DEALING WITH CHANGE REV. AMY RUSSELL JUNE 4, 2017

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Adam Flynn
5 years ago
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1 Many of us who grew up in churches have watched as many churches in the communities we know have dwindled in their attendance and may be dying a slow death. Changes that have come to religious institutions in the past 20 years are huge. These changes include multiculturalism, different expectations of a younger generation, and the challenge to be a part of a larger community. The ability to accommodate these cultural changes can mean the life or death of a religious institution. There was a church who faced these challenges in a community in the Southwest. This church had enjoyed a heyday of being a pillar church deeply involved in the community where it was located. They had enjoyed a time of full attendance and a burgeoning Sunday school. But the nature of its neighborhood began to change. The neighborhood was increasingly populated with Latino families. Many of the people who used to drive in from the suburbs started to feel more uncomfortable with the change in demographics in the neighborhood and they started attending churches nearer their suburbs. The church membership dropped below 100 and then attendance in Sunday services started dwindling. The minister who was retiring suggested to the search committee that they look for someone with a multi-cultural background. The church made the inspired decision to hire a Latino minister. At first, there was a great feeling of energy as the new minister and his family moved into the neighborhood and the church started seeing a few people from the neighborhood come and check it out. Attendance was starting to go up. People were starting to feel more positive. The minister s daughter who was a teen, asked if the youth group could have a pot luck dinner for neighborhood youth. The fellowship committee agreed. There were 10 youth who showed up from the neighborhood to join the handful of teens still attending the church. They enjoyed the event and future events were planned. But the head of the Fellowship Committee who showed up the next morning to make coffee complained that the dinner had caused strange smells to be present in the parish hall the next morning. She complained that people wouldn t like these smells. She took her complaint to the board. The board understood that the Fellowship committee head was experiencing a discomfort with the idea of having people culturally different from the suburban white people who had always made up the membership. The church realized they had to start dealing with the changes that had come to them. Changes that would be hard. But changes that had to be made if they were to move forward. Page 1 of 5

2 Changes in congregations are difficult, just like changes in life are difficult. What other challenges are we facing in our churches in addition to multi-cultural changes? How to stay relevant to younger people is another challenge. Pew Research Center reports, By some key measures, Americans ages 18 to 29 are considerably less religious than older Americans. Fewer young adults belong to any particular faith than older people do today. Furthermore, one in four millennials are claiming that they are unaffiliated with any religion. Millennials are significantly more unaffiliated than members of Generation X were at a comparable point in their life cycle. In other words, religious organizations have become increasingly irrelevant to young people today. Now, I think you could say that younger people in a generation have traditionally shown less interest in traditional forms of religion. But this trend is widening that gap. And is it any surprise that people who have grown up in an age where most of the information that they learn comes to them on a digital device have a hard time with the traditional forms of worship? They get their entertainment, their social contact, their personal data about what is available to them at any given time- consumer options, local events, and world news all come to them over the thing that they hold in their hands or in their laps. And we expect a generation who grew up in that context to come and sit quietly while some old foggy pontificates about something or other that they may have no interest in? Why would we expect that? So, whether we like it or not, change is necessary in order for the churches and religious institutions to survive. We can change or we can die. But change is not easy. Now we all know that change is all we can expect in life. In fact, Buddhism teaches that all of life is impermanent. And whatever you expect will happen in life, probably will change if not now, then later. The only thing we can count on is change. Buddhism teaches us that it s how we deal with change that creates for us a life of stress or a life of peace. You know, I ve been studying Buddhism for many years now, and I have the most difficulty with understanding the teachings on change. I m a very goal-oriented person and when I m told that if I just live calmly without attaching myself to any specific outcome, then I ll be fine. I ll lead a peaceful life. What- not attach to any specific outcome? How do you do that? Like I m just fine if people I love get sick. So, I m just fine if I lose my job and don t have enough money. I ll just chill out and meditate when I find out someone I care about is really mad at me. That sounds easy!! Page 2 of 5

