Changing Church Culture
Presented by Rev. Dr. Christine Chakoian
First Presbyterian Church of Lake Forest
Sept. 25, 2014
From Columbus to Lake Forest
Churches are like Marriages…
They can get stuck in RUTS.
But they don’t have to STAY there.
Changing Church Culture
Knowledge
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•
•
•
Know your current problem
Know your embedded patterns
Know your embedded strengths
Know your faithful goal
Engagement
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•
•
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Engage Christ’s message
Engage leadership
Engage conflict
Engage sorting
Calibration
• Calibrate your pace
• Calibrate your people
• Calibrate your personal growth
Changing Church Culture: Knowledge
Know your current problem
Diagnostic Tools
• RevealWorks survey
• Consultants/consulting programs
• “Word on the street”
• “Kitchen cabinet”
Changing Church Culture: Knowledge
Know your embedded patterns
crypto = hidden or secret
+ mnesia = memory
Congregations have all kinds of
hidden memories and buried
patterns.
Changing Church Culture: Knowledge
Know your embedded patterns
Historic difficulties at First
Presbyterian Church of Lake Forest
• Financial control
• Turf Wars
Changing Church Culture: Knowledge
Know your embedded patterns
The “Red Carpet Moment”
Exercise:
• What are the patterns of discord
in your congregation?
• Can you name your “red carpet”
patterns?
Changing Church Culture: Knowledge
Know your embedded patterns
Siloing
Changing Church Culture: Knowledge
Know your embedded strengths
Superficial and embedded strengths
Exercise
• What are the patterns of health
and strength in your
congregation?
• What blessings have endured?
Changing Church Culture: Knowledge
Know your faithful goal
Pastor as orchestra conductor
Changing Church Culture: Engagement
Engage the “score” – Christ’s Message
Knowing and
Teaching the “score”
Changing Church Culture: Engagement
Engage leadership
Changing Church Culture: Engagement
Engage tension
Tension is crucial for growth.
Exercise
What are the healthiest Christian
practices to engage tension in your
church?
Changing Church Culture: Engagement
Engage sorting
Discerning how to let the
Gospel reach different people
Exercise
• What helped you feel God’s
presence early in your life?
• What do you see helping the
next generation connect with
God’s presence?
Changing Church Culture: Calibration
Calibrate your pace
Change doesn’t happen
overnight!
Going too fast, too slow or
just right can make a BIG
difference.
Changing Church Culture: Calibration
Calibrate your people
People resist change when:
• They feel it is imposed upon
them. (They become frightened.)
• They sense too much anxiety or
fear. (They become paralyzed.)
• They experience no sense of
urgency. (They become
complacent.)
Changing Church Culture
The power behind the “ship” of Christ was
always the wind—the wind of the Holy Spirit.
If we think we’re in charge, we’ll sink this ship.
Wesley’s Covenant Prayer
I am no longer my own but yours.
Put me to what you will, rank me with whom you will.
Put me to doing, put me to suffering.
Let me be employed for you or laid aside for you, exalted for you or
brought low for you.
Let me be full, let me be empty.
Let me have all things, let me have nothing.
I freely and wholeheartedly yield all things to your pleasure and disposal.
And now, glorious and blessed God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, you are
mine and I am yours.
So be it. And the covenant now made on earth, let it be ratified in
heaven. Amen.
With the wind of the Spirit, push me, pull
me, rock me, stop me: but let it be your
will that guides our ship, now and forever.