IN LEADERSHIP, ALL CHANGE IS LOSS
There’ s a popular myth that people in churches don’ t like to change.
Yes, we said myth.
The reality is churches change all the time. Change is not usually the challenge. It is the loss tied to change that people resist.
Ron Heifetz explains:
Adaptive change stimulates resistance because it challenges people’ s habits, beliefs, and values. It asks them to take a loss, experience uncertainty, and even express disloyalty to people and cultures. Because adaptive change forces people to question and perhaps redefine aspects of their identity, it also challenges their sense of competence. Loss, disloyalty, and feeling incompetent: That’ s a lot to ask. No wonder people resist.
When you’ re trying to introduce a change in your parish or ministry, people are not likely to resist the change. Instead, they’ re likely to resist the loss or fear behind that change.
As two of many additional researchers who highlight this principle, Robert Kegan and Lisa Laskow Lahey of Harvard University explain:
It is not change that causes anxiety; it is the feeling that we are without defenses in the presence of what we see as danger that causes anxiety. That“ change makes us uncomfortable” is now one of the most widely promoted, widely accepted, and underconsidered half- truths around.
Again, people don’ t resist change; they resist loss. One congregation pursuing the futurefocused 3 Checkpoints wanted to shift from a traditional to a more contemporary worship
44