The best practical suggestion I ever heard for church mergers may apply to transitions as well, since both require paradigm shifts. Here's what one merger did, when a older-population/declining church invited in a younger-population/church plant. For several months, members of the host (older) church put a time-line by decades on the wall of the largest meeting room. Anyone who had memories or photos of people and events and God's activities among the congregation from those decades posted them. They devoted some public time to recounting that history, from the host-church people who were there as eye-witnesses, while those of the church plant listened in and celebrate with them. Later, the church plant recounted their shorter history with a similar timeline and public sharing. And the church-plant timeline on the wall merged with that of the host church on the date of "relaunch."

It really did seem to work, because the stories and people were valued, the time spent was intentional and not seen as wasteful, and it visually signified the death of BOTH parties in the merger, and the BIRTH of something new that had never been before. Both "sides" lost everything, and gained everything, in this process …

Now, that's the healthiest example I've ever heard. Wish others would follow it, especially seeing that it simply cannot be one side doing all the change and the other side simply leading the change. (And it isn't always the younger church in a merger controlling the change process, as I have unfortunately seen.)

I still want to get down there and visit Life on the Vine with you guys sometime and experience this thing first hand.

Having been through the process of planting now I've come to discover that planting doesn't usually get you of the hook for this transition, because you're still often transitioning people who join your plant – and I've learned there's something else that we missed at that bigger church: the critical role of lament. By trying to avoid critique we miss out on the importance of lamenting and the ensuing newness of life that comes on the other side of lament. I think we in evangelicalism have lost a sense of the importance of critique and lament to the process of renewal and rebirth, and I think we've largely failed to recognize – and therefore affirm – that much of what has come to be known as Emerging was essentially a large scale lament by divers sectors of Christendom.

I’m reminded here of a quote from long-time church consultant Lyle Schaller, when he taught in 1999 at a conference on the church, leadership, and seminaries in the 21st century. In talking about paradigm shifts, he said, “When the sequential [i.e., conventional] church leaders do not accommodate the concurrent [i.e., random, non-linear] thinkers, the concurrent people lose hope.” As best I can recall, he believed many major denominations were going to be in big trouble, as were many seminaries, because of this problem of paradigms. In fact, he expected many such organizations to fail within 25 years.

JR Rozko recommended a book on “appreciative inquiry.” This process can be helpful to figure out what assets a group has, or track what its long-term “redemptive purpose” seems to have been in that cultural/neighborhood setting. However, a note of caution: I saw church leaders at the second church who supposedly wanted to transition. But it appears to me that they ultimately hid behind what they traditionally did well. They let a focus on “being positive” and “unity” obscure the very areas that needed strengthening to truly transition into a paradigm that fit with the emerging cultural framework that had been changing around them for decades. They did not transition because they sought to reformat, not reintegrate. The “new” version looked strikingly like the old, still in the images of the current leaders and the church’s past glories.

From this, I came to see that we may find that what assets or purposes were invaluable in a former paradigm, culture, or church methodological model could actually prove to be a liability in the context of the dominant paradigm or current culture. Transition is about a paradigm SHIFT not simply a purpose-statement or program SHUFFLE.

A final note. I am still working on this concept and how to express it, so for now, I’ll just have to blurt it out and keep refining it. It’s the idea of push and pull, and how they sometimes get reversed in the transition process. Conventional leaders tend to vision cast to “push” people toward what they see the future should/will look like. New-edge leaders tend to vision carry and embody what that future already looks like, so they can “pull” people toward that future. I think transition could work better with this specific combination of push/pull – it keeps people of different paradigms and generations in a mode of collaboration.

It doesn’t work well when the new-edge leaders try to push people toward the future (those who live in that unknown land can easily generate fear in those who don’t) while the conventional leaders try to pull them there (these leaders may only glimpse that “right” future in theory and have gaps in their practice).

Does that make sense? A blog-post and story for another time … and this topic is, in fact, on my schedule to address before I end my futuristguy blog this April (or however things unfold).

Meanwhile, I also posted this comment as an article at the following address. There may end up being comments there, and I'll post follow-up articles if/when I can:

http://futuristguy.wordpress.com/2010/01/30/thoug...

I've been involved with several situations that could be considered attempts at established churches becoming more transitional and/or missional. Two of them in particular had the main problem of major differences in core paradigms held by participants.

1. CHURCH MERGER. One was a merger situation of a church plant with a declining church. We thought the vitality of the church plant could carry the weight of the other body. That was naïve. What we didn’t realize going into this was that a merger actually involves the death of both parties to what they were, and a significant period of gestation for something new that is not exactly like either of the older versions of the partners or even a mere combination of them. And then – maybe – something different is rebirthed.

That process is perhaps the essence of transition in the peculiar era in which we live: It’s the merging of people from two vastly different paradigms, and not simply reconciling the differences, but reintegrating everything against a comprehensive biblical worldview AND reflecting new kinds of questions the current culture asks that we need to ensure our paradigm covers. In this merger, there were points where each side seemed to try to exert personal or paradigm control over the other: trying to force old wine into new wineskins or force new wine into old wineskins.

In retrospect, I think it would’ve helped to s-l-o-w down and apply some “strategic foresight” and contextualization tools: (1) Studying the local cultures and their paradigms to see what the current situation was. (2) Studying the congregation to see how it could POSSIBLY connect missionally within its neighborhood. (3) Facilitate a process where the group considers not just what is possible, but what is PREFERABLE. Limit group activities to the most preferable future scenario. (And this is where “appreciative inquiry” can help in discerning what is preferable.)

These three processes CAN be facilitated so that both analytics and intuitives can participate. Analysis tends to represent the approach taken in conventional culture and older generations to divide things into details, then examine and interpret them. Intuition tends to represent the processing approach in the emerging culture and younger generations, sort of “gestalting” a whole experience and taking in massive amounts of interconnected information that give a three-dimensional understanding. Conventional/analytic leaders tend to vision cast toward the correct concepts for the future. New-edge/intuitive leaders tend to vision-carry to role model the future.

I’ve rarely seen this kind of approach taken. But, it generally has proved helpful. I’m part of an international missional/social entrepreneurial team. The intuitives generally are instigators and catalysts of social transformation enterprises; the analytics generally are the project managers and sustainers for the enterprises. Sound familiar, like an adaptation of APEST/APEPT from Ephesians 4 perhaps?

I have seen the opposite, though, where people stubbornly or subtly refuse to accommodate each other in different modes of thinking. I hate to say it, but I guess they chose the consequences they got. Such as … the intuitive types who “get it” about the way culture is changing globally go off to plant a church because they want to do something new, or they just leave because they sense no hope due to overcontrol by people with conventional paradigms. And the fewer intuitives left, the more likely the conventional thinking gets even more entrenched, making it even less likely that a culturally intuitive (and younger) leader could survive in a sea of convention. And such a destructive downward spiral was the case of a second church … [to be continued].

Looking forward to sharing more with each other at Ecclesia.