Church After

Finding transformation in unexpected change

Anna Mitchell Hall

• Publisher: Cane Mill Press
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9781737560418
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Christian Church

Change is inevitable. Make it transformational.Discomfort with change blocks transformation in churches and individual Christians every day. Yet the current landscape of church in the US is one of inevitable change: shrinking attendance among committed members, population shifts from rural to urban, and increasing numbers of people for whom church is an afterthought, at best. We have now lived through a period of unrelenting forced changes on congregations due to a pandemic. For those churches and their members who can embrace the current and coming changes, there are opportunities to not only survive but to thrive. Church After lays out strategies for moving each of us toward a faith without fear, a faith which embraces change and transitions, and a faith rooted in the Good News of Jesus, which proclaims that we must die to the old to become new. Packed with practical ideas for use with any congregation, Church After utilizes research on brain science and transformative learning to help congregations find transformation in unexpected change. Pastors and lay leaders will find in Church After the essential skills and knowledge to leverage congregational transitions for maximal spiritual growth and individual/congregational transformation.

1

Introduction

Unexpected change occurs daily in churches. Highly publicized examples of congregational change make headlines, from pastors who find themselves mired in sexual scandals to congregations who must relinquish their shining cathedrals because of financial instability. These examples may seem particularly dramatic, yet any time a congregation encounters a big change, this encounter can be a profound experience for those deeply involved. While initial reactions may be negative, especially for those of us who prefer to know what to expect at every turn, these changes can be more than trials to get through. Each unexpected change in a congregation can be a chance to learn more about how to follow the God that makes all things new. 

Like the disciples, who struggled to adapt after Jesus’ death and resurrection, with the added challenge of struggling to understand much of the wisdom He had left with them, every day, churches are charged with continuing in the face of losing a leader, a building, a group of congregants who leave the church. This book is for your church, so you can learn together from the change you are facing now and changes you will face in your future. This book is for churches who seek to prepare their people to listen to and learn from God during all the changes life will throw at them. 

The following chapters can be used in the order they are presented or taken one at a time if a particular topic is of more interest to you. There are reflection questions throughout and at the end of each chapter for those who choose to use this book as a workbook. In the Appendix, there is a small group curriculum for those who would like to do a group study of this material. Also in the Appendix are a change assessment for your congregation, worship resources, and a brief curriculum for use with children and youth during times of congregational change.

In The Challenge of Change, I discuss why change is so hard and yet so important for us as individuals and churches. I outline the latest research on how our brains process change and suggest some ways we can draw on the Christian story to help us recognize change as the gift that it can be.

In The Power of Change, I explore the power of using transitions intentionally to develop change-ready Christians. I suggest structures to move beyond survival into intentional transformation during congregational change. These structures focus on building skills for change and adaptation. There is great potential for individual and congregational transformation in unexpected congregational change. Strategic approaches to learning during transition can encourage individual and congregational transformation. Becoming intentional about learning and transformation during transition can equip congregants to better handle change whenever it comes.

In Facing Change, I provide recommendations on how to deal with a current change in ways that can cultivate transformation. When you allow time and energy for learning about your congregation, tuning up congregational systems, and planning rituals and celebrations, you make room for big things to happen in your members’ hearts and minds. 

In Embracing Change, I provide recommendations for enhancing learning in members during congregational change. This section addresses how members learn through various elements of worship and spiritual practice and provides practical suggestions for developing these areas in your congregation.

In Practicing Change, I address the need to build in practices of support and guidance for your members to access during times of change. Whether the change they are facing is congregational or individual, such as an illness, job loss, or relationship shift, you can ensure that they are supported and guided through that change by church leaders and fellow members. Learning from change often starts in encounters with others or with spirit. Providing opportunities for those encounters is an essential part of faith formation.

In Helping Children and Youth with Change, I examine the possibility of using congregational change as an opportunity for learning among children and youth in the congregation. Strategies and best practices for religious education and youth programming are included.

In Cultivating Change Readiness, I describe how you can build change skills in your congregation even when you are not facing a big change. Change-ready congregations are sustainable congregations, and while it may seem like quite a large endeavor, you will not regret shifting time and energy to this effort. The next time a big change comes around, your congregation will approach it with open minds, open hearts, and maybe even enthusiasm!

