The Ken Johnson Group / November 9, 2005 Featured Article

Culture Change in this church?

You’ve got to be kidding that will never happen!!!

by Ken Johnson

I was recently talking to a pastor who said: “I’ve been at this church for seven years and I haven’t been able to change the culture one iota.” After spending time with him I realized why he hadn’t made any headway: he didn’t understand how to change the culture and he didn’t have the personality to effect change. Changing the culture in a mildly successful church is difficult. Therefore, changing his church, which enjoyed much success before his arrival, would take an individual who is up to the challenge in a variety of ways. And it was obvious that this Pastor was not going to be able to accomplish anything.

When I was a child my mother regularly said that each day was new, that change had happened over night and I needed to be prepared for that change. It has been exciting to be alive in the last half of the twentieth century and the beginning of the twenty first century.

Are you looking at needed possible change in your ministry? In this article I am going to attempt to help you understand why change is something that needs to happen, and give you a few thoughts as to how you can reasonably create change in your own situation.

The first question that needs to be answered is: Why would anyone want to change the culture of a church? First it is important to know what “culture” means in this context. Webster’s Dictionary defines culture as: …b) the customary beliefs, social forms, and material traits of a racial, religious, or social group (p. 314, Ninth New Collegiate Dictionary). The culture of a church is what makes it unique. Is it dynamic, on fire, and living, or is it dead on the vine of the Christian Faith? If a church is on fire for God and is spreading the Word of God in, at the very least, the local neighborhood, then perhaps its culture shouldn’t change. But if a church’s culture is dead and totally introspective then at least a small culture change needs to transpire.

The following are some reasons for culture change in a church:

1. The church is in a rut and can’t get out.

2. “I’ve served on every board of this church, now it’s time for someone else to do the work.” 3. Membership or attendance hasn’t gone anywhere but down for the last five years or more.

4. Everyone in the congregation says: “This is MY church!”

5. “That’s the way we’ve done it for the last forty years and we’re not changing now!”

6. “I fought to have this in the service forty years ago and you’re not changing it!”

7. “This building was good enough for me and my children, so it’s good enough for my grandchildren.”

8. “How can we have worship without the pulpit in place?”

9. “We don’t need any evangelism classes our Sunday School will provide for all of our needs.”

10. “How can you say that parking is a problem? We had three times as many people twenty years ago and didn’t have any more parking.Many more reasons could be added to this list, it is certainly not all-inclusive. They exemplify a “dead church” that needs a culture change.

Here is an example of how a church changed its culture for the good. In the 1970’s I had the distinct privilege to be on the staff of a church that made an amazing culture change in a very short period of time. There were a couple of reasons the change happened. First, the church had just lost a pastor who left his wife and married the church secretary. Secondly, the new, dynamic pastor helped the congregation understand why the culture should be changed. He immediately convinced them that they should purge the rolls of inactive members, which quickly happened, and that his “vision” for the future of the church was what God wanted.

Fortunately, he was a real man of God who relied on God for everything and the people believed and followed him. Within two years the church membership increased from 400 to 2,400 and the culture was changed. In that period, the church went from an introspective “country church” whose members ministered to themselves to a church that ministered to the world. Although one might have visited the church with the attitude that it was a big, uninviting, cold church with no personality, one went away feeling quite different. When a visitor left they felt like they had just been at a loving family reunion (not all family reunions are loving) or maybe a “love fest” (this term is used with the best thoughts in mind) because everyone welcomed you, talked to you, listened to you and let you know how important you were to this Family of God. They hadn’t been hit over the head with the attitude of “we’re so good but look at how bad the rest of the world is or attacked with: “You have to turn your life over to Christ today.” They went away with the feeling that the people of this church cared about them as a person. The congregation was not just hoping to put another notch in its belt for Christianity. The congregation grew to over 4,000 members and continued its wonderful kind of ministry, starting a few highly successful churches which still minister to flocks today, and leading in church change. It even helped begin a new denomination in the 1980s.

Over a period of almost ten years this congregation literally sent hundreds of people into missions around the community and the state as well as around the world. God used this congregation in amazing ways. Regretfully, many things come to an end, and the amazing outreach ministry of this church began to fall apart during my fifth year at the church. The Senior Minister, who freely admitted to me that he had made a mistake by not really going to the Lord and asking Him in prayer if he should hire two new ministers, will be eternally saddened by what happened next. Granted, he had promised them positions at the church when one retired as a Chaplain and the other finished Seminary, but in the grand scheme of things there was no room for them at the church. I’m sure that God would have provided places for them to go if the church hadn’t hired them, and it probably would have been in a place where they would have fit in much better.

