Every pastor has a change bank account.
You won’t find it on the church’s financial statement, and the treasurer can’t tell you the balance. But it may be one of the most important accounts you have. It is the amount of trust and goodwill you have accumulated with your people. Every time you lead a change well, you make a deposit. Every time you handle one poorly, you make a withdrawal.
This matters because sooner or later, every church will face a change that is difficult, expensive, or controversial. When that day comes, the question won’t simply be, “Is this a good idea?” People will also be asking, “Do we trust our leaders?”
One of the ideas I explore in Change Your Church or Die is that successfully navigating lots of little changes prepares a congregation to navigate the big changes when they come.
Start With the Problem, Not the Solution
Recently, my wife’s Sunday School class became overcrowded. This is one of those problems every church would like to have, but a good problem is still a problem. If we didn’t do something, the class would eventually stop growing.
Unfortunately, every solution had a downside. Some options cost money. Some required work. Others disrupted somebody else’s space. There wasn’t an obvious answer that everyone would immediately love.
I could have walked into the class and announced the solution. Instead, I presented the problem. It happened to be a particularly crowded Sunday, so nobody needed much convincing that we had one.
Then I laid out the possible solutions I could think of and left the issue with them.
I have learned that it is often a good idea to give people problems and let them come up with solutions. Proverbs 15:22 says, “Plans fail for lack of counsel, but with many advisers they succeed.” In this case, the eventual solution came from someone in the class rather than from me.
There is an important principle here for anyone leading church change: don’t get people to agree with your solution before they agree there is a problem.
Let People Own the Change
Pastors tend to be problem solvers. We see something that isn’t working, think about it for a while, come up with an answer, and then present our carefully considered solution to the church.
There is only one problem: while we have been thinking about the issue for three months, everyone else has been thinking about it for three minutes.
Then we wonder why they aren’t as excited as we are.
Often, a better approach is to slow down. Help people see the problem. Ask questions. Listen. Give them time to think about it. You may discover that someone in the congregation comes up with a better solution than yours.
And even if the eventual solution is similar to what you had in mind, something important has changed. It isn’t just your idea anymore. It has become our idea.
That little pronoun can make an enormous difference.
Make Deposits Before You Need Them
This brings us back to the change bank account. Every successful change can make a deposit in that account.
Suppose the church makes a small improvement to the children’s area and everyone loves it. Deposit. You improve communication and people notice. Deposit. You make a small adjustment to the worship service that works well. Deposit. You listen carefully to people’s concerns about a proposed change and modify the plan accordingly. Another deposit.
Over time, people begin to develop confidence in the leadership. They have seen that you aren’t trying to destroy everything they love. They know you listen. They know you don’t have to get your way every time. They have watched you make changes that actually made the church better.
Then one day you may need to lead a change that isn’t so easy.
Perhaps the church needs to remodel its facilities, hire a new staff member, change its worship schedule, discontinue a ministry, start another service, reorganize its small groups, or make some other significant change. That change is going to require trust.
You will be glad you have money in the bank.
Improve Before You Replace
One practical way to build your change bank account is to concentrate first on improvements that almost everyone can feel good about.
Before changing the entire musical style, make the music you already have better. Before reorganizing the children’s ministry, make the nursery cleaner and more attractive. Before replacing Sunday School with a completely different small-group structure, make the groups you already have healthier. Before announcing a major new hospitality strategy, make sure someone is smiling at the front door.
There are probably dozens of improvements your church could make that would create almost no controversy. Make them.
Small successful changes build confidence. They demonstrate that change does not necessarily mean losing something we love. Sometimes change simply means making something better. The discussion material in Change Your Church or Die specifically encourages leaders to identify improvements in worship, facilities, communication, hospitality, children’s ministry, and small groups that could be made with relatively little resistance.
Someday You May Need That Trust
Luke 16:10 says, “Whoever can be trusted with very little can also be trusted with much.” There is a leadership principle there as well as a spiritual one.
Lead the little changes well.
Listen to people. Solve problems together. Admit when an experiment doesn’t work. Don’t spend political capital unnecessarily. Look for changes that make the church noticeably better and help people feel good about moving forward.
Then, if the day comes when your church faces a major challenge and a difficult change simply cannot be avoided, your people will have a history to remember. They can look back and say, “We’ve been through changes together before. Our leaders listened to us. They didn’t get everything right, but they handled it well. We can trust them.”
You can’t manufacture that kind of trust in a business meeting.
You build it over years, one deposit at a time.
That is one of the central messages of Change Your Church or Die. Healthy church revitalization isn’t merely about having the right ideas. It is about becoming the kind of leader—and the kind of congregation—that can navigate change together.
