4 Types of Change in Your Church (and the right questions to ask yourself during these changes)

Could your church be on the cusp of profound transformation? This episode with Todd Atkins from Lifeway is a revelation for any church leader seeking to navigate the complexities of change. We dissect the four fundamental shifts that can breathe new life into your congregation: strategic realignment, personnel adjustments, process enhancements, and personal leadership development. Whether it's shaking up your church's mission or tweaking staff roles to unlock hidden potential, these changes promise to inject vitality into your worship community. Engage with us as we guide you through a series of reflective questions designed to help you identify areas ripe for transformation.

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Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:07

Hi there, welcome to this edition of the Healthy Church Staff Podcast. My name's Todd Rhodes. I'm one of the co-founders over at chemistrystaffingcom. I hope you'll head over to chemistrystaffingcom in your free time, all the free time that you have, and check out all the services that we have, both for churches that are looking for staff and for staff members that are looking for new ministry opportunities. Okay, so I got the plug out of the way.

Speaker 1: 0:33

Let's talk today about four types of change in your church. This is a list I got that I found really helpful from Todd Atkins over at Lifeway. He talks about four different types of change in your church and I want to go through each one of these quickly and then offer you some questions. These should show up in the show notes as well that you can ask when you're going through any types of these changes in your church. Okay, so let's look at the four types of change that Todd identifies, and the first is strategic change, and that is a potential, maybe even a complete realignment of your church leadership activities and mission with the goal of revitalizing your church. So this is like the pinnacle of change. This is what a lot of people think when they think church change. It's not every change is strategic, but strategic change maybe has a potential for total realignment of leadership, mission activities, all of that. So that's the first type is strategic change, and here's some questions I think would be helpful to ask, as you're looking at do we need to take a look at some strategic changes? The first is what is our core mission and purpose as a church and does our current strategy align with that? A lot of times it works well for years, but then there comes a point where it doesn't work anymore and you need to look at some strategic changes. Another question to ask what needs in our community could we better address? And another question what assets and skills and resources do we currently have that are being underutilized? What has God gifted you with? What has God given your church? What opportunities are there that you're just not able to go after because of your current strategic alliance? And then, finally, what radical shifts could re-energize and revitalize our congregation? So what could get us from where we are to where we think we need to be? Those are all fit into that first bucket of strategic changes.

Speaker 1: 2:39

Okay, the second type of change are people changes, and these could be adjustments of roles within the church could be. Staff could be key, volunteers could be transitioning current staff members or volunteers or bringing new members in to better fit the church's needs. So here's some questions. When you're talking about people changes as you look at your current structure, do your current, do they and their responsibilities best serve our mission of where we need to go? Again, we're not talking about strategic change here. We're talking about people changes. So we're not saying we're going to change our strategy. We're saying we're looking at our people in our current mission and we're saying do our current roles and responsibilities of those roles best serve our current mission?

Speaker 1: 3:31

What skills or perspectives are missing? Where are the holes serve our current mission? What skills or perspectives are missing? Where are the holes on our leadership team and how can we best support transitions for exiting or new members of our team? This is something that churches as a whole do not do well. That's the reason that Matt Steen and I started chemistry. Staffing is that there's a lot of dysfunction when it comes to hiring and firing, entering and exiting the team and the support for transitions, and if you ever need any help in that area, you can always reach out to me at any time. Podcast at chemistrystaffingcom. Love to help you, but how? That's the question to ask. How can we best support transitions for either exiting or new members of our team? And then last question people changes. How can we maximize support transitions for either exiting or new members of our team? And then, last question people changes. How can we maximize the gifts and passions not just of our staff and our leadership, but of our congregation? What kind of latent energy is there that we're not tapping into yet and how can we take advantage of some of those giftings and passions that you already have in your congregation? So those are people changes. So we already looked at strategic changes and people changes.

Speaker 1: 4:35

Third, let's look at process changes and, again, most of the changes. When we talk about church change, most of the changes should fit into one of these four areas. So either strategic or people changes, or the third one, process changes. And process changes are simply modifications to the way you currently do things, your routines, your practices, your traditions. What do you need to change there, when it comes to practices or routines or traditions in your church, that could help improve efficiency or effectiveness? So here's some questions to ask when you're talking about changes that have to do with process. Number one is what traditions or practices are either now outdated or inefficient? And ministries what ministries do we have that are outdated or inefficient or no longer effective? That could be a process change. Where are communication breakdowns or bottlenecks happening? How could we streamline decision making and implementation? These are all kind of internal process changes.

Speaker 1: 5:35

And here's one of my favorite process change questions what small changes could we made that could make big improvements? In my time at Leadership Network, we also called this kind of the low-hanging fruit. What's the low-hanging fruit? What could we tweak? What could we change in a small way? What's the low-hanging fruit? What's the low-hanging fruit? What could we tweak? What could we change in a small way? What's the low-hanging fruit that would be easy to make a decision on and see a quick win? So those are process changes. So strategic changes, people changes, process changes and then finally changes in you and in changes in you.

Speaker 1: 6:11

We all change as leaders. There's an evolution in our personal leadership style, in our mindset, in our approach to managing and guiding the church, and sometimes there are changes that happen and there are changes that happen in you. What leadership skills do I need to build or improve upon? How can I adapt my approach to better fit the needs of our church. A couple other questions and I'll get you out of here for today. But am I embracing innovation and change or resisting it? We just talked about this on a recent edition of the podcast about embracing change. And then the last question how can I model continual growth and learning as a leader?

Speaker 1: 6:47

These are just some of the questions that you should be asking yourself on a regular basis about you personally and your leadership and what changes that need to happen. So whatever changes that you're trying to make in your church, chances are that they're going to fall in one of these areas strategic change, people change, process change or just changes in you. The first thing you need to do is determine what bucket the change that you really need to make or want to make fits into, and then start asking some of these questions. The questions are all in the show notes. You can get them at the podcast website, but that is a great way to start to get a really good grip on, first of all, what kind of change you're looking for and what you need to be asking in order to successfully lead through that change as a leader.

Speaker 1: 7:41

I'd love to hear your comments and your suggestions for maybe future topics here on the podcast, you can reach out to me anytime at podcast at chemistrystaffingcom. We are here on the Healthy Church Staff Podcast every weekday, monday through Friday, but you can listen 24-7. My goodness, why wouldn't you right? You can listen anytime. Today is episode number 67, so you can find a complete archive at our website. It's at chemistrystaffingcom slash podcast and I would love to hear from you anytime, any day. We'll see you back here again tomorrow.