A. Charting Change
In order to bring about healthy change a church must develop a “holy discontent” with some aspects of its present situation. If people assume that everything is right (ER in the chart below), then there is no incentive to change. Apathy and immobility characterize the church because any change is presumed to be the enemy of present comfort. But the antidote to apathy is not panic. Those who seek to bring about change by claiming that everything is wrong (EW in the chart below) create cynicism and paralysis. Change is meaningless when hope dies. When everything is wrong the perceived enemy is not change but rather the leadership (past or present) that allowed this hopeless situation to develop. Thus, motivations for healthy change cannot be found in either self-serving apathy or otherdirected cynicism, but rather in something between.
Charting Change
Situation Attitudes Responses Perceived Enemy
EW CynicismParalysis Past/Present leadership enemy
WHAM Zeal/Change Barriers to Progress
ER Apathy/ Immobility Change is Enemy
Comment: Wow! What a simplistic, even simple-minded, analysis. First, I don’t think anyone in the PCA is in either the ER or the EW groups. That means we’re all somewhere in the middle. We agree that there are problems. The things about which we disagree involve the best approach to solving those problems. Another way of putting it (referring to the chart above) is that from one perspective, one of the barriers to real progress is past and/or present leadership. Another barrier to progress is the wrong kind of change. In the
But note also the acronyms. Ew, that really stinks! Er, I don’t see what the problem is. Wham! We have a mission! Now let’s get everybody excited about our mission! This sounds like something that came out of a retreat weekend by the folks in “The Office.”
1 comment:
This sounds like something that came out of a retreat weekend by the folks in “The Office.”
lol!
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