Christian Leaders Tense Relationship with Change

As I write this, the church that I lead has been given seven days to vacate the building that we use for Sunday worship services. Simultaneously, we are also exploring purchasing a building in a different area of Manchester to where we planted the church eleven years ago. This latest saga, though particularly dramatic, is the latest of a near constant procession of pivots, changes and adaptations as the church has pushed through each growth barrier on the journey from twenty such adults to around four hundred. 

We know something about leading change, we're experts at it, and by and large we're good at it, however the truth is, I don’t really enjoy change.

That might seem like a contradictory confession, but having worked with numerous leaders through my role as Director of Gospel Coaching UK, I have learnt that I am not alone. I believe most Christian leaders sit with an uncomfortable tension of managing constant change in the pursuit of sustainable growth, which seems to be the predominant task of those who shepherd their flock in the 21st century. Although I have found this tension operating in every church I have ever encountered, I have also come to learn that we don't talk about it. 

In this article I hope to not only name the elephant in the room but give permission for us not to feel that it is our duty to tame it. Rather we should acknowledge the honest truth that we must learn to live with it, picking up the pieces as we go, and even developing a fondness for its disruptive, awkward and chaotic presence.
 

Acknowledge the web

Change at its simplest level is something moving from one state to another. Of course, in a Christian ministry context, change can be on a scale from small at one end, to significant at the other, but it’s useful for us to remember that, even in a church, all change is organisational change and therefore there is some common wisdom we can usefully apply. 

Even the most insignificant shift within a church has the potential to, like a pebble cast into a pond, create ripples in surprising and unexpected areas. It is for this reason, a newly appointed minister can remove a fading cross-stitch from the vestry and find a rebellion amongst the hospitality team. The link between the two events maybe utterly unclear but change echoes through organisations via invisible lines of emotional and relational connection. 

Organisations of every type and stripe function as complex systems, much like the human body where an infection in the toe can manifest as an ache in the head. It can be helpful to visualise the building or office of your church or organisation looking like an immense spider’s web of threads attached to every desk, computer, person, baptistry and welcome table. 

Some threads are piles of long coils whilst others are strung taut and tight, so that the smallest tug would pull over the object it is attached to. In such an interconnected system, an uninformed new leader, full of enthusiasm and ideas for, what seems in their mind, easy and straightforward changes, can quickly find themselves hopelessly entangled in these threads like a fly stumbling into a web. In such a system a leader can change their work rhythms and suddenly find themselves facing an accusation of pastoral insensitivity. 

In such a system, crises come in clusters but are diagnosed as the spiritual equivalent of a ‘bad run of luck’ or a ‘challenging season.’ It is for this precise reason that many older, exhausted leaders, aware of the complexity of the many threads of their organisation, resignedly sit as still as they can, and resist change for as a long as they can, because they do not have the energy or brain-power to figure out how to move without everything toppling over around them. 

Understanding your organisation as an interconnected system is vital if one is to hold the tension between the necessity of change and the desire for stability. Such a view gives leaders permission to make a mess when pursuing necessary changes. Often our desire to enact a process of change that is perfectly planned, unanimously supported, and smoothly executed sets us up with unreasonable expectations, leaving us feeling guilty when we inevitably fail; or we learn to avoid change altogether precisely because we fear that we cannot achieve perfection. 

A systems view of our church and para-church organisations allows us to firstly set reasonable expectations for the cost of change. Secondly, it helps leaders anticipate and therefore be forewarned of inevitable unexpected consequences. Thirdly, it gives us sufficient resilience to press ahead with costly change programmes simply because we know in advance that the middle of any campaign looks like failure. In other words, this perspective allows us not to panic when the elephant of change has its trunk in the fine-china of our organisation’s long-standing ministries but we must also be ready to patiently pick up the pieces. 
 

Give space for the pain

Any campaign for change is a study in pain. It is not that people dislike change as a matter of principle, but rather change is always a form of loss, and grieving is therefore a normal part of the process. The realisation that one of a leader’s key roles in navigating a group of people through change is to give them space to process their pain is vital. 

Many leaders mistake the initial discomfort of individuals in the wake of an announcement, as resistance, where it is actually a normal response to anticipated loss. Sensitivity and understanding will therefore heal the friction rather than defensiveness and martialing justifying arguments. From my experience of coaching leaders over the years, many fractious inter-church disagreements could have been avoided had the leader in the initial outlining of the new plan or proposal sincerely acknowledged what would or could be lost and expressing honest empathy with those who will struggle the most. 
 

