A Change Will Do You Bad

Steering Clear of Innovation's Trapdoors
Russ Robinson 

These days, churches are considering a limitless assortment of changes, but which innovations should they pursue? What is the proper framework for deciding which changes will work best? And most importantly, what is the motivation of this needed change; will it truly improve our ability to love and serve more effectively in our ministry or are we simply justifying a passionate jump on to the bandwagon of the latest fad?

Please understand that I do not want the church to be paralyzed by a fear of change, abandoning the need for relevance and cultural engagement. That would be worse than the bias for action we've finally gained. However, having worked with numerous churches facing change (like the Willow Creek Association), there are legitimate reservations and concerns that do need to be raised about how and why we have been pushing for change in recent years.

What You Don't See Will Kill You

An appropriate way of approaching these questions and concerns is through the imagery of trapdoors. This analogy is helpful because a trapdoor is something you can avoid; if you know where to look. This is especially important for us "action-oriented" types. We must keep our eyes open for the trapdoors around us and heed the warnings God gives for our protection. For example, King David was the ascendant to the throne, a conqueror in battle, a friend of God and visionary of the ultimate monument to the Lord. Yet for all of his faithful action and leadership, his plans for the Temple ran headlong into the consequences of his own fervor, his enthusiasm run amok in war cost him the dream.

Regardless of one's intentions, the results of all trapdoors are the same: pain, lost opportunity, squandered momentum and rattled confidence are just a few. Needless to say, trapdoors are worth avoiding.

Character Trapdoors

Trapdoor awareness is not for the faint of heart. It starts in the most sensitive spot, the heart. Oftentimes, whether we admit it or not, innovation exposes motives. Whenever God asks leaders to envision action, motivate others, design effective strategies, and move an enterprise forward—and it works—it becomes a potent boost to the ego. The taste of success and the growth of reputation and influence quickly creates inherent pressure to continuously enhance your level of success.

This pressure causes you to ponder your surroundings, as you: catch glimpses of other leaders setting records that you dream of, attend conferences where they tell war stories of victories won, bump into friends who describe innovative breakthroughs, and read a book with an author's latest idea, etc, etc. This environment will lead most everyone to privately wonder if they can join the parade too.

These are the normal realities of leadership. However, they are also the space in which leaders stumble.

The Grandiosity Trapdoor

I will never forget the day Bill Hybels turned over my applecart. "I think you are should leave your law practice to be Willow's Small Group Director," he said with inimitable challenge. He then dared me, "What do you think?" My initial deflection, that if this was his best plan he should be fired, didn't work. Weeks later I was on the job, wondering if I would sink before I could swim.

God was up to something, though. An incredible team, clear mission, and some right-place-right-time dynamics yielded a certain amount of success. Speaking opportunities, the books, and some notoriety followed. It was cool. I didn't see how what was cool was a seedbed for the deception that I was cool. Grandiosity snuck in. I didn't see the intersection of grandiosity and innovation.

Grandiosity does something inside leaders. Whether a byproduct of our own or others' successes, it can become a drive to impress, for ever-greater achievement. Sometimes leaders in search of the next record performance push because their worth demands it. When churches over-celebrate heroism, grandiosity lurks. The grandiose requires the heroic. The heroic requires the grandiose. The cycle of bigger, better, greater, more is on.

How do I know? I hate to admit it, but I'm guilty as charged. I have cloaked my grandiosity motive with the mask of progress. I have looked with envy on colleagues' recognition for ideas better than mine. There has been fear of lost status than I could concede when failure supplanted success.

Rather than overcome it—I haven't—grandiosity has become a good shadow to beware of. It also causes me to muse about motives of other leaders who pitch the next big idea. Might they be following me through the trapdoor?

Candidly, those suspicions have grown. I hear leaders a little too eager to advance a fresh cause. I sense thinly veiled competition for the newest idea, subtle but noticeable longing for recognition, and even relabeled ideas appropriated as something new. Potential for status through celebrity pastorates, conference platforms, and financial payoffs complicates it further.

How do we dodge the grandiosity trapdoor? I Peter 5:1-4 is one screen for my eagerness to innovate. "Be shepherds of God's flock, because you are willing, eager to serve, being an example." Warnings against the nuances of pushing too hard, advancing financially, and running the treadmill stand against my pretensions. Am I really motivated to this innovation because it really helps, extends better care, and models spiritual advancement? Or is it something darker, about me?

