I used to make New Year’s Resolutions. Each year, I had every intention of living out those commitments. Yet, each year, before February rolled around, I had given up on these resolutions. I didn’t know why it was so hard for me to stick to these commitments. I’m a fairly disciplined, hard-working and dependable individual but somehow I wasn’t able to make those changes to alter my habits.
Reading this book is helping me to understand why I could not live up to my resolutions. I knew what I wanted to do. My Rider was on board. My Elephant was motivated as I was inspired and was able to break down the change to more reasonable smaller steps. The challenge was that I didn’t always do a good enough job of shaping the path. I didn’t consider “tweaking the environment,” or to “build habits,” or to “rally the herd.” So, my attempt to change fizzled out over time.
I believe many of our churches are in a similar situation. With an appointment of a new pastor, they have every good intention of wanting to turn their churches around, to become vital and growing, to reach out to new people, and to minister to children, youth, and young adults. Many of our churches are sensing that urgency recognizing that the time for change is now and many are genuinely seeking to experience vitality. In other words, their Rider is on board and their Elephant is sufficiently motivated. But yet, so many of these churches have a difficult time making that switch. Why is this the case?
Reading this book is helping me to understand the role that I can play in helping my congregation make that switch. I am pastoring a church that is seeking to turn around. In my first two years, we’ve spent a significant time articulating our vision, setting goals, and attempting to implement these goals. Although we still have a long way to go, we have made some significant strides in becoming more outwardly focused and to serve the needs of our community so that hearts and lives are being changed for God. Yet, with every step we take forward, there seems to be a force that is at work pushing us back a step or two.
This has been a frustrating and disheartening experience for me to continue to encounter such road blocks and resistance. There are moments when I have felt that there is no hope for change because it’s so hard to change people. And in those moments, I felt like giving up.
That is why I’m so glad that I have been reading this book especially these chapters on “shaping the path” because I have discovered that there is hope. I have discovered that situational force can overcome even individual character. Moreover, I am beginning to realize that what I had written off as being unchangeable, blaming it on our DNA, past history, apathy, unwillingness to change, etc., can be changed.
Indeed, some of the successes we have experienced were due to the ways we’ve learned to shape the path. For example, one of the challenges in our church is the Fellowship Hour. Although many of our members are very welcoming and hospitable, we recognized that our Fellowship Hour is intimidating to new visitors as people tend to sit in round tables with their backs towards the door in already established cliques. So, as we were planning for our 45th anniversary celebration, we intentionally changed our Fellowship Hour format and got rid of all the tables. The rationale was to make it easier for people to mingle more especially in light of the fact that we were going to have quite a few guests and visitors from the community. And it worked. I saw people mingling with folks whom they don’t usually sit with. I saw people moving around a lot more greeting more people and engaging more individuals. By tweaking the environment of the Fellowship Hall, that particular Sunday’s Fellowship Hour created more opportunity for people to mingle and connect. The only regret that I have about this is that we didn’t continue this new format even though we have continued to talk about how we can get our members to mingle more.
Another example of how shaping the path has been effective in the successes that we’ve had is our Ministry Moment. During the service, we provide a 2-4 minute spot for a new ministry, program or project by celebrating how God is at work, recognizing how many volunteers participated, and highlighting how this ministry is making a difference. The Ministry Moment serves several purposes – to inspire people, to encourage their continued support, and to thank them for their ministry. What I didn’t intend was that this would be the way to rally the herd but it is fulfilling that purpose as well. In November, we were launching an ambitious project of offering a Furlough Days program, an all-day childcare program offering Vacation Bible School and Enrichment Classes for children during furlough days. We knew we would need a lot of volunteer support to pull this off but we are a small church with not a lot of young people. We weren’t sure we would have enough volunteer support to make this work but in faith, we began to recruit and invite volunteers. Once we had about 20 persons committed, we shared this upcoming program during our Ministry Moment highlighting how many volunteers have been enlisted. By the time the Furlough Days program started, we had almost 40 persons committed, included were a few folks who have never volunteered for anything like this in the past. With these volunteers, we served 32 families from the community to further our mission of “sharing the love of Christ with our world.”
Reading this book is helping me to rediscover my role in the midst of this change. My role as the pastor is to make the journey easier so that more and more people can join. My role as the pastor is to never lose hope but to trust that transformation is possible in God. My role as the pastor is to utilize these tools and skills to help God’s people make that switch. Because in God, all things are possible!
thank you Nicole. Very insightful and helpful. Linda
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