In part two of our conversation with Dr. Kara Powell, Dr. Jake Mulder, and Ray Chang from Fuller Seminary, we dive deep into the practical aspects of transforming church organizational culture. Harvard Business Review reports that 70% of change efforts fail, but these researchers have discovered why some churches successfully navigate transformation while others struggle. The key lies not in solo leadership or quick fixes, but in building diverse transformation teams that can effectively guide change through four essential zones: here, there, who, and how. Our guests share compelling stories of churches that shifted from spectator-based ministry to empowering communities of co-creators, demonstrating how effective church organizational culture change happens when the right people stay at the table long enough to discern God's direction together.

Whether you're a pastor carrying the weight of change alone or a church leader seeking practical strategies for engaging your congregation in transformation, this episode offers hope and concrete tools for developing a future-focused approach. Learn why starting with "who" is more important than starting with "why," discover practical exercises for imagining your church's future through Scripture and community discernment, and explore how Jesus modeled the most effective change leadership principles. From building transformation teams with the right mix of authority and responsibility to creating church organizational culture that naturally develops disciples who live out their faith in daily life, this conversation provides a roadmap for sustainable church transformation rooted in theological conviction and practical wisdom.

Harvard Business Review, 70 % of all change efforts fail. And we know that even in the life and ministry of Jesus, he experienced quite a significant amount of resistance to change. And one of the things that we think and wonder is that our failure to bring about change is actually less about our church's lack of openness and more about our own lack of mastery of the change process.

Hello everyone, welcome to the Pivot Podcast, where we explore how the Church can faithfully navigate a changing world. I'm Dwight Zscheile This is part two of my conversation with Dr. Kara Powell, Dr. Jake Mulder, and Ray Chang, co-authors of the recent book, Future Focused Church. If you missed last week's episode on the elements of a future-focused church, be sure to go back and check it out. It sets up today's conversation perfectly.

So these three guests who are all connected to Fuller Seminary and ⁓ have spent years researching what distinguishes thriving churches from declining ones. In their book, Future Focused Church, they define such communities as groups of Jesus followers who seek God's direction together, especially in relationally discipling young people, modeling kingdom diversity, and tangibly loving their neighbors. So welcome back.

Kara, Jake, and Ray to the Pivot Podcast.

gonna be back Dwight

Great

to be here.

back long time no see

So in this, this part of the conversation, I really want to dig into what takes up quite a bit of your book, which is how do you actually lead change? And so you talk about here, there, who, and how, what are those words? So tell us more about what those terms mean in the process of taking this journey to become a future focused church.

Yeah, so if you listened in on the last episode, you would have heard Jake do a flyover of these terms. But, you know, according to Harvard Business Review, 70 % of all change efforts fail. And we know that even in the life and ministry of Jesus, he experienced quite a significant amount of resistance to change. And one of things that we think and wonder is that our failure to bring about change is actually less about our church's lack of openness.

and more about our own lack of mastery of the change process. And so we try to figure out the best and most simplest way to lead people through a very complex process. And we've kind of narrowed it down to these four very important zones. We know it's not a quick fix, but again, it's a process and we've named them as the here, there, who and how to what you mentioned.

Here is where we are now, why we're here. This includes everything from your physical location and your people, your culture, the current sense of life and vitality, the resources that are or are not available, the infrastructure that's in place, the programs and more. It's everything from what the spoken expectations are to the unspoken expectations are, how people move throughout the building space and how people navigate relationships with one another.

And then there is where we or you believe God is leading you. ⁓ And so it's a picture of your church six months from now, six years from now, or even 60 years from now. ⁓ We wanna be actively discerning where God is leading that particular unique congregation that has been planted and ⁓ is seeking to be a blessing to the broader community around it. And then the who is who the...

people in our congregation or ministry and wider community are that must shape the effort. People are best asset and resources to any type of community and they're the most valuable. And so in most churches, this actually encompasses the overall congregation, encompasses the leaders, but it also encompasses those who are not yet part of the church, but those you hope to engage. And mapping out

the community and the who is going to be really helpful to the process. And then the final is how. ⁓ So it's here, there, who, and how. And it's essentially asking the simple question of what is our next faithful step and how might we move into a more faithful future? It's the tangible and practical steps that need to be taken in order to lead change. And we believe that these four zones construct the map of change. And we believe that they're

helpful and memorable enough for you to be able to implement.