Throughout, I return to stories of the members of Smalltown Baptist Church, Suburban Presbyterian Church, and Urban Congregational Church. While these stories are specific and grounded in their individual contexts, they contain universal themes and experiences that will illustrate the conclusions and recommendations that follow.

I wrote this book out of my deep concern for the future of congregations. Organizations, including churches, that cannot change and adapt will die. Christians who cannot change and learn will be unable to carry the faith into the future. If any form of church is to survive into the future, Christians who can handle change and harness it for real learning and transformation will be the key to that survival. 

It is my hope that this book contains resources for the work of envisioning, building, and strengthening congregations that create just those Christians. Such Christians, ready to face change and transition with open minds and tools for learning, will lay the foundation for Christianity to survive and thrive in the coming years, decades, and beyond. Above all, I hope the experiences of the churches I studied and the resources provided here will help you and your congregation to face change with hope, optimism, and even excitement about the amazing opportunity ahead for you and all in your congregation to become the change-ready Christians that our faith needs for the future.

 

2

The Challenge of Change

Everyone deals with change differently, and some are more comfortable with change than others. Often the way change transforms us (or doesn't) depends on whether we see it as a good or bad thing.

Personally, I hate change. When I hear about something that is changing, that is out of my control – something at work, my bus route, a technology I use, or a tool I rely on – I get very weird. I start to feel all hot and flushed. I immediately get aggravated with whoever caused this change or even the person delivering the news of the change. I begin thinking of who I can blame and where I can lodge an official complaint. I generally come to acceptance at some point, but my initial reaction is 100% fight or flight. Certainly, as a researcher of pastoral transitions and someone who really enjoys observing and participating in organizational change, I obviously do not hate all change. Yet when you get down to the nitty-gritty of changes that affect my life and are not in my control in any way whatsoever, I am not a big fan.

In my years of studying and working on change, though, I found out a few essentials about change that shifted my perspective. I began to understand from my research and experiences that:

• Change can and should be an integral part of any faith journey.
• Change can be a living devotional.
• Change can be the raw material that is transformed into new insights and awareness.
• Change can bring us closer to our fellow Jesus followers, from the beginning of our faith until today.

When we find ways to see and live through a change in these ways, it can be a powerful tool for our personal and congregational development.

So how can we shift our perspective on change?

Change and our Christian Story

Change is built into the story we live as Christians. The disciples experienced change on the road to Emmaus. They were working to process what they believed had happened to Jesus, having heard things that were beyond their comprehension and possibly beyond their belief. They could not incorporate this new information, the words of the women and their vision telling them Jesus was alive, their checking the tomb and finding it empty, into what they believed had happened, that Jesus had been killed by the authorities and would be with them no more on this journey they had chosen because of his call. Even when they met who they believed to be a stranger on the road, they could not process that this stranger was, in fact, Jesus. Assuming him a true stranger, they told him the whole story. The story of the trauma of their beloved rabbi being put to death, the story of their hopes and dreams for him, the story of their ongoing confusion. Jesus had some more lessons for them. He told them that not believing the women, or their own eyes was foolish and slow of heart. That not taking this new information and incorporating it with what they knew of the scriptures was the wrong path. But despite all these disorienting experiences, it was not until Jesus broke bread with them, as he had so many times before, did they find a new understanding that while Jesus was killed, he had not left them. He was walking with them into their future.

How many times are we faced with change, with new information, only to compare it with what we already know and either discard new conflicting data or simply doubt that data’s truthfulness or relevance? We are just like Jesus’ disciples every single day. We doubt that God is in the change until we have a transforming experience or insight that opens our eyes. The only problem is that too often, we don't have those mountaintop experiences. We go along unchanged, even resisting change, and never learning how God may be speaking to us in the process.

Big Changes Ahead

One of the primary changes we face as members or leaders of churches is a change in pastors. Like the disciples, who struggled with change after Jesus’ death and resurrection, with the added challenge of struggling to understand much of the wisdom He had left with them, churches are charged with continuing after the loss of one teacher to continue to spread the good news of their faith through the life of the church. During such transitions, some people find their faith tried or strengthened by their experiences during the transition. But even when their experiences have the potential for profound learning, people consistently interpret their experiences considering their pre-existing beliefs.