Grandiosity is an enemy of the church. "God opposes the proud (James 4:5)," we know. Could our longing to innovate make us so?

The Hipness Trapdoor

By the time Huey Lewis sang "It's hip to be square" in 1986, no longer was it true in church. The obligation to be contemporary, relevant, cutting-edge had created pretty hip congregations. And yet the longing for the latest, to never fall out of fashion, to be known for the new can be a snare. Simon the Sorcerer is transformed by Christ but finds his reputation for the miraculous unshakeable. Seeing unprecedented apostolic power was too much. He wanted this newfangled edge, regardless of the cost. Peter's rebuke echoes, "ask God to forgive you … . You are jealous and bound by your evil ways (Acts 8:22-23)."

Whether due to jealousy, mimicry, image management, or whatever, it is still evil. Anytime our drive for innovation is sanctified getting in on "it" before we are seen as behind, spiritual risk mounts.

It takes all forms these days. The latest worship angle, family ministry trend, spiritual formation method, small group technique, leadership tactic—may have greater charm than substance. The ironic initiatives for the future ancient, neo-liturgy, or "lost" rituals can be as much retro branding as spiritually timeless.

I wonder if we can avoid the hipness trapdoor by being wary of extremes. Extreme change, extreme quickness, extreme claims violate a wise word. "It is good to grasp the one and not let go of the other. Whoever fears God will avoid all extremes (Eccl. 7:18)." What if we slow long enough to avoid this character trapdoor?

There are other character trapdoors, to be sure. Our drive for achievement can make mission trump community. The adrenaline produced by success can become an unholy addiction. Our reports can be puffed, our stats inflated, our shortcomings glossed by what in candor are nothing but lies. Let's choose to be honest about the character trapdoors that may cost us God's blessing on changing his church for the good.

Evaluation Trapdoors

The Benchmark Trapdoor

At the start of this article, I mentioned the Church's lack of a standard by which to measure change. That is the first evaluation trapdoor. We lack the benchmark to analyze innovation.

Allow me to use small groups as an example. Each week produces another small group innovation. There is plenty of competition in the marketplace of community ideas, but which ones make sense? What strategic innovation might work? Who knows?

Pardon my bias—I willingly concede fallibility but need to illustrate the point—Bill Donahue and I formulated analytical benchmarks via The Seven Deadly Sins of Small Group Ministry several years ago. Right or wrong, we declared principles by which any small group strategy can be evaluated. Accept them and you have a means to decide how well it might work. Reject them, and you still need benchmarks to judge any innovation.

Lacking a framework for analysis, we are in danger of the Biblical indictment that everyone "did what was right in their own eyes (Judges 17:6)." A lack of benchmarks means all ideas are created equal. Avoiding the benchmark trapdoor means learning more about how to think rather than what to think.

The Timing Trapdoor

You've probably heard the question, "What do you get when a sick church becomes a worship-centered church?" A sick, worship-centered church. It may seem obvious, but sick is sick. In other words, innovation can't mask deeper problems. But churches too often bandage terminal illness with changes that won't heal. Clever leaders can obscure real issues by rallying people to the promise of clever ideas. The sure sign? Repeated transient advances without real change.

In conversation with some leaders, it feels to me they are on a quest for a strategic silver bullet, one that will treat underlying problems with quick fixes. They ignore intractable conflict, staff underperformance, meddling members, budget shortfalls, manipulative boards, declining attendance—and the deep roots typical of such troubles—in search of a magic wand.

Innovation can hold false attraction, dodging the laborious effort required to deal with dysfunction on its terms. Sometimes innovation gets a bad name due to inevitable defeat caused by disease it simply can't cure. Let's admit what we all know: new ideas are most fruitful when planted in healthy environments. Unresolved maladies will diminish their impact in proportion to their seriousness. So timing is everything or the effort innovation requires will be futile.

A quick clarification: every church has problems, so this is not about being problem-free. Avoiding the timing trapdoor requires dispassionate recognition of any insurmountable obstacle to improvement. How does that happen? Mostly from external, discerning eyes, reckoning with how our "plans fail for lack of counsel, but with many advisors they succeed" (Pr. 15:22). Wise perspective will improve timing immeasurably.

As with character trapdoors, additional evaluation trapdoors exist, too. Inadequate decision-making processes, flawed governance structures, giftedness mismatches, overpowering senior pastors—these and other variables can render assessment of advances deeply flawed. Change can be a most needed, wonderful gift. Its value usually correlates with the quality of our evaluation. Beware of the trapdoors your assessments expose.