So we're gonna get into unpacking the who and how in the there a bit, but I wanna just begin a little bit on the here, because how do you help congregations have a really kind of honest sense of where they actually are? mean, it's very easy for churches to have ⁓ their own kind of view of their reality, and either that can be.

a sort of distorted view around, know, well, we think we're really welcoming to all of our neighbors, and in fact, they're not, or ⁓ it might be ⁓ that there's a deep sense of shame that they feel. We don't have the young people we'd like to have, but how do you all wrestle with helping the here come into focus, if you will, in ways that are engaging for people and help them actually take the journey?

Yeah, I can I can jump in on that one. We ended up calling this out as a formal step in the change process just because so often here it's an assumed step in the process. So like for most of us who are church leaders and may be effective as church leaders.

We were taught if we went to seminary or if we didn't go to seminary, maybe the skills we got good at are like how to read and apply scripture, how to preach, how to provide pastoral care. There's, there's a number of activities, but a number of us are good at getting things done. We're action oriented, kind of activating type people, which is maybe why we ended up in leadership. That, that step of actually pausing long enough to understand where we've been placed. It's not always a part of our.

pastoral training and part of the reason we felt the need to call it out is, especially when we're thinking about change, changes about what's ahead, where are we going from here? And when we're focused on what's ahead and where we're going, we don't take time to discern where we are currently. And we ended up working, one of my favorite stories of this, I was at a church in Texas and I was meeting with an elder board and

they had brought me in to help think about how they could engage young adults in the community. And at one point, one of the elders said out loud, hey, I think this is a waste of time. We don't have any young adults in our community. And a few of the elders kind of like looked around at each other a little bit confused, but this is a particularly influential elder. And from this person's experience, I mean, they didn't see a lot of young adults as they went throughout their day to day and sorts of things, because they weren't spending time where young adults were.

We had flown in for our visit kind of the night before and we needed to go to a restaurant on a Saturday night that there was packed with young adults all around the church. It's just that the rest of the people weren't there. Well, one of the other elders decided to pull up census bureau information and this was a really big college town and it turned out something like 30 % of their community consisted of young adults, right? But it was just that basic ability to read where we're coming from. If we're not starting with an accurate understanding, it's

really hard to figure out where we're going. So that would be a start to the response to white.

I love that. I just want to underscore how important that step is and so easy to skip over it. Well, so let's talk about the who. Your kind of approach to change is really about building transformation teams rather than a kind of top-down approach. Now, a lot of churches, as we know, have ⁓ more of a sort of top-down or solo kind of approach to leadership where the leader is expected to drive the change and do it all herself or himself. ⁓

Say more about your strategy on this.

Yeah, so ⁓ Simon Sinek, who we think is smart and on in so many things, has a book called Start With Why that has done very well. And at least for churches leading change, we would respectfully disagree, or at least say pause for a minute, because we found what you mentioned, a lot of individuals who maybe have a top-down mentality where that one person, they might follow Simon Sinek's idea of start with why, but then they go off and do what they want to do. We think it's important that churches start with who.

So Ray outlined that here, there, who and how. The first chapter that we end up going deep into that process is all around who. So we wanna start with who. Theologically, Dwight, I know you're part of a Lutheran seminary. There's some Lutherans there. We believe in the priesthood of all believers, right? Like God has actually called and equipped everyone. We take that seriously.

But a story from our experience and research, there was one church that we came across. This church is in the Minneapolis area, so I'm hoping that they're not Luther seminary grads. I don't think they are, but just to say this for a second. This church wanted to engage more young adults. And so they got three or four people who are all age 50 or 60 said, well, what do young adults want? They said, they probably want a Sunday night worship service. So they launched a Sunday night worship service and hardly any young adults showed up.

