“When it comes to leading and organizations, change is inevitable. Great leaders though are always looking ahead and changing by design as they seek to make their lives and organizations more dynamic and effective in our current world. Leadership is such a fluid dynamic and when it comes to leading people you have got to understand that change will come.

Change is a choice. You can either initiate the change you want to be or you can allow circumstances to demand the change that needs to be made and accept the outcome that is thrown your way. Either way, change is the only path toward transformation as we travel on this journey.

That is why you need to be aware of the three types of change:

The first is change by crisis. As you begin to look at your organization or department are you going to have to change due to a crisis. Maybe it is one of your leaders or staff that come to you and say they can no longer help out. Maybe as a church you have realized that you attendance has been declining rapidly. Maybe in your life a health issue has no forced change upon you.Were you prepared or are you now having to change due to the crisis. The cost is usually high when it comes to this type of change.

The second type of change is by drift. Many churches get into this type of change. They are always looking around for the next best thing. They see a mega-church doing such and such program that has gotten them results so they drift towards that. Then they see another church doing something else and they drift towards that. Or they even go along with the latest church fads. Usually the problem with this type of change is that it does not happen fast enough. Usually when you have changed because of drift you have changed too late or it wasn’t the most ideal change for your organization or department.

The third type of change is by design. This is where being innovative leads you into the change you want. Successful leaders are looking ahead and, even though they might already be successful, see change as a chance to create new energy and momentum for growth. Changing by design is embracing change as a choice.

You can change by design and be the change you want by:

Charting your destination – Write out where it is you want to be in one, two or five years. Be specific.
Constructing a new course – Begin moving toward your new destination intentionally. Work your way backwards and set benchmarks to hit.
Creating the change – Begin making it happen. Be determined. Force the change.
Lance Armstrong said, “The easiest way to predict the future is to create it.“

What change do you see coming?”

Yesterday we had an email delivered at about 2:00pm with this message: STAFF MEETING PART 2; body: 2:30pm (No Worries).

That was probably not the best choice of words considering as of that meeting we are now launching 2 Saturday night services beginning Jan. 31. So “no worries.” Obviously, I’m be facetious. Two and a half weeks to get children programs, worship teams, production teams, greeters and ushers together. This is a big hurdle that we are going to have to jump over.

This will be a litmus test of our leadership.

In order to make this transition effective, I believe there are several things we need to keep in mind:

• Communicate the vision for “why” we are doing this. The why is more important than the what. When a leader communicates the what before the why the buy in becomes less. It is important that our congregation buys into the vision, because they will be the ones making the schedule changes to move to a different experience time to open up seats and to provide the ministry in the these new gatherings.
• Next, we need to communicate the “how.” We must come up with a strategy, thinking about all the details. Since this means restructuring teams, we need to optimize our teams’ talent and time so we can execute at a Sunday level.
• We need to remember that we lead by example. This is probably just as important, if not more important than communicating the vision behind the “why.” We lead by example. People won’t follow someone who says one thing and does another. A visionary who doesn’t model what he asks is like a person driving on a flat tire. He’s going to get no where fast.
• We Pray, and ask others to pray with us.“Unless the Lord builds a house,
  the work of the builders is wasted. Unless the Lord protects a city, guarding it with sentries will do no good.” Psalm 127:1

So we will see what lies ahead. There will be some crazy days, late nights, busy weekends, but most important new names in an important Book. I like that thought.

But I believe it will happen. We’ll see how together we are as a church and how well our leaders can cast a vision that people can buy into and