Implementation Trapdoors

Once we've checked for character and evaluation snares, a perfectly good innovation may be in hand. But we're not out of the woods yet. Someone needs to make it work. A great idea won't just happen. The devil is in the details. In the church—opposed by the gates of hell—trapdoors multiply when we implement change. You figure that if a church's leaders are well-motivated and the changes are well-timed, innovation should be easy, right? Sometimes. Sometimes not. Plenty of churches fall through implementation trapdoors. These can be itemized in rapid-fire fashion, and you can take pragmatic steps to evade them.

The Technical Trapdoor

The church is a communal experience. Strategy isn't. Change requires numerous tactics, plans, and systems. Innovation quickly translates into technical systems and processes rather than a people focus. Because the church is more organism than organization, every adjustment you make will require far more touch, conversation, empathy, intuition, and good old-fashioned love than most leaders allow for. Make everything far more relational than technical.

The Inflexibility Trapdoor

In the midst of Willow's small group revolution, I fought to label serving teams "serving small groups." Didn't matter. Volunteers kept calling themselves "serving teams." It finally dawned on me I was losing the label battle, while serving teams deepened community. "Serving teams" it was. The point: don't confuse form with function. You may be making more progress than you realize, but inflexibility on what doesn't matter will distract you. Watch for substantive more than cosmetic change.

The Concession Trapdoor

My colleague Paul Krause keenly observed, "Resistance often peaks as you near the summit of change." It is true. As we implement innovation, we always meet resistance. Lengthy opposition is wearying, so we give up as it crescendos. We unwittingly concede defeat moments before the shift we sought materializes. Impatient leaders like me can lack the staying power innovation demands. Holy stubbornness may be our greatest ally. Remain more patient than hasty.

The Complexity Trapdoor

It may be a byproduct of eagerness to implement or a refusal to narrow options. Regardless, we forget to KISS—Keep It Simple, Silly. Workable plans work when we make one policy declaration (such as "We must reach families through their kids" or "Our compassion will ambush our community"); two or three strategies to turn vision into reality; a half-dozen concrete, clear, actionable tactics or steps; and timelines and accountability to connect each component. Instead of KISS, churches habitually chase too many initiatives through too many strategies with too many parts and pieces. Complexity paralyzes. Keep it more simple than elaborate.

The Momentum Trapdoor

Beauty is skin deep, except with innovation. Transformation retools the foundation. The problem is that leaders ignore the depths of real change that many shifts require. The status quo has its own momentum, which likely must move for the new to materialize. The level of vigilance required will surprise you. Overlook current momentum and you'll soon be whispering to yourself, "Nobody told me it would be this hard!" Prepare for long hauls more than quick wins.

The Execution Trapdoor

Bob Erickson, a local ServiceMaster executive, used to invite Willow staff to his company's training. I gladly sent them, just to hear Bob say, "A well-executed mediocre strategy will beat a poorly-executed perfect strategy every time." Slow adoption of innovation makes leaders wonder whether strategy is wrong, when execution is the real problem. Most innovations simply require elbow grease. A bunch of people have to show up each day to execute, execute, execute. Blaming the innovation more than faulty implementation? Don't do it. Invest in execution more than evaluation.

Innovation That Helps, Not Hurts

We can take comfort in perspective from history. This Church, now entrusted to us, has found fresh life in its innovations. From its first generation to The Reformation—1500 years—it did its business as usual. The next four centuries were a plateau that finally met evangelical renewal in our grandparents' generation. Not much changed until our day, when innovative energy compounded incredible progress. Continuing it will realize Christ's dream of activism, relevance, and impact—the magnetic city on a hill that his church is to be.

For it to happen, though, we leaders must become world-class innovators. Innovation can never be an end in itself, because only the changes we pursue with unalloyed motives and unmatched wisdom will honor God in both intent and outcome. Only the improvements that really work, after being well benchmarked, timely chosen, and effectively implemented, will make the church what it must be. It will take our best, better than we are at innovation today.

Can we do it? I don't think that is the question. We can. Will we do it? That is the question only you can answer. A cloud of witnesses awaits your answer.

Russ Robinson has been a Willow Elder, its Small Groups Director, and WCA's legal counsel. He is currently a lawyer by day, and a speaker, writer and small groups/leadership consultant by night and weekend.

Copyright © 2007 Russel G. Robinson.

**An earlier version of this article was first published in Willow Magazine**