And they hadn't taken the time to start with who. Now let me contrast that with one of the stories we write about in the book is a church called Loma Linda University Church. And they found that there was a group of young adults who met for young adult activities, but had nothing to do with the rest of the church. At least they weren't integrated as much as the rest of the church wanted. When the pastor was trying to think of next steps, it would have been really easy for that pastor to say, yeah, this is a young adult problem. We're going to ask the young adults to fix it.

Instead, what they did is say, we really need a cross-functional team if we're going to solve this. So we need some people across the age spectrum, across ministry areas, across backgrounds to work on this problem together. And so this pastor got this team together and we ended up talking to the pastor for one of our interviews four or five years later and said, hey, in all the change that you tried to do, what made the biggest difference? And this pastor said, you know,

I would have liked to say we were really smart or we tried so hard or we found exactly the right answer. He said, what made the difference is we just early on got the right group of people at the table and they stayed together at the table long enough. And that can solve all sorts of complex problems. So a couple pieces I would pull out of that Dwight to be really practical. We think diversity in teens matters. And yes, we're talking about racial and ethnic diversity, but age diversity, perspective, male, female.

We think that when we embody the kingdom with multiple perspectives, and Harvard research backs this up, diverse teams end up being smarter. They make better decisions. They're not always easier to operate with when you get multiple perspectives, but they tend to be smarter. ⁓ The other piece that I would say just to offer, you know, kind of one other principle here is figure out in that team how to match authority and responsibility. We tend to find that those things get ⁓

If those need to be in balance, and I guess I'm doing a teeter totter right here, I have young children, so that's about as good of an example as I get. Sometimes there are teams who have a lot of authority, but they don't really understand the issue that needs to be dealt with. And sometimes there are people who have in-depth understanding of the issue that needs to be dealt with, but they don't have the authority to actually make the change. And we want to make sure that when you put together a team, you have a clear sense of the right people at the table who know the issues.

and then they're empowered with the authority that's needed to move forward. So that'd be a little bit on who.

So you talk in the book about empowering a community of co-creators. So this is about kind of engagement and participation. What are some levels of that, of that engagement and participation within a congregation for this kind of change effort? What does that look like in practice?

Yeah, I haven't gotten to talk yet, so I'll go ahead and field that question, Dwight. You know, the first verse of scripture that comes to mind is Ephesians 4, 11 through 13, where Paul writes that God gave some to be apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors, and teachers to equip God's people for works of service. So I'm constantly having to remind myself as a leader, my job is not to do the ministry, my job is to equip others to do ministry.

As I heard said last week at a leadership conference, it's not about me being a genius, but about me creating a team, a community of geniuses. So it's been so inspiring to see thoughtful leaders of all ages really hand the keys to others and especially young people. We tend to always keep our eyes out for young people.

And Dustin is a leader we describe in the book. And when he went to a small church, the elders that hired him said, if you don't reach young people, this church is gonna die. And they weren't wrong. ⁓ It was a small and aging church. And so Dustin started keeping his eye out for young adults who would walk through the building, come to gatherings. He would get their names and emails. Eventually he and his wife felt.

like it was time to start a young adult Bible study. did, young adults started showing up. And Dustin asked this powerful question, what would you like to see God do through you? What would you like to see God do through you? And the young adults, they had ⁓ a proclivity for being medical professionals that had come to the church. And so they said, we'd love to start ⁓ a volunteer medical clinic.

And so the young adults worked on a plan. They took it to the Deacon Board. The Deacon had a lot, the Leading Board had a lot of questions, but they agreed the young adults could keep moving forward. The Deacons were coaching the young adults, overall congregation got involved. And now both this church and a second church that Dustin ended up planting, you know, they've done several one-day medical clinics and served thousands in their community.

Because Dustin asked what would you like to see God do through you and the entire church got mobilized so You know it often feels like churches are full of spectators who watch the pastors do all the work and we think scripture and the priesthood of all believers There we go a good Lutheran tenant the priesthood of all believers and just what we are seen in churches. It reverses that ⁓ and so

So we hope that leaders will start asking others what would you like to see God do through you and then empower them to actually do that.