Learn from Jesus’s change framework

Much of the later portions of the gospels carry the thread of Jesus preparing his community of disciples for the imminent change of his death, resurrection and ascending departure. The most notable headline of Jesus’s change framework is variety; he seems to have three gears that he interchangeably utilizes depending on the context of who he is speaking to, these are: outlining the optimistic vision of the future, acknowledging the necessary pain that will be experienced, and finally, stating a determined focus to move forward no matter what. These three gears are used by Jesus at different points as he talks with his disciples and steadily moves towards the cross, but in Matthew 16 we see all three gears used in quick succession. 

Matthew 16 is a key point in the Gospel as it simultaneously brings together the confirmation that Jesus is both the promised Messiah but also that he must be killed and raised back to life.  In verses 18-19, Jesus outlines a vision for Peter’s life and ministry - a future role where he will be the rock that the global Church will be built upon. This is a declaration of the coming kingdom of God that the Jews had longed for, and the disciples had anticipated was imminent since they joined Jesus’s inner circle. Jesus clarifies this future vision, by giving the kingdom a global reach rather than just a regional one and moreover declares that the victory will be certain: ‘the gates of Hades will not overcome it’. This is the compelling future vision vividly painted. 

The second gear for Jesus’s change framework quickly follows in verse 21, where Jesus outlines the necessary pain and cost that the change requires for the new future to be achieved. Jesus doesn’t hide the fact that the difficult path to the global kingdom future will mean he must ‘suffer many things at the hands of the elders, the chief priests and the teachers of the law’. This honest revelation of the necessary pain acknowledges that suffering and loss is an understood and unavoidable part of this change process. It is notable that where we would typically be tempted to play down the cost of change when we present new ideas to our people (under the justification that we don’t want to ‘scare them’ or cause ‘distress’), Jesus by contrast is willing to acknowledge coming pain and loss, openly and frankly. For Jesus, disclosure of future hardship is one of the ways he loves those he is bringing with him on a change journey. Moreover, he does it knowing that such pain and loss will bring out the worst in some of his closest allies, Judas will betray him, and Peter will deny him.

Finally, the third gear is in verse 23, where Jesus states a determined focus to move forward no matter what. Peter’s response to Jesus’s acknowledgement of the necessary pain is to be flooded by anxiety and then to panic. In our own organisations we see this reaction all the time: change is announced and then starts the negative gossip followed by the serious emails, that: 'I’ve been talking to a number of people and we all are very concerned about the direction of the church!'. 

Anxiety is a social experience not merely an individual one, and it spreads like COVID through teams and congregations and largely has one goal: to maintain the status quo. This collective anxiety in the face of coming change puts immense pressure on leaders as it typically manifests itself as criticism and undermines the leaders’ confidence that the change project is good, wise and even possible. It is at this point, under immense resistance, the leader has two choices: either capitulate, which often is expressed by the decision ‘we need to delay’ or ‘re-think’; or we need to re-emphasise our focus and determinedly push ahead. Jesus takes the second option in the face of public critique by his right-hand man. The phrase ‘Get behind me Satan’ demonstrates that Jesus has a high and healthy emotional immune system that enables him to be un-wavering in the face of rebuke and resistance. 
 

Wise leaders up-skill their change-making

We must be honest about the fact that our role as leaders in church and parachurch organisations requires us to move our people forward towards a healthier future, and that requires us to frequently be leading change campaigns. There is no question change is necessary but holds many tensions that make it difficult, which is precisely why the effective leaders of the present and the future will be those who recognise that to steward the responsibility we have, and to love people well, requires us to be intentional about becoming excellent and intentional at change leadership. 

For those who believe that you can’t do it, and perhaps it's not why you came into ministry in the first place, be assured that these skills can be learnt, and frameworks for change can be applied effectively into your context. Secondly, for those of you who have a track record of leading successful change through natural instincts, it is worth remembering that the world is changing fast and therefore what worked before is unlikely to simply work again in the same way.

If you are interested in developing your skills for leading change, why not sign up for the webinar: Leading Anxious Teams Through Change (27 November 10am-12pm). We’ll be working through practical frameworks and tools for effective change in churches and parachurch organisations.

November 2025 Lead On article by Matt Waldock, Director of Gospel Coaching UK.