Leaders as Change-Agents Part 4

In the process of change we are inviting people to embrace a different concept of themselves, of their role, their purpose for being in the church, their interactions with others, the purpose of the group and maybe their reputation. Change is a big ask, in other words. We are inviting them to move form the comfortable to the uncomfortable, the known to the unknown, form inaction to action, form areas where they feel skill to ones in which they feel deskilled.
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Leaders as Change-Agents Part 3

Where does a united approach to solving a problem in a church come from? Shared biblical vision. It's the only place. For sure you can have a shared organisational vision that produces results for organisational change, but if it isn’t supremacy-of-God-oriented then what you get is a building or a project or an adjustment to practice rather than kingdom growth.
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Leaders as Change-Agents Part 2

In a comment on the previous change-agents post Daron left a number of excellent thoughts on reasons change might be necessary in a church. If others would like to leave similar suggestions we could put a very helpful list together that I will put in a future post.

 

Spiritual leadership is NOT the same as other organisational leadership. That is not to say we don't have a lot to learn from secular leadership models and theory, but those models will only take us so far.

Spiritual leadership involves knowing what God wants for his people in his local church, using God's methods to get them there, relying on God's power to do it. Therefore the process of change and the methods of initiating change that are available to Christian leaders are not necessarily the same as in any other organisation.

Organisational change in churches starts with spiritual roots. Roots of godliness, spiritual perception and hunger for God. That is the baseline starting point. When we meet situations where it seems impossible to bring necessary organisational change because of the sheer degree of resistance, our first response is to pray and teach into these areas. Because gospel-centred change emerges from gospel-centred convictions about ourselves, about God, about the church and its purpose.

If you don’t believe that the purpose of the church is to declare God’s excellencies to a dying world, then any call to change it to produce that is threatening. If you think that activities are good in and of themselves regardless of any connection with glorifying God, magnifying him and drawing attention to him, then you will never be able to stop those activities or replace them with ones that do.

Unless the reality of God’s promises grip people they won’t adjust their lives to base all they do on them. Unless the grace of God in Christ is thrilling them, they won’t attempt new things with an attendant risk of failure, because they are content with the way things are.

The Challenge of Training

At this moment in evangelicalism in the UK, the development of missional leaders in our churches for our churches is the number one key priority for the health of the church nationally. Neglecting it is an unaffordable luxury. Devoting energy elsewhere while neglecting this is likely to prove a terrible false economy, because if our churches lack biblical leaders in 15 years time – and at current rates of progress very many will – then at that point all other ministries of the local church that depend on biblical leadership will also take a fatal blow.
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