Permission To Innovate
by Rev. Mark E. Tidsworth, Founder and Team Leader
We have several churches near the same place in their visioning and discernment process… affirming and approving their missional pathways. As they anticipate confirming their vision, a new awareness is beginning to sink in… change is coming.
This is preferred change, missional-congruent change, and even congregationally-discerned change… all very positive, yet it’s still change. As the leadership of these churches look across the launch dates of their new vision, they are starting to anticipate some of the reactions when their missional pathways are pursued. One pastor described the need to ask several committees to stop several well-worn activities in order to make space for what’s currently rising in their church. Another pastor described the unspoken norms in their church which are likely to rise to the surface as their missional pathways advance.
Our first response is to develop a new activity in our visioning processes… a training for church leaders regarding how to navigate the journey when launching the vision, including what to expect and how to remain missionally-focused. The second response is to remember again how churches function as systems, with each part influencing most other parts. Here’s a statement I’m using with churches that helps them understand the systemic nature of church:
What brought your church to here, won’t take your church to there,
unless there is exactly the same as here.
In other words, the way a church has been church has contributed to its forward movement up to this point. Everything is in place for moving to this current developmental place. All the pushes, pulls, systems, processes, and practices are currently in place for yielding the exact outcomes in this present moment. The good news here is that with even minor changes, the church will move to a new place (missional-growth and movement). Conversely, changing nothing will yield the current outcomes.
Permission To Innovate
This brings us to the title of this article. This phrase arose in one of the aforementioned church consultations. I can clearly remember a person responding with a thoughtful look on their face, “Permission to innovate… that’s going to be a key for us.”
Fortunately (actually providentially), for these churches, they are well-positioned for giving themselves permission to innovate. The methodology in their visioning process, including every voice in the congregation from the beginning through the end, equips them to clearly say this vision was congregationally-discerned. This vision is what their churches have collectively discerned… together! When the people of the church discern the need for innovation themselves, then they are far more likely to participate with the changes as they come.
Essentially, permission to innovate starts in the soul of a church, and then becomes a mindset. After that soul-work is done, then leaders of a church can help innovation to be blessed through shifting mindsets; aligning mindsets with the discerned vision and missional pathways. When the churches mentioned here share their missional pathways with their congregations, they will be committing to a season of change. Very specifically, they will be agreeing together that the next three years (or so) are a season of change or discovery, giving themselves permission to launch as many Holy Experiments as are needed for living into their missional pathways. When the people of these church grow uncomfortable due to changes, they can say to themselves and each other, “This is what we meant when we described being in a season of discovery. This discomfort with change is what we predicted, expected, and decided is worth it.”
When this happens, permission to innovate is alive in church systems. May we do the work necessary to position our churches for embracing the call to transformation as bodies of Christ.
For more on this kind of church process, see our Crossing Thresholds Visioning Journey here https://www.pinnlead.com/crossing-thresholds-visioning-journey.