Three necessary Teams for Change

All three of these teams are necessary. Many fail because they try to bring change on the strength of vision alone. - Ed

While the new pastor is communicating urgency and developing vision, he or she is also recruiting three key teams of people. Team One is a prayer team that will commit to pray regularly for changes that lead to health, growth, and reproduction.

Team Two is the vision or dream team. Certain people find new ideas and ways of thinking intriguing and are energized when put with others who think as they do. Also many declining congregations have some individuals who are dissatisfied with the status quo and make quite clear how they feel. Idea people and critics should be recruited for this team. The purpose of this team is to help the pastor develop arguments for urgency and create vision in order to address the urgency.

Team Three consists of leaders whom the pastor recruits and trains to help implement change. A pastor should not recruit these particular leaders or potential leaders for Teams One and Two. The pastor will need all the leaders that can possibly be recruited for Team Three.
--Paul D. Borden, Direct Hit

Good leadership and Vision

A congregation is desperate for leaders who are filled with passion, have already demonstrated courage, see flexibility as a virtue, are missional because of their passion, are wise, really believe God expects them to win with a whole groups of saints who feel the same, and who take bottom-line responsibility for what God will do through them.

Vision does not necessarily start with the pastor. However, most pastors who arrive to lead congregations that lack vision, hope, and morale will find that if they do not generate vision, no one else will. Committees, vision communities, or people exploring vision as a short-term project do not generate visions that produce systemic change.
--Paul D. Borden, Direct Hit

Thoughts on Vision

There are dangers connected with not having a vision. Here are three.

Without a coherent vision...
1. energies of leaders go in many different directions and produce little benefit;
2. leaders feel like they are competing with each other for the available resources;
3. leaders are more vulnerable to the attacks of the forces in the congregation that are opposed to change.
--Gary Straub & Judy Turner, Your Calling as a Leader

Symptoms of an undernourished soul

Leaders need to be spiritually mature and healthy. The busy pace of our lives can lead us to a place where we are not taking in enough spiritual food to keep ourselves healthy. Pastors are at greatest risk, because we can fool ourselves into thinking that our time spent in Scripture preparing for a sermon counts as devotional reading. It does not! Years ago Harvey Cox identified some of the signs of an undernourished soul which now describe our whole society.

The symptoms of an undernourished soul appear in countless ways: violence, lethargy, alienation, alcoholism, deterioration of the family. The shrunken modern psyche is “just as much a victim of industrialization as were the bent bodies of those luckless children who were once confined to English factories from dawn to dusk.”--Harvey Cox, The Feast of Fools,

Lest we fall into despair, P.L.Berman offers this word of hope:
“It does not matter how long your spirit lies dormant and unused. One day you hear a song, look at an object, or see a vision, and you feel its presence. It can’t be bought, traded, or annihilated, because its power comes from its story. No one can steal your spirit. You have to give it away. You can also take it back.”
--P.L.Berman, The Search for Meaning

The work of the church is to bring back to life the souls of people who don’t even know they have a spiritual problem. This is one reason why churches need leaders who can do more than just chair a meeting.

The rhinoceros approach to spiritual growth

They say rhinoceroses have poor eyesight and small brains. Therefore, if while you are walking across the African plain, a rhino charges you, you should stand still. The reasoning is thus: If you stand still, the beast will have a hard time seeing you. Then because he has a tiny brain, he will forget why he is charging, his full gallop will slow to a walk, and he will look puzzled and just wander off.

Many of us are like that in our spiritual lives. We move toward "perfection” which is being formed into the likeness of Christ. Along the way we forget where we are going and wander off. Worldly concerns like family, work, health, and busy schedules sidetrack us. We forget where we are going on our faith journey because the way is long and the goal hard to see.

For more than 200 years Methodist bishops have asked pastors at their ordination, "Do you expect to be made perfect in love in this life?" While the expected answer is "Yes", once a young ordinand, in a graduating class of one, hesitated in his answer as he stood alone before his bishop and the community. His crusty old bishop peered over his glasses and said, "Well Bill, if it happens, don't you imagine it will be rather late in life?"

Perfection in love, if it comes, will probably come late in life because the way is long and the goal hard to see. This is why we need role models, spiritual friends, knowledge of the varieties of religious experience, a faith practice, and a Christian community which can help us on our way. Church was intended to be a community of soul support. It takes spiritually mature leaders to help a church become what God dreamed for it to be from the time he called it into existence. Therefore, who are your role models and spiritual friends and what is your faith practice to help you become the person and leader that God needs you to be?