I love that Kara. So let me follow up with a a just a bit of a different question on this, which is, is we think about planning for the future. That seems like that's hard to do in this cultural moment. There's so much change going on. It's so disruptive. Like, talk a bit about that.

Yeah, yeah, boy, I wish I could plan for the future. ⁓ Sometimes it's hard to like plan for tomorrow, right? So you're right Dwight, like I feel like this is such a disruptive, disruptive season. And so that means we as leaders, we have to constantly be willing to adapt and be responding to pivot point. You know, the core of our definition for a future focused church is that it's ⁓ a group, it's a community of people who seek God's direction together.

And so I'm glad that when it comes to shifting for the future, it's not me by myself, but it's a community of others. And, you know, one of the diagrams in the book that's gotten a lot of ⁓ buzz is we start with a here, and then there's a lot of different there's that emerge from that here because the path can branch out in all sorts of ways. you know, something that we encourage churches to do.

is when it comes to what they imagined for the future that didn't quite pan out is to be really candid about that. All generations want the church to be authentic. And I find myself as a leader that when I try to sugarcoat something or minimize something, ⁓ it ends up feeling disingenuous. And so when there's disappointment about things that haven't worked out, like let's be optimistic about how God is working, what we're learning.

from the bumps along the road, absolutely. But also be honest that this is different than we imagined. And I'm glad that we can rest in a good God who's with us in the midst of whatever the future might unfold.

Well, so on that theme of discerning the there, future, right? Where God is leading. How do you ⁓ help congregations distinguish between vision that really comes from anxiety about decline, you know, or survival versus vision that emerges from that genuine sense of the spirit's leading? Because I can imagine a lot of churches kind of casting an aspirational

Yeah, so on the one hand, I do think those two can be hard to separate sometimes. ⁓ Maybe the good thing is often God can choose and is able to work through either. I'm reminded of the Psalms, like often it is those Psalms of lament or hurt or concern or fear of like a God, this is terrible, save me. And often God works through that. And I think it's just worth considering what might the spirit be saying to us in the midst of that decline. That said,

We really did find that this future focused orientation and ability to move change, to move into change, it's not just about better business and organizational principles. Though there's some of that, it fundamentally starts with a theological question and orientation, which is all around hope and a recognition that even in the midst of anxiety and decline, there is hope and that's part of the Christian calling. And for those who would say, that's, really positive spin psychology, like

in the wake of Jesus' crucifixion in John 20, when the disciples are locked in an upper room, Jesus enters in and says, I think three times, peace be with you. then Jesus says, so part of that, think, is just allowing Jesus and the Spirit to do the work that needs to be done. And again, to orient with the hope and possibility that we have a God who promises to make all things new and to shine a light in the darkness. Now, to continue to turn practically in that,

Oftentimes, I find churches almost obsessed with all of the things that are changing and feeling like they can't keep up as opposed to just leaning into some basic realities that are never going to change. So, okay, if you're trying to figure out how to engage younger people or your neighborhood, yeah, there's a lot that is changing and young people need depth of relationship and people to trust. Those are unchanging realities. ⁓

We also find that this is an act of imagination, and I'll pause there because I imagine you may want to dig into imagination a little more.

Well, I do. mean, I'm really curious about that. Like, ⁓ you know, what are some exercises for imagining a church's future? I'm curious, Ray, like, what are your thoughts on that?

Great question. we have several exercises that we outline in the book. But one of the things that we encourage people to do is figure out who the transformation team is. So in Leading Change, we encourage people to gather a transformation team, about a dozen or less people that are going to be moving together to discern what God desires for the community.

