Video Transcript: The Dynamics of Change

Welcome back. We're continuing with our course developing great commission  skills, and we're turning our thoughts in this session to the skill topic, the  dynamics of change. You know, anytime you're dealing with vision, casting  vision, building ownership of vision, there's going to be some degree of change  in in what we're looking at. And so we want to, we want to sort of dissect this,  this art and science of change, a little bit to equip ourselves into how to  negotiate, how to negotiate with change better. So we're going to start with the  first of four dynamics, and it has to do with the willingness to change. You know,  when leaders are endeavoring to move a congregation through change. Of  course, their thoughts go to willingness. And you know, we're asking the obvious question, are our people willing to change? Now, here's what I've discovered. I  learned this a long, long time ago, kind of one of those hard knocks education  things that you learn. I discovered that willingness to change is is not all there is  to the the equation of change, to the science of change. Yes, we want people to  be willing, but there's more to the story. You know, a better question than are  people willing to change would be this is willingness enough to produce actual  change. Let me tell you a quick story. My first local church ministry was in  Southern California. I was working with a church planter. The two of us moved  our families to Southern California. We started a church. Soon upon arrival, we  discovered there was a church in the area that had 39 members, but they had  no Pastor, no key leadership to speak of. And long story short, those folks made  the decision to to join with us, and they became the initial congregation of this  new church. Now six of those people did not want to make that journey, and so  they left right away. And that left, of course, 33 others. And all 33 of these folks,  all 33 of them elected to be part of it, actually signed a document that they knew  the changes that would be coming, they had been spelled out. And you know,  we're all behind this. We're with you 100% this makes so much sense. We're so  excited. We want to be part of it. Well, here's the thing that worked really well up  unto the point that we actually made those changes, and then about half of that  group ended up pulling out. Now they left under what I'm going to call Healthy  circumstances. You know, they came to us, individually or as couples, and just  said, Hey, you know what? We really believe that this direction that you're taking the church is the direction that God wants for this church, but it doesn't work for  us. So God bless you, but we're going to go up the street to some other church.  Now, what do we learn from that? Well, what we learned is that people could be  willing. They were willing enough to make the votes necessary to turn the  property and the building over to the new entity, to sign on the dotted line that  they wanted to be part of the original core group, that they understood all the  changes that were coming. They were willing to do all of these things. But when  the time came, we find that they couldn't make the change. Now that brings me  to dynamic number two, the ability to change. You know? What we discovered is that people can, in fact, be willing to change, but not be able to make the 

change that is much more complex. And so the words of the wise here is, don't,  don't mistake willingness to change, which is somewhat hypothetical. What that  says is, hey, when the time comes for change, I'm going to be willing to make  that change until the change gets here and moves from hypothetical to real,  that's when you find out if people are actually able to make the change. And the  truth is, some folks, folks, some folks that are truly willing are just not able to  make the change. Now, the third dynamic is the substance of change. Change  has two faces. There is what are we changing from, and there is what are we  changing to. Now, here is what, what I've discovered, changing from is much  easier than changing to. You follow that, changing from is easier than changing  to. You see, let's say you've got a group of people on a on a team. Let's say it's  10 people, and they are working on this idea of a new and improved vision for  our church discerned from God Himself. Well when it comes time to make a  change from something that was previously in place to something new. The  decision to change from is a much easier decision than what to change to. You  see, whatever it is that we're changing from is something that's well known by  everyone. We can look at it. We've experienced it. We've lived with it for  probably many years, and we're collectively as a group, we've reached  consensus, unanimous vote, we need to change from that. We all agree, yes.  But then you ask the question, okay, we're going to change from that. But what  are we going to change to? Well, now you've got 10 different versions of what  the new change should look like. And it's it's again, it's hypothetical. It's  theoretical. It's not here yet. All we can do is project we can describe. Maybe we  have some samples that we can show but it's not here yet. It's It's mysterious,  much, much more difficult to get agreement on what to change to than what to  change from. Now that brings me to the final element, which is the pace of  change. And here's a couple of questions, how much change can our  congregation handle? And how fast can our congregation process the change?  So when it comes to changing from one thing to another, how much can our  people handle and how quickly can we navigate this change? Now there is no  set rule or formula to this. It's simply a matter of knowing your congregation We  have to know the people involved now, here's here's where the tension lies. We  don't want to compromise on our vision, because we are afraid that people  might be upset, disturbed, not happy, not cooperative. If God has led us to  formulate a certain vision, we are compelled to move in that direction. So I'm not saying to negate God's vision because of how it might land with certain people.  What I am saying is that when it comes to actually navigating the changes  necessary to invoke that new vision, we have to think in terms of quantity and  time. How much of this change can our people handle over what period of time  now, we don't want to delay things so much that it never happens, or that our  folks begin to believe that, hey, we talked about this, but we're really not making  it happen. You know? We don't want to go that far. We don't want to put the 

