The Ken Johnson Group / May 10, 2006 Featured Article

Change — stay strong and don’t give up

by Ken Johnson

For the last sixteen years I have been involved with churches that are struggling with the demons of “that’s not the way we’ve always done it” past, and I know that this is a major problem in churches that have long histories. My goal is to convince pastors that when they try something new they have to give it plenty of time to work before they give up. Just this week I came across a metaphor that helps explain the slow change process. It’s important that you give any try at change time. Your people need to have time to forget the old ways and time get used the new. It’s interesting how time sometimes allows change to happen. If you continue the change over a period of time the people will have forgotten what was happening before and the change is accomplished.

Here is the metaphor; there was recently an earthquake and mine collapse in Tasmania where one man died and two men were buried alive. The rescue team found where the two men were and they were able to get a conduit pipe through to them and get them the bare essentials for survival. They then began to bore a larger hole as a guide for a larger escape tube. When they got this larger hole opened they were able to give them a few more necessities as well as extras (even Ipods) and begin to cut the larger rescue hole. Interestingly enough the machine (I’m not sure if it was a machine or by hand) that cuts this larger hole continuously pounds the rock until it is powder and can be removed so it is not a quick process digging this escape tube hole. In fact they were only able to dig about 20” a day. Praise God they were able to rescue the two men and they walked out on May 8, 2006. This is what the leadership of a dying church needs to do, slowly give them what is necessary for survival and they will accept it in these small doses, but not all at once. Then you need to keep beating the drum, softening up the soil around them to help them understand the need for change, and most often the change will happen. This is not a foolproof method but it works more often than it fails.

The biggest problem with dying churches is that they won’t admit that they are dying so they don’t want the doses of life giving food they just want to keep living on what they have survived on for many years. This is the reason that you give them small doses and don’t give up. You may need to stay at it for sometimes many months before the new lesson is learned and firmly in place.

Here are the questions that I have a person who is considering leading a change ask themselves before they begin any change.

1. Do you have the desire to change?
2. Are you willing to learn?
3. Can you make sound decisions concerning that change?
4. Can you take the proper action to effect the change?
5. Are you ready to fight the sometimes long term fight that it might take to make a change?

Change is vitally important and needs to happen on a regular basis as your local church culture changes. Churches that stay in the same rut never get out and eventually die. I’m not saying that this is always bad—there are some churches that need to die, but I’m sure that God would rather all of His churches would grow.

In His Steps

Ken Johnson