Category: Change Management

Posted in Change Management, Church Growth & Vitality, Contracting and Negotiating Before Beginning, Entering and Engaging the Congregation, Is Interim Ministry for Me?, Managing Expectations Tagged with

12 min 09 s

Rev. Dr. Todd Grant Yonkman

  • Why setting expectations is critical & how to do it
  • How the metaphor of “Midwife” for the transition pastor can clarify roles and responsibilities
  • The church you were is not the church you are going to be…
  • What are you willing to let go of to get what you most want?
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Posted in Buildings and Property, Change Management, Church Decline, Conflict Management, External Relations Tagged with

16 min 36 s

Rev. Dr. Rochelle (Shelly) Stackhouse

  • The book of Acts is an underutilized resource for discerning about the building
  • There’s more than one way to solve the problem…
  • Solutions to the building problem only surface by going deeply into discerning your relationship with the community around you
  • What might you have to do to your physical space to make other people want to use it?
  • Learning not to underestimate the beauty of our spaces… > Dealing with idolatry of the building
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Posted in Change Management, Church Decline, Entering and Engaging the Congregation, Legacy Churches / Church Closing, Mission and Vision Tagged with

10 min 43 s

Rev. Chris Mereschuk

  • Key questions to build relationships with people at the beginning;
  • How to avoid closed ended questions;
  • Getting the congregation to think more deeply about their future when closure is a real possibility;
  • Helping the congregation get to its “Why”
  • Assessing the capacity of the congregation for ministry; Questions to help a declining congregation think realistically about its options;
  • Questions to help a declining congregation think realistically about its options;
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Posted in Assessments and Evaluations, Buildings and Property, Change Management, Church Decline, Church Growth & Vitality, Church Mergers, Legacy Churches / Church Closing, Mission and Vision Tagged with

15 min 33 s

Rev. Dr. Todd Grant Yonkman

  • When the energy gets low, churches often don’t know there are other options to closing;
  • Thoughts on various options: merger restart, adoption, consolidation, redevelopment…;
  • Barrier for vitality is shame and blame;
  • Avoiding the “Twin Titanic” model (throwing a rope from one sinking congregation to another);
  • Key to church mergers: learn to love other things together;
  • The challenge of trying to do vitality work and consolidation work at the same;
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Posted in Assessments and Evaluations, Buildings and Property, Change Management, Church Decline, Contracting and Negotiating Before Beginning, External Relations, Legal, Mission and Vision, Social Justice Tagged with

12 min 33 s

Rev. Dr. Rochelle (Shelly) Stackhouse

  • Book of Acts reminds us that the first congregations shared space;
  • Many New England churches originally called themselves “meeting houses” – places for all kinds of meetings, not just Sunday worship;
  • Assessing the many ways your congregation adds value to your community;
  • “Partners for Sacred Places” can help your church think creatively about uses for your building;
  • Over the centuries, churches have functioned as patrons of the arts;
  • Integrating social justice in multi-purposing your space;
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Posted in Buildings and Property, Change Management, Church Decline, Church Growth & Vitality, Contracting and Negotiating Before Beginning, External Relations, Faith Formation, Healing / Grief Work, Managing Expectations, Self-Care Tagged with

10 min 59 s

Rev. Dr. Rochelle (Shelly) Stackhouse

  • Is the church over?
  • Is this great experiment that was started by Jesus – this experiment that the Holy Spirit exploded on Pentecost – is it really over?
  • Perhaps we’re asking the wrong question….
  • If our role isn’t to preserve the Church, what is it?
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Posted in Change Management, Church Growth & Vitality, Conflict Management, Healing / Grief Work, Leadership Development, Pastoral Care, Self-Care Tagged with

10 min 50 s

Rev. Pegi Ridout

  • The difficulty with conflict isn’t that we have it, it’s that we don’t know how to do it well.
  • How do we treat conflict as gift? How do we get there?
  • Respectful communication guidelines developed by Eric Law at the Kaleidoscope Institute
  • trust, respect, listen, then speak.
  • Conflict skills/muscles are built through practice;
  • Pegi’s 3 types of practice for building our conflict muscles;
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Posted in Change Management, Church Growth & Vitality, Conflict Management, Leadership Development, Mission and Vision Tagged with

11 min 38 s

Rev. Dr. Terasa Cooley

What gets missed when decisions are made quickly;

Benefits of the “How might?” question;

Framing a question for maximum engagement;

By changing yourself, you can actually help change others – it’s contagious;

We carry conflict in our bodies;

Make complexity your friend;

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Posted in Change Management, Church Decline, Church Mergers, Death and Dying, Entering and Engaging the Congregation, Financial Management, Legacy Churches / Church Closing, Managing Expectations, Pastoral Care Tagged with

13 min 49 s

Rev. Diane Kenaston

How we were able to tell the truth about our reality without also predicting gloom and doom;

My own process from being one of the people in denial about the congregation’s reality, to embracing it and moving forward;

How we were able to build the trust necessary for people to listen to the truth of their reality and move forward;

What I did when I realized that the church was not going to have another full-time pastor after me.

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