vision at risk, but we do want to be judicious and how how this new vision is  unfolded. How much change can our congregation handle, and how fast can our congregation, handle it. So these are matters that are are delicate. There's a lot  of sensitivity here. Change is more difficult for some people than for others, but  we have to just be smart, we have to be wise, we have to be prayerful. We have  to be considerate and respectful. We don't want to just sweep in and blow things up. We want to find a way to fold changes into reality in a way that is going to be something that a congregation can can handle. It's not going to be so disruptive  that it blows things up and that, you know, we give people an opportunity to to  get used to the new and improved version of us. Now, I want to share something with you. It's a model for change that I encountered some years ago. I went  through a certification process with with an outfit called Prosci, and this, this  organization deals with change management. So I went through a training  process to be earn a certificate in change management from these folks. It  involved a great deal of reading and study on the front end, followed by a week  long conference down in Austin, Texas, in my case, and and I've been using this  model in a variety of ways ever since. So I want to share this model with you,  Prosci's model for change management. It's called the ADKAR model. Now,  frankly, I wish, I wish they could have come up with a better phrase. ADKAR  doesn't kind of stick with you. I wish that they had read the Heath brothers book  on made it stick and come up with something that was more, I don't know, more  simple, more concrete, but nevertheless, it's their company. This is how they did  it, and they call it the ADKAR model. So what's at stake here? Well, here's how  the ADKAR model works. You start with awareness. We have to help the people  that are part of our congregation become aware of the need for change. There  are lots of books out there in the marketplace that deal with change. They tend  to start with the concept of urgency. You know, until folks have a sense of  urgency that change is necessary, they won't make the change. Well,  awareness, in part, is to create urgency, either because things are so difficult  that we need to change out of a response to crisis, or that there's a great  opportunity here to be seized. There's an urgency to the moment. And so how  do we do that? We're going to cast vision. We're going to promote the rationale  for change. The reason that changes are so important, both on the negative and the positive side. The D stands for desire. We have to foster a sense of desire  on the part of our people to make the change. Well, this has to do with creating  ownership. You know, if we want people to have that desire to change, then  we've got to help them develop ownership of this vision. So therein, those first  two connect with our skill casting vision and creating ownership, creating  awareness, creating desire. The third one is the K knowledge. Well, we need to  know what's at stake. We need to know how to do this. And so training kicks in.  Remember, training is about learning some things that we can eventually guide  our execution, and move into knowing how to do things. Then finally, we come 

into, well, not finally, but next is another A which stands for ability, the  implementation, the execution. So we're actually putting our knowledge to work.  So if you think about knowledge and ability in combo, we're talking about the  teaching element of gaining knowledge and the training element of gaining  ability. We've learned what we. Need to do the How to training, but now we've  got to take the How to training and implement it, execute it, and then finally, the  R reinforcement. We have to go back to these things again and again and again  and again. Perhaps you know this, but adult education has a number of key  principles, and one of those principles is the idea of reiteration. In working with  adults, what you want to do is reinforce, reinforce, reinforce, reiterate, reiterate,  reiterate, repeat, repeat, repeat. You never get to the point where you've said  things too much. We're constantly reminding people of this is what we're doing.  This is why we're doing it. This is how we're doing it, and let's implement and  follow through, and then we're going to reinforce, reinforce, reinforce. So I find  that the ADKAR model is a very healthy model in helping congregations  navigate change now, vision casting to create ownership recognizes that change is difficult. It's complex, and you know, approaches to change are greatly  enhanced by awareness of these four elements. You know, the willingness to  change, ability to change, the substance of change, the pace of change. If we  have these four elements in mind and we leverage the value of the ADKAR  model, we can go a long ways toward navigating change. Now that wraps up  our session for this time that has to do with the dynamics of change. In our next  session, we're going to be looking at the skill topic, people types, we're going to  be making note of the personality and temperamental variances among people  as working through people is how you navigate through change. Remember,  without the people, the vision will perish. May God bless you as you continue  with your studies in the name of Jesus. Amen