Keeping things the same is an exercise in change management

Hi, I'm back.  My silence has been a combination of 1. my forgetting how to get into the back end of my blog with 2. an incredibly busy time preparing for the launch of the new theological college in South Australia: Uniting College for Leadership & Theology - http://unitingcollege.org.au/ .  During my absence some very kind reviews of Introducing the Uniting Church in Australia have been published, and MediaCom advise me that the booklet continues to sell very well.  I've got to say, it's the reading of the booklet that I'm so pleased about, not the selling.  We've got a lot to be enthusiastic about in the Uniting Church, and our heritage and vision is one of those things.

The process of launching the new Uniting College for Leadership & Theology has involved a huge amount of change here in SA.  It has reminded me of a rather searching conversation I had with a student last year, when the scope of the changes were beginning to become visible and the language of "leadership" was starting to take hold more widely in the church.

“I’m so over change”, he said. “We always assume that leadership is about change – coping with changes in a group’s situation, planning organizational change, managing change.  Can’t leadership sometimes be about helping a group stay right where it is, keeping things the way they’ve always been?”

 

The student asked good questions.  And in spite of what I’m about to say, I continue to think about this one.

 

But I think leadership has to be about change.  Even keeping things “the way they’ve always been” involves change.  Say a congregation decided it wanted to maintain the wonderful tradition of Wesleyan hymn-singing.  It would have to accommodate enormous changes to do that.

 

It would have to factor in the decline in communal singing in Australian culture in general, the loss of denominational status of the Methodist Hymn Book as the one text every congregation had in common besides the Bible, the absence in 2008 of that big multi-generational group of singers that most congregations could marshal in 1958, not to mention the shortage of pianists, organists and similarly skilled volunteers to lead the singing at the same time as fending off the fanatical antiquarians who’ve been inspired by that Maddy Prior recording of what the hymns “really” sounded like in Wesley’s day!

 

No doubt about it, to maintain that tradition of hymn-singing today would require a very innovative congregation indeed.  It couldn’t be done without really embracing change, and not without effective local leadership.

 

Then again, I would say that, wouldn’t I?  After all, as a member and minister in the UnitingChurch I signed up for change.  It’s in the Basis of Union:

“The Church lives between the time of Christ’s death and resurrection and the final consummation of all things which Christ will bring; the Church is a pilgrim people, always on the way towards a promised goal; here the Church does not have a continuing city but seeks one to come.  On the way Christ feeds the Church with Word and Sacraments, and it has the gift of the Spirit in order that it may not lose the way.” (paragraph 3)

Belonging to “a pilgrim people” implies change.  It’s a journey, and journeys involve changing surroundings, changing fortunes, changing travelling companions and, unless you’re amazingly skilled at packing light from the outset, changing the stuff that makes up your baggage along the way.  Something we need at one point in the journey we don’t need at the next.  It could be a form of worship, a way of making decisions, a rule, a building, a battle.  At some point we just have to consciously choose to lay it down at the roadside – grateful for the blessings it brought, warmed by the memory of what it meant to us, but recognizing that now we must go on without it.  Unless we can do that we become burdened in ways that will slow us down and ultimately bring the pilgrimage to a sad, shambolic end.  Not to that “promised end” that Christ will bring, not even close to “the final consummation of all things”.

 

Our point of departure never changes (Christ’s death and resurrection).  Our destination never changes (the final consummation of all things which Christ will bring).  Our need for nourishment and direction doesn’t go away (Word, Sacraments, and the gift of the Spirit).  But the things we need along the way are in a constant state of change.  That’s what leaders are for.  To help us recognize and negotiate those changes that will keep us “always on the way towards a promised end”.

 

Comments

[Paul Langkamp]

Here is the last paragraph from Paul Langkamp's blog found at
http://www.confessingcongregations.com/resources/item/varieties-of-uca-non-confession-blog-7/

Another variety of non-confession is part confession. It happens when any appealing non-Biblical idea gets worked into the way we think about confession. A current popular idea is ‘change’; that’s its constantly happening, and the job of leaders is to help people manage it, including leaders in the church. The idea readily gels because Christians, more than ever, live in a world that is moving swiftly further and farther from Christ. Nothing seems the same any more. President-elect Andrew Dutney had some ideas about change in a blog last year. He wrote, though he admitted he would keep thinking about it, that the Basis of Union suggests change, “Belonging to ‘a pilgrim people’ implies change. It’s a journey, and journeys involve changing.’ Indeed, the Basis was the big blueprint for molding together of two confessing denominations. What Dutney is certain about is that, “Our point of departure never changes (Christ’s death and resurrection). Our destination never changes (the final consummation of all things which Christ will bring). But Dutney admits frailty in the now: “Our need for nourishment doesn’t go away (Word, Sacraments, the gift of the Spirit).” True. But to admit Christ the beginning and Christ the end but not Christ very present isn’t confession at all. And so it is less than whole confession to waiver with uncertainty of ‘change’ and not seize the certainty witnessed by the great Methodist Hymn, “Guide me O thy Great Jehovah, pilgrim through this barren land.” Another old favourite is “Rock of Ages”. The certainty of the Rock of Ages guides us while contemporary culture’s cunning wiles of change waylay us. Confession gives confidence because whom we confess is Lord: always of everything. Furthermore, to not totally confess Christ in the now renders confession elastic to ever-changing cultural trends and the latest religious fads.

Christ of the cross, our ever-present guide and our destination is the unchanging confession of Christ’s church. In making this confession in a changing world, the Uniting Church can draw on the riches of two denominations of faithful confession: the Methodists who show Christ’s work to entire sanctification of the Christian’s life and the Reformed churches’ firm, systematic understanding of the Christian’s life in God’s world. Both denominations draw deeply and similarly on ancient Christian confession.