3 So, in studying Buddhism, I have this nonchalant attitude- I will try to understand these philosophies and try out like a tiny little, practice piece of the philosophy and see how that goes. So, for instance, Buddhism tells me to embrace our rocky problems in life without letting them knock you down. A Buddhist seer would tell me not to get too attached to the beautiful new car of whatever that I just got because it s impermanent. Everything is going to change. My job, my relationships, my housing situation, even my body changes every day to get older. Hey, wait, can t I just enjoy something for a week or two without having to non-attach to it? Buddhism says get the most out of the present moment and fully appreciate it without holding onto it. Because it s likely to change. And sometimes, Murphy s law tells us it s probably going to go downhill. So, in my attempt to practice this centuries old philosophy, I would enjoy the new car or any new thing and enjoy the present moment fully until one day I get a ding in it. Shoot, why did that have to happen? But in reality that ding is evidence that life is changing and I am moving on. So, I should embrace that change- hey, that ding adds a little character to my car. That s fine. Until someone runs into me and totals that beautiful car. And then I m ready to really get upset. Hey, why did that person have to run into me? What did I do? Until I realize that I didn t get hurt in that car accident. And I can maybe enjoy the present moment of realizing how lucky I was. And that if I could enjoy the wonderful moment of realizing the joy of my life, then the car accident would become just a reminder that I am living a life full of changes that I can learn to accept. Or to resist. And when I resist change, I create for myself, a life full of suffering. Of suffering because I cannot accept change. Change is a tricky thing. Because we can be fully enjoying the present moment, breathing it in and relaxing and then bam, something makes it change. But the real opportunity in change is that whatever in life we don t like is also going to change. There s hope in that. That whatever I m manifesting in my life that isn t going well, I can decide to change. That s very freeing. And takes a lot of taking responsibility for owning the problems in one s life. Only I can change these things in my life. And if I want to be happier, it s up to me. Buddhism gives us ultimate freedom and ultimate responsibility. You must take responsibility for everything in your life. Even when we didn t cause certain things to happen, it s still up to us to find a way to accept what happens. Buddha actually said that most actions you choose in your life only lead to a little less happiness or a little more happiness. But then there are actions that are not transitory in nature. Those actions might lead you to that goal of enlightenment. Buddha pointed us to Page 3 of 5

4 be looking in our lives for those actions that are long-lasting- that may lead us to be better people and more likely to achieve even a moment of enlightenment. Those actions, Buddha said, are often about creating peace and happiness in our own lives and also in the lives of others. Acting out of compassion for ourselves and others- that is where we might find the ability to deal with change. When we look at the possibilities in our lives and those possibilities are myriad, we should look for those actions that lead to longterm happiness. That is true for us as church leaders as well. So, we are seeing a lot of changes in our current church culture. We are moving to two services in the fall. We are getting more involved in the community. We are growing and seeing a lot of new faces. We have more and more kids involved and are seeing them do amazing things in our services. Our building looks better and better as B&G works on it. We have a new Little Free Library. We are renting our building to an Islamic group so you see prayer rugs laid out in the sanctuary during the week. Change here and change there. It s all good, but it can feel a little too much. We don t know everyone any more. We don t know everything that happens. We show up and open the door to the sanctuary and we don t know what s going to be happening in there. All this change can be disconcerting. And makes us wonder if this is still the church we joined. So, why change? Why grow? What does it lead to? Our long term happiness. Our church mission is to grow love, wonder, and connection to transform ourselves and the world. That s why we should welcome change. We can get stuck in a rut of being attached to the way we ve always been. And that way we ve always been may not fit some of the people who are walking in our doors. Or we may not attract younger people if we aren t open to change. And we may not grow ourselves if we re not open to change. There are different ways of approaching change that occurs in an organization. People in organizational development talk about different kinds of problems that organizations face. Problems that have been dealt with before that can be solved by problem-solving are seen by some as technical fixes. Meaning we know about the situation, we have dealt with it before, and we can imagine what different possibilities might solve the problem. But a situation that challenges that very nature and purpose of an organization that kind of problem Page 4 of 5

5 is seen as an adaptive challenge. Mark Lau Branson and Juan Martinez, authors who write about church culture write: And adaptive challenge is one that will require that the church move toward a future that it cannot see, become something different, learn things it does not know and innovate beyond the current imagination. Heifetez asks, Does making progress on this problem require changes in people s values, attitudes, or habits of behavior? If so, the challenge is adaptive. -Churches, Cultures, and Leadership, Mark Lau Branson, Juan F. Martinez An adaptive situation cannot be changed with small improvements on current ways of doing things. Leadership who recognizes that a challenge that they have is not like anything they ve ever done before can name a situation as an adaptive challenge. This kind of leadership can help its organization imagine how the situation might help them define their mission and vision in a new way. An adaptive challenge asks us to re-define who we are and what we are doing and look for new ways of being. Organizations who can step up to adaptive challenges can grow to become something new according to their mission and vision. In our country and in our religious association, we are facing adaptive challenges. They are unlike anything we ve ever seen. We are challenged not only by direct challenges to our values as a country and as a faith tradition, but also by changes within our organizations. We are challenged to meet the questioning of the values of religious liberty, acceptance of diverse religions, ethnicities, races, and sexual orientations. Those challenges I think we can meet. We have been standing up to bigotry and intolerance for many years and we will continue to do so. But the challenges to us as organizations that come from within our denomination, within our congregation, and within our communities those are harder. Because those challenges ask us to consider our own implicit bias, our own ways of responding to different cultures, our own ways of seeing situations with diverse people. Those challenges are creating great anxiety and conflict in our denomination and even within ourselves. Change is hard. It s easier not to change. It s easier to stay the same. But if we choose not to change in our personal lives or in our congregational life, we are choosing stasis. As Buddha said - Growth is painful. Change is painful. But nothing is as painful as staying where you don t belong. Page 5 of 5

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