that weigh it down and work to reform its culture in a negative direction.

 
FROM OUR ARCHIVE: ODOM ON LEADING CHANGE
Three keys to making dramatic change
The Cooperative Baptist Fellowship adopted a new governance structure with no dissent. How did the denomination do that?
 
A change process should answer the questions your stakeholders are asking
Aligning your answers to the questions on people's minds has a calming and focusing effect on a change process.
 
A well-designed process is key to leading change
Mapping out a clear decision-making process enables stakeholders to track progress and identify places where people are stuck.
 
 
FROM THE ALBAN LIBRARY

Humans have been choice-makers since the days when hunter-gatherers had to decide when to hunt and what to gather. Making choices is what humans do. But individuals feel more personal autonomy and power to choose today than ever before in human history. In Choosing Change, author Peter Coutts acknowledges that clergy today recognize the impact our individualistic culture of choice is having on congregations. But Coutts also points out that many leaders do not think about motivation. For them, encouraging change is about selling their congregation on a new idea, governed by the assumption that a better idea should win the day. Wide experience in the church demonstrates that this approach often doesn't work and leaves many congregational leaders demoralized. Leaders see the need for change in their congregation, and they earnestly want to help their congregation to change. But the approach to leadership they learned, which perhaps worked better in days gone by, is no longer working. Leaders are in the motivation business, argues Coutts. Choosing Change provides an overview of current thinking from the field of motivation psychology. In the first half of the book, Coutts explores theories, ideas, and terms that are most pertinent for leaders who desire to encourage congregational change. The second half of the book offers detailed guidance for congregational leaders who want to be motivational leaders.

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Alban at Duke Divinity School, 1121 W. Chapel Hill Street, Suite 200, Durham, NC 27701
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