People of Hope:
Over a decade ago, I would begin each day listening to these words from Bob Dylan:
Come gather ’round people
Wherever you roam
And admit that the waters
Around you have grown
And accept it that soon
You’ll be drenched to the bone
If your time to you is worth savin’
And you better start swimmin’
Or you’ll sink like a stone
For the times they are a-changin’
According to the prophet Bob Dylan 😊 when we admit that the waters around us have grown, we can make the choice to swim, but those who refuse to swim “sink like a stone.” Accepting change is like swimming; failing to accept change is like refusing to swim when the water starts to rise.
Change can be scary just because something is new. Change can be exhausting because we have to relearn something. Change can be emotionally challenging if it involves getting to know and love a new person. Regardless of how we feel about change, the times they are a-changin’ — in our world at large, in our personal lives, and also here at Esperanza. Specifically, we are anticipating calling a new pastor.
Peter Steinke is a pastor and author who writes about and coaches congregations as they work through change. He believes healthy change happens in three stages.
- Redefine Problem
- Redefine Self
- Define Specific Changes
We can assume that, when a change is made, there is a reason for it, usually a problem of some sort. In Steinke’s book How Your 21st Century Church Family Works, he writes: “One of the most effective ways to introduce change is to redefine the problem — to see the whole pattern of interaction … [In a particular congregation where he was called in as a consultant] I gave them the assignment to redefine the problem without focusing solely on a person or issue as presented in the original problem. Both the pastor and the leaders began to see their problems as a whole, as a matter of mutual influence. After they redefined their problem, they had a whole new perspective — and they were thinking systemically.”
For example, the congregation he was working with said: Our new pastor isn’t effective in ministry. When they redefined the problem, they realized: We have discovered that we are accustomed to a pastor who is like this or that. AND We have some resistance to the challenges our pastor puts before us. AND We want our current pastor to be like our former pastor. AND We have had trouble adjusting to our new pastor.
Redefining the problem helps us see that there is more going on than what we first identified as the problem. Usually, one person is not solely responsible for the problem; as Steinke writes, it is a matter of “mutual influence.” It is a matter of how others respond to a person, not just what one person does. It is a matter of a system that functions with many assumptions and expectations that never get verbalized — which means that fully informed choices can never be made.
In the next couple of weeks, I will share about Steinke’s two other stages in making healthy change. In the meantime, I invite us to practice redefining problems.
With hope,
Pastor Sarah