How a rider, an elephant, and a path can help you change your church

By John Purcell © 2011

When First Church (not it’s real name) decided to develop new vision, mission, and core values plus a strategy to move the church in that direction, they invited members to interact more on the “rough draft” of the plan. What followed threw the leaders back on their heals, as several people opposed any changes and utilized the venue as an opportunity to fire criticism at the leaders about multiple concerns they had about the church.

A key point from the book Navigating Through Change is that people will experience fear and then a real sense of loss, even grieving, when they know that change is coming. I believe that change in a church can be harder than in any other type of organization — for several reasons. First of all, our churches are very important to us, and God has impacted us through them just the way they are. So, naturally, we’re not sure we want to see them become different. Secondly, the people we are urging to adapt to the change are not employees whom we can order around but members and attendees who are there voluntarily. Finally, we can’t communicate with those people on a daily basis as a business does with its employees, so it’s more difficult to reinforce the change.

Last year I read a new book called Switch, How to Change Things When Change is Hard by Chip and Dan Heath. Since then I have helped several churches apply concepts from the book to their situations. A rider, an elephant, and a path represent the book’s paradigm for change. The premise is that we must direct the rider, which represents our rational thinking, motivate the elephant, which represents our emotions, and shape the path, which represents the new direction of the change. Obviously, the elephant isn’t going to go where he doesn’t want to go, so a core finding is that we can’t ignore the role of emotions in the process of change. The authors do a great job researching the subject and describing numerous case studies to demonstrate and prove their points. However, I would like to explore how this paradigm applies specifically to the Church, so we will take their points and sub-points and demonstrate how to apply them.

Directing the rider (our rational thinking)

• Have a distinct vision and describe it so that your people understand where you are all going. Make sure the leaders are the first to buy in (ideally after helping to shape the vision themselves). Then it’s not one person’s vision but a vision that God has brought to the leadership. Hilton Head Pres did this when the leaders took two weekend retreats to shape the strategic plan then took several weeks on Sunday mornings to describe the vision for the church.
• Clarify the steps each person can take to help them as individuals and the church as a whole to get there. What do you expect of them and why? Make the steps as easy and specific as possible. Sparta E Free Church did this when it challenged the members to, over the next few years at least, each get into a discipleship group to experience spiritual growth and deep Biblical community.
• Who is ministering or growing in a way that you want to see others doing? Find out what they are doing and reproduce it. Perimeter Church did this when they realized that many of the mature and equipped followers of Christ were coming from Randy Pope’s discipleship groups, so they developed what he was doing into a transferrable process that has permeated the church and today is impacting numerous other churches.

Motivating the elephant (our emotions)

• Describe the vision in a way that your people can FEEL it and are moved to desire it. Utilize stories, paint a verbal or literal picture, find testimonies, and do anything else that is experiential. Robert Johnson of Hixson Pres did that when he preached a sermon series about their newly crafted ministry and strategic plan, not only unpacking the Biblical basis for the plan but painting a picture of what the church could look like one day in the future.
• Break the change down into bite sized chunks that can be more easily handled emotionally. When a church called The Vine decided to try to get everyone involved in ministry, it invited its people to take the one step of attending a series of equipping events where they would explore their unique designs and spiritual gifts. At the conclusion of this experience they were provided specific opportunities to serve.
• Challenge and help your people to grow through this change experience. The admonition to pray is definitely a part of this, as is a concerted effort to personally shepherd you people through this. Several churches have announced that the elders are available to meet with anyone who wants to discuss the new, proposed strategic plan for their church.

Shape the path (the way forward)

• How can you tweak the environment to make the change easier for people? Intown Community Church offered small group leader equipping on Sunday morning in lieu of other types of community groups, brought in a great trainer, and then equipped the leaders in how to lead a small group in a deeper, more gospel-driven way.
• How can you help people build new habits around the change? In my discipleship group we all agreed to have personal worship times 21 days in a row, weekly sharing about the impact of our experiences, which have now become regular habits for most of us.
• How can you make the desired new behaviors contagious to make it more and more easy for others to adapt to them? Saddleback’s 40 days of [whatever] do just that through a campaign approach with the entire church, but so does a small group program that begins with a few groups that build demand through word of mouth.
• The Gospel – As you pursue these areas, rely on the Holy Spirit to move the elephant to go down the path.