The Good News ... and Challenge ... about Plateaued and Declining Churches

"There is no such thing as a dysfunctional organization, because every organization is perfectly aligned to achieve the results it currently gets," Ronald Heifetz, etc. The Practice of Adaptive Leadership: Tools and Tactics for Changing Your Organization and the World, (2009). 

This profound statement, when we understand it, is sobering ... and liberating ... and challenging! 

First, understanding the statement. Heifetz states the obvious: functioning determines outcome. What we do determines what we get. Think "choices have consequences." E.g., the lack of money management and over-spending produces debt and financial stress. The outcome (consequence) is debt and financial stress. The source (choice) is the mismanagement of money and over-spending. More money will not solve the financial stress because the problem lies in the mismanagement of the money. Until the mismanagement is changed, the result will be unchanged, regardless of how much money one has.  

Next, the sobering reality: Heifetz's statement, applied to churches, means that plateaued and declining churches across The UMC actually function in a way to produce the plateau and decline they are experiencing. What they are doing produces the decline they are experiencing!

Understanding this sobering reality can be liberating! It means we are not doomed to the decline we fear and say we dislike. We can change the outcome (decline) by changing what we do.

And therein is the challenge. We don't like change.

We do what we do in church life because it is comfortable and familiar. It meets our needs and fulfills our desires (comfortable). It is the way we have always done things (familiar). The predictability and certainty of the way we do things gives us a sense of security, albeit a false sense of security. The focus is on us: our preferences and desires, our comfort and satisfaction. Naturally, we resist anything that disturbs our comfort and substitutes something new in place of our preferences, i.e., change. We don't like change because it disturbs our comfort and displaces our preferences.

We defend our way of doing things by arguing it is the "right" or "proper" or "biblical" way of doing things. In reality, the way we do things is because it is the way we like to do things.

Heifetz's statement exposes our real objective: our comfort, our preferences, our desire for familiarity and predictability. That unrecognized objective is why we resist change, even in the face of decline. We really do not resist change; we resist the discomfort change brings. Until the discomfort of the decline is greater than the discomfort of change, we will continue to do what we have always done ... even though it produces the decline about which we whine ... even though the decline will ultimately lead to death.

What we do determines what we get. Our functioning determines the outcome. If we want a different outcome, we must change what we do. If we want growth and vitality instead of stagnation and decline, we must change how we function as a church. If we want comfort, if we want to have our preferences, we don't have to change a thing. But let's be honest about what we want and quit whining about our decline.

The challenge is to identify what we want, then adjust what we do to produce what we want. But let's be clear: vitality and growth will require change and the discomfort it brings.