Depending on God

As our denomination makes major changes in how we are organized it is interesting to see how difficult it is for people to process change without referencing the old organization. Of course, this is necessary to a degree but I am beginning to think that successful change is very much determined on leadership’s ability to reduce the comparisons as much as possible.

In most cases people want to know how each element in a previous system translates into the new system. This is good but only to the extent that the old elements actually translate. The hard part comes when old elements are eliminated or dropped entirely or new elements are added that have very little to do with the past.

In our case we are moving from several annual conferences to one national conference. In addition, in an effort to nurture healthy pastors and churches, we are adding a cluster system in which all of our churches are gathered into groups of approximately 7. What I have noticed is that a lot of people are trying to compare the old annual conferences with the clusters. In reality I think they would be farther ahead in thinking in terms of the relationship between the old annual conferences and the new national conference and thinking of the clusters as something new entirely.

As I have watched this I have thought about how difficult it is for people to set aside something we currently have and change to something entirely new. I think it is difficult for me too. But it is also exciting. It forces me to break dependencies I have had on man made things and depend on God.