Evaluation of the strengths and limitations of my approach
My approach to change and development seems to be effective in some contexts but not in others, particularly where there is professional experience of more linear approaches. Where there are a number of significant leaders who come from a business background and are familiar with more linear tools then they are often resistant to a quality based approach, using concepts such as health rather than numbers. They find it difficult to resist comparing one church with another on the basis of the numbers rather than using an approach that looks for energy and enthusiasm for change.
Those who are less familiar with business approaches often value an approach that allows them to talk and to express how they feel about their church and its mission.
The conversational approach often allows issues to surface that are of immense significance but are not unearthed by a quantitative approach. For example, the approach often allows the church to articulate the feeling that they are in a spiritually very weak place. And surely spirituality lies at the heart of what it is to be church!
The approach seems to work best as church reviews coordinated by the circuit, rather than as a circuit review that takes place through the churches.
A leadership that is committed to the process more than to specific outputs is enormously helpful.
The superintendent and others in leadership in the circuit seems to be really helpful in the production of good process.
The complexities approach enables the conversation and the atmosphere to change in the churches and in the circuit; it seems to facilitate a conversation that is more missional than hitherto. However, in most instances this change in the conversation seems to be short-lived. It is not long before the church returns to business as usual. But, in churches that are alive to missional thinking the change has been long lasting and has resulted in very significant changes in thinking and approach.
This kind of review enables a circuit to identify those places where there is a real missional vitality that is not about numbers or size. It enables the circuit to have a missional basis on which to focus the use of the key resources at its disposal and it enables churches to self-identify where they are only concerned with survival.
The key issue is whether the circuit meeting is prepared to respond to the issues in a creative and missional manner.
A new review tool
Over the past year I have been working closely with John Wareham, of TCC, (Transforming Churches and Communities). John comes from a background of work in the voluntary sector, and his approach is based very much around the development of plans and business models.
We have worked together to produce a tool that allows both of our approaches to be used together. We are, at the moment, using it with a church in Manchester to test it out. John will lead workshops that are based around the linear development of plans whilst, at the same time I will lead workshops that are around a conversational approach to the health and missional vitality of the Church. Once both sets of reviews have been completed we will work together with the Church to work out how change is going to be implemented.
This is very much at the pilot stage and we hope to have a published version by the end of the year, but at the moment we are very much open to critical review of the tool.