Accelerating the Dynamic Church : Change

Change or Die?

jhook — Fri, 14 Dec 2007 16:35:00 GMT

We have seen over and over that the biggest hurdle to embracing the real value of better information systems in churches is change management, or should I say the lack thereof? Amongst us church management software vendors, it is even a point of occasional conversation at industry conferences. “If only churches would learn better how to change.” Improvements require change! It is said that one definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over expecting different results.

I titled this blog entry Change or Die? But adopting new systems and processes in churches is not really a physical life or death situation, is it? So why change? There is not even a profit motive involved to motivate change. What’s the urgency? Why the importance? A better question might be, “If we know we need to change, can we?”

In a recent book called Change or Die, the author, Alan Deutschman, points out that research shows even when change is a life or death matter, change only occurs about 10% of the time! So that is the human state, for every 10 times we need to change, we only accomplish it 1 time! How do we know this? What do we base this on?

In Mr. Deutschman’s book, he refers to the following statistics: about 600,000 individuals have heart bypass surgery every year in the United States, and 1.3 million heart patients have angioplasties – costing our society billions of dollars. These procedures temporarily relieve chest pains, but around half of the time, the bypass grafts clog up in a few years; the angioplasties, in a few months. Why? According to Dr. Edward Miller, the dean of the medical school and CEO of the hospital at John Hopkins University, “If you look at people after coronary-artery bypass grafting two years later, 90% of them have not changed their lifestyles.” So even in a life or death matter, people refuse to do the work to change.

The church is an institution that asks people to change their lifestyles as well. Not for physical reasons, but for spiritual, emotional and relational reasons. We know this can be hard to accomplish, yet all things are possible through Christ. But, as an industry, I am not sure we understand change well enough to do so because we in fact have difficulty changing ourselves.

Dynamic churches take change seriously. They understand that it will not happen by itself. They understand that it takes leadership, planning and continuous improvements. They know that momentum can be sustained by creating a sense of urgency, by focusing on short-term wins and then communicating and celebrating the positive effects of change. They also know that there are bumps along the way that must be managed through instead of allowing the small setbacks to bog down the ultimate goal. Effective change requires everyone looking forward, focusing on the future, and not allowing people to relish the past and desire to, as one of our customer puts it, “go back to Egypt to make bricks.” Remember, that’s what some of the Israelites wanted to do once they were out in the wilderness heading to the Promise Land. For some of them, the change was simply too hard!

Change management cannot be delegated like some administrative process! To make ministry work, the leadership and ministers must provide firm direction to the staff, not delegate it to their administrative assistants like many other things they tend to do.

Change or Die? Progress or Die? Perhaps it is our flesh and sinful nature that avoids change. But if we don’t learn to change, if we do not learn to embrace better ways of caring for and growing people, the church will become irrelevant and perhaps even die itself. Even more critical, people will die – spiritually.

Grace to you,

jhook

What stops a church from fully Experiencing Fellowship One?

jhook — Thu, 01 Nov 2007 15:29:00 GMT

As I write this blog entry for our new community site, I contemplated the above question: What stops a church from fully experiencing Fellowship One? There are many different answers for the various customer situations ranging from 1) lack of leadership to drive change, 2) staff turnover, 3) lack of infrastructure for proper Internet access, etc.

Is it ever Fellowship One? Sure, when what a church wants to accomplish is not supported by the product, but situations like that should be determined during the sales cycle, not during implementation; or worse, after six months of trying to use the system. We try our best to help a church discern whether our product is a fit for what they are trying to accomplish because our desired end-result is not a paying customer; but, instead a delighted, “reference-able” customer that pays. Profit is not the goal of our business; it is the result of providing value to the customer.

Back to the question at hand - I believe the most common issue among churches having problems fully experiencing Fellowship One is the change management around processes required to implement the level of change required to implement a true ministry tool rather than a “back-office” system. In other words, business process management.

Recently we hosted Tim Vineyard, Lifeway’s CIO (www.lifeway.com), and some of his key staff members here in our offices to update each other on the progress within our respective organizations. I have met with Tim a couple of times over the course of our business life now and have always been impressed with him personally and professionally. I say this as a big compliment – Tim is a southern gentleman in all ways. He is articulate, engaging and personable.

One of the things that Tim and I agree on is that many churches simply use their church management system as an electronic Rolodex, primarily used for name and address look-up, labels, giving statements, etc. - the simple stuff. This requires very little process or process management. Let’s face it, access to a Rolodex is primarily ad hoc.

We agreed that one thing missing in churches is well-defined business processes. What we have found lacking in churches that attempt to implement change (and implementing Fellowship One, if done right, requires change) is well-thought out, well-documented process diagrams defining who does what resulting in what metrics to measure. Once these metrics can be measured, they can be “baselined” and then tracked to determine whether programs and ministries are being successful. Are people being reached, touched and impacted based on the resources expended?

One of our new goals within our Services group is to document a set of “best practices” business processes to augment the implementation of Fellowship One. By providing swim lane diagrams showing inputs, process flows, outputs, participants, inspection points, etc., church management and staffs can have a visual view of what forms are required, what metrics should be measured, what reports are run when, etc. For the Dynamic Church, hopefully, these process diagrams will function as living documents that are modified as business processes change to incorporate new goals and operations of the church, and to educate new staff members so that the entire church staff can get on the same page when it comes to measuring metrics that reflect the mission and vision of the church.

