Change in the parish
It will not go the way you imagined
This is from Finding God in All Things: Contemplation, Intercession, and Intervention, Chapter 2, Michelle Heyne & Robert Gallagher
It will not go the way you imagined
Implementation will not go the way you imagined. Leaders are often shocked to experience the confusion, resistance, anxiety, slowness, twists and turns, and unanticipated consequences of the change process. One way of understanding what is happening is what Karl Albrecht described as the “nose-dive syndrome.”
Albrecht suggests this frequently happens when implementing major change. It goes this way: the leadership assumes that all will go well in the change effort. In fact, some people will resist, grumble, fight, and generally play the victim or cynic in regard to the proposed change. Resources that were to be available are slow in coming. Key people get caught up in other demands and give less attention to the effort. Some people will change their minds about the project. Satisfaction declines instead of improving. The nose dive doesn’t always occur, but when it does, the parish’s leaders will have to make an assessment:
“This was a mistake; we misjudged what was possible,” or
“Our reading of the situation and the possibilities is mostly correct; there will need to be some adjustments; but if we stay with it, we will reach the hoped-for results.”
Resistance to change and the reality of loss
Resistance is likely as changes begin to take shape and impact people’s lives, or as that impact is anticipated. What may have earlier been a vague uneasiness becomes a fear of loss or recognition of what will be given up. Some who were initially in favor of change may become resistant. The sources of resistance are likely to be multiple. Social networks are disrupted, influence patterns change, reward systems are rearranged, there may be a sense of uncertainty about the future. The organizational culture—“the way we are and how we do things here”—may be seen as threatened. Resistance will be reduced if the issues identified earlier are effectively addressed, through such things as clear vision and direction, clear leadership, a monitoring/initiative management process, communication, and including people. It is also important to listen to the resistance. There may be information in the resistance that can improve the change project.
Another way of thinking about change and working with resistance can be found in the Bridges Transition Model, which differentiates between change and transition. The model sees change as external and situational, something that happens to people. Transition, in contrast, is seen as primarily psychological and internal. Key to the model is that all change starts with an ending. People are giving something up—they are losing something—in order to create the new thing. Accordingly, when people first experience change, expressions of grief may be at the forefront. Grief can be expressed in many ways, including anger, fear, sadness, and confusion.
Often leaders try to clamp these feelings down, or label them as “resistance” or “sabotage,” which can be both unnecessarily dismissive and can tend to prevent moving on from those feelings. Leaders’ own emotional intelligence, and especially an ability to identify and manage their own feelings, will help in creating an adequately structured environment that provides psychological safety, allows for structured expression of feelings, and also provides a pathway into the next phases of change. The aim is to help people accept their feelings, and allow leaders to hear about losses members are experiencing, as well as issues they perhaps hadn’t recognized earlier. Meanwhile, leaders continue to affirm the change is real and move forward with the new reality. One important thing to pay attention to is how leadership can help lessen the pain of loss without undermining the change effort. Sometimes, it’s as simple as returning some form of control that was inadvertently or insensitively removed. Or if part of the loss is related to a sense of incompetence in the new reality, how can the organization support additional training and provide additional resources? It’s also important to be realistic about what is not changing. Under-communication about what is staying the same can lead people to catastrophize or make inaccurate assumptions that interfere unnecessarily with accepting the change.
When one Anglo-Catholic parish was making a change from two Sunday services (8 a.m. and 10:30 a.m.) to three (7:30 a.m., 9:30 a.m., and 11 a.m.), the rector made it clear that while she was asking people to help populate the new 9:30 service, and that while it was intended to appeal more to families with young children, no one “had” to do anything. She also underscored that while the new service would be a bit simpler, and would have a choir made up only of parishioners, not paid section leaders, the basic structure, rhythm, and tone of the new 9:30 service would be consistent with the existing solemn Mass. This helped those who feared it would be a “guitar Mass” or would be somehow “dumbed down” by being directed at children.
Reinforcing and stabilizing change
Systems have a tendency to function like rubber bands. They are stretched under pressure. Once the pressure is released, they snap back to the original shape. Organizations, including parish churches, tend to revert to old behavior patterns unless efforts are made to institutionalize the changes. Some ways to do this include:
Have a team continue monitoring and reinforcing the change.
Key leaders need to check in occasionally on how well the new ways have become part of the parish’s life.
Train people in the skills and knowledge needed to competently function in the new way.
Provide adequate resources.
Modify related policies and practices.
Reward teams and individuals for making the new way work.
If necessary, remove extreme resistors from positions of influence.
This abides,
Sister Michelle, OA & Brother Robert, OA
Feast of Saint Mary the Virgin, Mother of Our Lord Jesus Christ
Related resources on the dynamics of change
Shape of the Parish program - Shaping the Parish (STP) is a two-year Zoom based program that has recently graduated its first class. New registrations are being accepted for the Saint Benedict Cycle which begins on October 10, 2025. The program fee for the two years is $100/person or $300 for parish teams of up to six people. Books used in the course cost $125 to 225 depending on whether they are digital or paperback.
The Benedictine Promise and Stability and Assessing with the Benedictine Promise
Organizations in a world of choices
Is Saint Clement’s poised for growth?