Engage the Church

Initial Thoughts

Understanding God’s plan for BE in the church should energize the church’s commitment because …

• It is biblical and gives a fresh sense of obedience to God. 
• The congregation will no longer have to rely solely on the pastoral staff. Other gifted men will be empowered and used.

Strategize

Because there can be barriers to people being energized by this, you need a strategy that will provide the best opportunity for success in transitioning the church to biblical eldership.

A good strategy should take into consideration two fundamental truths about the church:

1. It is a living organism, the body of Christ, with our Lord as the head and the Holy Spirit as the energizer. This is the biblical characterization of the church. Because it is spiritual in nature, it requires spiritual disciplines on your part: prayer, development of spiritual character, obedience to God’s leading, faith, hope, and love. You can be assured the Lord has given your team what is needed for the task (2 Peter 1:3); you need to simply make use of what the Lord provides.
2. It is a dynamic organization, a group of people structured for a common existence and purpose. Where there are two or more people, they must organize to live, work and serve together. Because it is a relational, human organization, you can draw wisdom from those who have gone before you, both in church life and in non-church organizational life. We believe that all wisdom is God’s wisdom, and there is much value in the research of those who study organizational management. 

Researchers unanimously ratify what we inherently suspect to be true: change is difficult for any organization—because organizations are made up of people and people tend to resist change. However, your team can stem unnecessary difficulties before they arise.

A few insights are in order.

Basic Principles in Leading People Through Change

• People need to understand the goal. They cannot embrace what they do not understand. They need to understand that the objective you are presenting is better than the status quo or any alternatives.
• People need lots of communication. Communicate, communicate, and then communicate some more! They need both written and verbal communication in order to feel in the loop. This is the number one problem in most organizations. What is clear in your mind after countless hours of study and discussion cannot be communicated in a one-hour presentation.
• People need clear communication. Use your best communicators for the bulk of the public announcements. Use your best meeting facilitators for the formal interactions and group discussions. Not every godly person is skilled at leading meetings and discussions.

• People need time for interaction. Get the congregation involved. They are more likely to “own” a new idea, like BE, if they have adequate opportunity to interact with it. Obviously, not everyone can be equally involved, but the more discussion and interaction opportunities you can provide, the better. People need to feel that their opinions and perspectives are heard and taken seriously. Their valuable feedback may even result in changes to the proposal.
• People need time to absorb new ideas. Monitor the responses, but guard against setting the pace of progress based on either the premature adopters or the perennial foot-draggers.

• People respond differently. Carefully select which of the transition team communicates best to which demographic group.

• People need to know the leaders are flexible. Rigidity on details will discourage people.

• People need to know the leaders are confident of where they are leading them.
• Address upfront why people resist change. Left unchecked, resistance can derail the whole transition process. See our article on Why People Resist Change.

Elements of a Strategic Plan

To involve the church, the transition team should consider the following categories and ideas:

Teach BE to the Congregation

• For those churches using Approach #2 (Function First, Then Form), this teaching has already taken place. You can skip this and go to the next step, “Present the BE Proposal.”

• Give out copies of the Biblical Eldership: Abridged.

• Provide in-depth teaching on BE to the congregation. You will need to decide what is the best time for this, whether Sunday morning to the whole church, in small groups, members-only meetings, ad hoc or special meetings.

• Decide who will best teach this material.

• You may use the video or audio lecture series on this website. Or you may use and adapt the transcripts.

Present the BE Proposal

• This is the working document that you submit to the church.

• Hold a special meeting? How many meetings?

• Follow up this large group presentation with small discussion/interaction groups (see next section).

Organize Discussion/Interaction Groups

• The transition team should set a schedule to discuss each of the different aspects of the proposal.

• Give ample time for questions and feedback.

• Each discussion group should include two members of the transition team. More than two members may hinder free participation of the others.

• Congregation members may be brutally honest. Resist the urge to be defensive, but encourage free and open sharing of thoughts and feelings. This is valuable feedback for the transition team.

• The transition team should meet regularly to discuss the feedback, which may result in improvements to the BE proposal!

What’s Next?

The transition team needs to prayerfully consider when the church has had enough teaching, discussion, and input—and the time has come to make a decision. How long this takes is a judgment matter, and the team needs to be sensitive to the Spirit’s leading and the tenor and trajectory of the discussions. When ready, go on to the next section, “Formalize the Change.”