Grace to you,

Jhook

So what is a Dynamic Church?

Jeff Hook — Wed, 06 Jun 2007 21:02:00 GMT

Dynamic, simply put, means change. When we say we accelerate the dynamic church we mean we help it accelerate in growth. So how do we do that? We help it accelerate in growth by helping its processes scale so that it takes less people to do more things, such as contact follow-up, activity registration, activity check-in, etc. If a church does not invest in some forms of automation, then as it increases in size, it takes more people to accomplish the same things just from a volume standpoint. Sometimes this is achievable through volunteers, up to a point; most of the time, it simply breaks down in execution.

A thriving, healthy church should be changing all of the time. The Christians who have been attending for a while should be maturing in their faith. That maturing should enable them to accomplish things that they were not able to accomplish before – remember, faith can move mountains! These same mature Christians should be mentoring younger Christians who are maturing as well. In both cases, the maturing is change. Both of these groups should be inviting and bringing in seekers and sinners, thus changing the landscape even further. This changing body, if done at a successful rate, is thus creating a dynamic environment. A church that is not dynamic is dying.

Having everyone who enters the church doors, who is going to stay, conform to the culture of the congregation is no longer valid. Even middle class America is changing and no longer as we once knew it. Whatever made us think that God produced us using some standard assembly line in heaven like some car manufacturer putting black hair on some, blond on others, white skin on some, and then brown skin on others? As our mommas always taught us, we are ALL unique. This uniqueness (we now also refer to it, in some cases, as diversity) adds to the dynamic nature of a healthy church.

Some say that being accepting of others and how they live will be the downfall of Christianity. The fact is we are all sinners and we all sin; it is our nature. Some of us sin very publicly; others sin in private and then others even without our own knowledge. For example, many prideful people do not even recognize their own sin, which at times includes me; sometimes it has to be pointed out by someone else or perhaps the Spirit. The “Church” (that is you and me, we make up the church) needs to get past judging people because they are not like us, their skin color, their political party, or their sin. Jesus’ second great commandment is “love your neighbor as yourself.” He did not add any qualifiers to that statement.

So what does that have to do with a dynamic church? We can all become more dynamic if we embrace change by embracing others who are unlike us. What does that have to do with Fellowship One? This diversity can be better serviced if those differences are tracked and then catered to by addressing the individual needs of each segment of the congregation. Even though some of our needs are universal, we are all different and have some different needs. Not only that, because we are always changing, those differences that are tracked are dynamic as well. Without a strong church management system, the church can lose track of the needs of the different groups within the body of Christ.

Grace to you as you embrace change,

Jhook

Cha-cha-changes...

Jeff Hook — Thu, 27 Oct 2005 15:55:00 GMT

…let God transform you into a new person by changing the way you think. Then you will know what God wants you to do, and you will know how good and pleasing and perfect His will really is. - Romans 12:2

This blog entry continues with more start-up information about the company and what we are all about. One of the things the team at Fellowship Technologies understands is that we have to put aside our own agendas, egos and feelings for the sake of what we are trying to do for God’s Kingdom. As I read and listen to more pastors’ books and sermons, I am starting to understand it more. One of the pastors at the Catalyst Conference a couple of weeks ago, I think it was Donald Miller, said it very clearly - this “movie” is not about me or you, we play only bit parts. This movie, or set of movie episodes that we call our lives, is all about God. At times we may think we can “up stage” God, but sooner or later we are forced to realize that we do not have the starring role.

As the CEO of Fellowship Technologies, I am just happy I am able to play the supporting role that I have. I reluctantly started this company. In fact, when it was first presented to me by Terry Storch and Lawrence Swicegood at lunch back in April of 2003, I refused to even consider it. Even after God compelled me to change my mind and heart, I made it very clear in my prayers that if this was going to happen, God was going to have to be the one to make it happen. Too often, we want to just take the reins and push God aside.

The experience that caused me to change my decision to start Fellowship Technologies was truly divine – so much so that I felt that I could not ignore the call from God. And as many pastors can tell you, when called by God to do whatever, you initially think, “This is for and of God, it is the way to go.” In fact, I truly thought that I had no alternatives, the message was so clear.

But just because the path is clear does not mean it will be easy. There have been times here at Fellowship Technologies when the lessons we needed to learn were not easy. And isn’t that how Christian life can be? God can still be part of what we are doing, but that does not mean it is necessarily going to be easy on us. We think it should be, right? If it is God’s will then shouldn’t it be easy! That’s just not how it always is because change and growth are not easy.

Many churches I talk to are uncomfortable with change; uncomfortable with doing things differently. However, to do some of what God needs to do through us requires us to get out of our comfort zones, out of our traditional ways of doing things, out of that mentality that has us always thinking in OUR ways. We need to think in HIS ways. Many times if it is right and God is in it, it will not be easy! Learnings from the Apostle Paul would indicate that the easy way is many times the path outside of God’s will. Creation is all about doing new things, different things. So make change happen!

Grace to you as you go out and CHANGE!

Jeff Hook