These two men were wonderful men and Christians for sure, but they came first of all without any job descriptions; because there were no job openings and secondly, they both came out of the military where they had been given their marching orders at the beginning of each week and didn’t understand how a staff could work that didn’t have a dictatorial leader. The Senior Pastor was the type of leader who believed in hiring the best person for the position and then letting them do the job. He didn’t stand over their shoulder and watch what they did. The staff met weekly and discussed our short term plans and had retreats every couple of months where we discussed at length the long-term strategies and plans, which created an atmosphere of trust within the staff. Adding new people who weren’t privy to this atmosphere of trust created a new problem, one we hadn’t had to deal with at any time during my first five years at the church. Regretfully, they weren’t happy when they found out that the Senior Minister wasn’t going to change his style. They began building their own congregations from the membership at large to help them convince the powers that be to make a change. Instead of making things better, this created a problem in the ranks. It wasn’t long before the dissention and tension around the church was almost unbearable. The problem was that neither of these men seemed to have any idea as to the problems they were causing. What a sad commentary on the church and the love and compassion that is supposed to be there.

I’m sure that these two Pastors still don’t realize how they impacted the church, but this example just shows how evil can lurk and work to the detriment of the staff. I know for a fact that neither of these Pastors had in mind to kill the church. All they wanted to do was have the staff work the way that they were used to, but that wasn’t the way that the church had succeeded up to that point, and this tension created the beginning of the end of an amazing ministry. Currently the church is a shell of its former self, with fewer than 700 members and a very inactive congregation. What a sad end to a wonderful beginning.

Now I’d like to go back to the Pastor who said: “I’ve been at this church for seven years and I haven’t been able to change the culture one iota.” Where do you think he might have been for the last seven years? He obviously had his head in the sand. Too bad for the church and for God’s Ministry, because they were both cheated out of at least seven years of potential ministering to the congregation and the community, and will likely be cheated of more if the Pastor stays and does nothing. The big problem is that a Pastor like this will always blame the shortcoming on everyone else except himself or herself. What a sad commentary on the ministry. You have to wonder where this pastor received his/her training. Why wasn’t this person weeded out of the Ministry early on before they got to this position and became a dead weight?

This Pastor was probably either being paid so much that he didn’t have any reason to be creative or he was depressed and had no desire or understanding of how to be creative. These are just a couple of the things that might be ailing this Pastor. I realize there are many more possibilities. Many times the Pastor is in the same rut that the congregation is in, but this is not usually true of a pastor who is just beginning at a new church. This Pastor came to the church and in seven years did basically nothing new and refreshing. The church needs to reinvent itself at least every five to ten years. If you don’t you are just treading water.

How Do You Change The Culture? Here are some suggestions.

1. Core Values: First, find out if you have any core values and make sure that they are in place and that the entire church is understands them and lives by them. If you don’t have any set core values that the church goes by then you need to first develop those and begin living them.

2. A Vision: First of all you need a well thought out Vision for the future of the church. This Vision needs to be put together by a combination of church lay leaders, the Pastor, and the professional staff. This vision can’t be dreamed up by just the Pastor because if the Pastor leaves or dies then you have no one to carry on the vision. This needs to be a joint effort.

3. Make it a real Dream Vision: Make sure that the vision is something that your congregation will have to, as a group, strive for, not just a simple vision that can be reached without any work. This vision should create togetherness, not isolation.

4. Someone to articulate the Vision: You need to find someone who can be an articulate spokesperson for the vision. The first thing that you might say is “the Pastor is the one who should present the vision,” but I have found over the years that that is not always true. Be open to how God leads. This person may not even be on your leadership team but someone who is well respected for their Christian beliefs and the way they live their life.

5. Present the Vision: Don’t just have a congregational meeting and present your vision there. Begin by presenting the “vision” to as many people as you can in as many settings as you can find. It’s very important that you begin with small groups and increase to larger settings this way you begin to build a consensus.

6. Listen to feedback and respond: Listen and gently respond to all comments good and bad so you can understand what people are looking for, what they are thinking, and what you are going to have to do to sell the vision.

7. Take your time, but don’t take too long. This is the tough call. How long do we take before we move with the vision? This question has no easy answer. Just don’t take to long, because you will lose the excitement, and it will be harder to sell. Roll it out with a drum roll. Make a big deal of it. Don’t try to sneak it in on your members or you will have lost every opportunity.

Realize that there are many other ways that the culture in the church may need to be changed; I have only discussed one way here. You need to be constantly on the lookout for areas of the church that have gotten into a rut and begin to pull them out. You aren’t going to change the entire church all at the same time, but you might be working on different areas of the ministry throughout your entire time at the church. When will you begin changing the culture in your church? Today, tomorrow or will it be next year or the year after? Don’t wait to long. The longer the church stays in the rut the harder it is to get out. Remember, yesterday ended last night.

November 9 , 2005 Featured Article