John Kotter, a professor at Harvard Business School and a world-renowned change expert maintains that the first task required in managing change successfully, without which failure is guaranteed, is to create a sense of urgency around the need for change. When you think about it this is actually common sense. You don’t need to be an expert from Harvard to recognise the simple fact that people don’t change unless they really want to. This is the wisdom of Alcoholics Anonymous as much as it is the wisdom of marketing executives and advertising agencies. If it’s not broke don’t fix it.
In his 14 years as chief executive of Tesco, Sir Terry Leahy turned the company into the largest supermarket chain in the UK and transformed it into a global enterprise. It was remarkable feat. Reflecting on what he learned he recently wrote a book called “Management in 10 words” in which he pinpoints the 10 vital attributes that make successful managers and underlie great organisations. Number one was this: TRUTH. “Organisations are terrible at confronting the truth,” he argues. “It is so much easier to define your version of reality, and judge success and failure according to that. But my experience is that truth is crucial both to create and to sustain success.”
Once again we can see the sense in this immediately. Only the truth sets us free. Only when we accept the stark reality of our situation do we begin to consider new ways of addressing our problems. Truth is vital. Consider any of the recent Olympic champions. Did any of them succeed without truth? Did any of them find a way to win without being brutally honest about their own strengths and weakness and those of their competitors? No. They needed truth every step of the way, no matter how uncomfortable. And that’s what they expected from their coaches and trainers.
The longer I work as a Vicar in the Church of England however, the more I recognise the importance of both these things. Of course, we have been talking about and experiencing change for decades but I wonder if we have both lacked a radical commitment to speak the truth in love about how things are and been able to generate a significantly widely held sense of urgency about the need to change the way we do everything. We are perfectly designed to achieve the outcomes we are currently producing. If we are to achieve different results change is inevitable.
Time, as the recent report for the Church in Wales by Bishop Richard Harries so powerfully suggests, is running out on us. We may well feel that the state of the church in England is very different from the one in Wales, and I’m sure that this is right, but I’m also sure that it is a difference of degree rather than direction. Standing still is not an option.
It seems evident to me, and I think statistics support this, including recent evidence of church growth outside Anglicanism in a report from Durham University, that the future of the Church of England lies in the balance for the following reasons:
- Declining congregations
- Aging congregations
- Time poor congregations
- Less regular attendance
- Clergy retirement exceeding clergy recruitment
- Aging clergy
- Declining revenues
- Disconnection with under 40’s
- Growing numbers of non-churched and de-churched
- Increase in joint benefices
- Massive cultural shifts in society
- Incoherent vision for church
- Fear of change within church
Recognising that the Church of England has long held a privileged position in the life of the nation and remains engraved into its culture and social structures it is no less safe from the forces of decline than the United Reformed or Methodist churches have been and may well cease to be the vehicle through which God’s gospel about Jesus and his Kingdom is proclaimed and experienced in our nation just as the Catholic Church in France has become so marginal to the majority of the French.
These are the realities we face. Things are not all as they should be or could be. Now is the time for truth. Now is the time change. It’s urgent.
Hope
God has not given up on his church. How could he when it is the ‘body of Christ’?! But we must not let this fact blunt the impact of these truths on us. Instead we must put greater energy into discerning the direction of the wind, the wind of the Spirit, and the direction that the Spirit is blowing us. And then we must wholeheartedly set our sails to catch this wind, holding tight and letting him lead us out on a new trajectory into a future we had never before experienced.
And so I have hope for the Church of England. All around me are signs of how, from the bottom up and from the top down, the Church is beginning to catch this wind. Perhaps there is an opportunity now, as never before, for the CofE to be caught up in a new story, a new movement. Perhaps we are going to see the most radical shift in Anglican ecclesiology ever experienced. Perhaps we are living through a new reformation.
At the heart of this reformation there are, I think, at least 5 movements that the Spirit is requiring of us to make, 5 new directions he is leading us into. If repentance is about rethinking things and changing direction, then I think we are being invited to repent of 5 different expectations and attitudes. We are being invited (perhaps even compelled) by the Spirit to review the following 5 things:
- Our POSITION
- Our PURPOSE
- Our PRIESTHOOD
- Our PROPERTY
- Our PLACE
1. Move from service provision to making disciples – from ministry to mission – review of purpose
- Everyone a disciple
- Everyone a disciple-maker
- Every church a discipling community, discipleship centre
- Everywhere a discipleship invitation
The marks of the church need to move from preaching of the word, sacraments and church discipline, to being a disciple-making community. We need to develop a new score card. We need to redefine fruitfulness.
2. Move from national chaplain to mission agency – disestablishment of the church – review of position
Culture has moved from Christendom to post-Christendom – and requires a completely new approach.
3. Move from minister to every-member ministry – review of priesthood – ordination, lay ministries, authorisation – five-fold ministry not just pastor/teacher
4. Move from monument to movement – review of property – church as sent community
5. Move from neighbourhood to region – from geography to network – review of place
GROWING ENTHUSIASM 