Struggling with any information that conflicted with those beliefs, seeking out research and information to shore up their pre-existing beliefs, they put all new information in a box marked “Don’t need, don’t want,” high up on a shelf somewhere. In churches, this can seem benevolent. People want to see a congregation in the best light, so they ignore information that might counter that. But it can hinder their progress. People who want to think of themselves as generous cannot figure out why their salary is not enough to attract the best candidates. Lay leaders who think of themselves as reasonable and forward-thinking seek a pastor who will continue business as usual.

Changing our Minds

The disciples could not take in the new information of the women’s testimony, the empty tomb, the appearance of Jesus. Not at first. They had new information, sure, but they took it, compared it to what they believed to be true, and dismissed any parts that did not fit. We all do that. Brain research has suggested that not only do humans amplify information that confirms their beliefs, we experience genuine pleasure – the same brain chemical released from pleasure or a substance high – when processing information that supports their beliefs.³

During the run-up to the 2004 presidential election, Emory researchers found just that. While undergoing an fMRI brain scan, 30 men with strong political feelings had to evaluate statements by both George W. Bush and John Kerry in which the candidates clearly contradicted themselves. The Republicans were critical of Kerry, the Democratic subjects were critical of Bush, yet both neatly avoided criticizing “their guy.” And the scans of their brain showed the part of the brain most associated with reasoning was inactive during all of this. Most active were the parts responsible for emotions, conflict resolution, and making judgments about morality. Once the men had arrived at a conclusion that made them emotionally comfortable, their reward and pleasure centers lit right up.⁴

We all do this. In some ways, we are just rats in a maze of life, avoiding the shock of information that conflicts with our beliefs to get to the pleasure of reaffirming what we already believe to be true. This is the challenge we have with our experiences of change. We go in with one idea of what is or should be unfolding and have an exceedingly difficult time opening ourselves to any new information from the change that, while it may be shocking or unexpected, can be one of our greatest sources of learning. Yet we are called by the stories of our faith to transcend our instincts to take the safer path and avoid the shock. In fact, our faith is permeated with the idea of metanoia, an idea that closely parallels what we would now call transformational learning.

Learning from Experience

For many people, learning from change, if it happens at all, is not transformative. Our frames of belief and understanding persist in the face of informal and incidental learning, despite experiences and new knowledge that challenge those frames. In my study of several congregations experiencing a pastoral transition, congregation members seemed to interpret most of their learning during the transition through the lens of their pre-existing frame of reference, if the lesson even intersected with their frame at all.

Research on transformative learning shows that most learning is transactional rather than transformative. Transactional learning is where learning through experience only results in new skills or information.⁵ In my study, for example, congregation members reported a great deal of learning that simply obtained information or skills needed to move forward in their responsibilities to the congregation. Even disorienting experiences such as learning of the changes in gay marriage policy in the national church or feeling much less comfortable in the congregation during the transition were likely to be interpreted through the lens of their frame of reference and reinforce that frame, rather than change it significantly.

In the field of neuroscience, brain imaging research has demonstrated that strongly-held beliefs are not only difficult to change, but that brain processes actively resist changing them. Parts of the brain that handle reasoning are less active when we are faced with information that challenges our strongly-held positions. We experience an emotional shock, almost as if we are a rat in a scien...

Table of contents

• Half-Title
• Full-Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Dedication
• Preface
• 1 - Introduction
• 2 - The Challenge Of Change
• 3 - Smalltown First Baptist Church: “Seeing God’S Will Manifested”
• 4 - The Power Of Change
• 5 - Facing Change
• 6 - Changing Pastors And Changing Times At Suburban Presbyterian Church
• 7 - Embracing Change
• 8 - Urban Congregational Church: “Survival Mode”
• 9 - Practicing Change
• 10 - Helping Children And Youth With Change
• 11 - Cultivating Change Readiness: Being Ready For Change In “Ordinary Time”
• 12 - Onward Into The Change
• Appendix
• Change Assessment For Churches
• Assessment Scoring Guide
• Worship Resources
• Church After: Curriculum For Small Groups
• Session 1: Intro/Safe Space
• Session 2: Testimony
• Session 3: Grief And Loss
• Session 4: Hopes And Fears
• Session 5: Gifts And Passions
• Session 6: The Road Ahead
• See, I Am Doing A New Thing: A Children’S Curriculum
• Session 2
• Session 3
• Session 4
• Session 5
• Session 6
• Endnotes
• About The Author