One of the exercises, I'll just give you three out of the six that I think we've named. One of the exercises is imagining your future through scripture. ⁓ We encourage people to take their transformation team ⁓ and invite them to carry their Bibles around and read their scriptures together, whether it's the physical paperback version or the digital version. I always encourage people to take the paper version because there's something about...

the turning of the page that's just beautiful. ⁓ And in advance of the meeting, invite them to consider one or two passages of scripture that are meaningful to them and could inform God's there for the community. And then invite them to really guide, and then have them invite God to guide your discussion and reflection in a meditative fashion, very much like ⁓ in akin to Lectio Divina. ⁓ Sit with the passages and ask.

How might one or more of these passage inform where God is leading our church and let that inform and shape the imagination. Another exercise that we encourage people to do is imagine their future by revisiting their past. ⁓ Before the next meeting, we encourage people to invite team members to consider stories or moments in their church's past that are particularly important to define who the church is now.

especially stories that have shaped the church's core purpose or core values, because change is a grieving process. You're losing something as you're gaining something, and often you're moving towards change because the gains are far greater than the losses. And so the goal for the meeting is really to identify foundational elements of the church's past and to also identify what needs to be honored, what needs to be preserved, and consider how those things might inspire the church's progress towards

the three checkpoints that we mentioned ⁓ in the beginning of the book ⁓ around relationally discipling young people, modeling kingdom diversity, and tangibly loving our neighbors along with other future-focused priorities. And then one other way to imagine the future is through communal discernment. This is where you invite people within the transformation team and outside of the transformation team and widen the group of participants beyond the transformation team to discern together.

It can take a lot of different shapes and forms. It could be done through a prayer meeting or town halls or even think-take type of gatherings where you garner input from a variety of people, spark conversation, and allow people to really dream together. But these are some practical exercises we think that anyone can kind of organize and orchestrate within their communities to help lead towards change.

So Kara, I'm curious, how do you then move from imagination to activation?

Yeah, great question. ⁓ Well, before we start recording, we were talking about a friend that we all share in common, that is Scott Cormode, one of our colleagues at Fuller, and he describes vision as...

I thought

we called him Work acquaintance, did we? Alright, friend, in case he's gonna-

going

to say friend, he calls vision, describes vision as a shared story of future hope, a shared story of future hope. And largely using the extra kind of exercises that Ray was just describing, it's been so encouraging to see teams together reflect on what is that shared story that emerges. So one church transformation team comes to mind where they did what Ray said. They took some time looking over scripture.

as individuals and then came together and process. And it was stunning how many ⁓ felt drawn to Jesus talking about the parable of the prodigal son. And so when they came together, a number of people around the room said, well, I was drawn to that too. And so from that imaginative exercise, they ended up actually saying, okay, we want to activate toward being a church that celebrates when someone

joins our community. We want to throw a party. We want to be welcoming. And so that image for hospitality really became key for them and they put that into practice. So yes, it's amazing how tangible the images, the stories ⁓ emerge from those kinds of exercises.

So in the book, you all describe Jesus as the most effective change leader who ever lived, I would agree. What specific aspects of Jesus's approach to change do you see as most relevant for leaders navigating cultural change in the world today?

So one of the pieces in writing the book that we were reflecting on is if you go back to Jesus's first words in the book of Mark, ⁓ I would say they're words about change. He says, the time has come, the kingdom of God has come near, repent and believe the good news. And you've got like everything included in a good change message. Like it's timely, it's specific.

There's action required on your part. It's good news. There's almost everything that needs to be there is included in Jesus's first words in the book of Mark. And I'm decently well-read on adaptive change. Karen Ray have spent time here. Dwight, I imagine in this podcast, you've talked about adaptive change. When you start to take adaptive change principles and go back and reread the gospels, I find it fascinating. I don't think...

I don't know, maybe Jesus knew that adaptive change and, know, Hyphets was coming with all of his language, but like Jesus just embodies the realities and principles of adaptive change that are required. And I mentioned that because I often talk to pastors who feel like they're choosing between, they going to be the like spiritual formation Jesus Holy Spirit prayer person, or are they going to be the like business drive change sort of, and I find it really interesting.

that in the example of Jesus, I don't know that you need to change. You can actually model faithfulness to Jesus and be the sort of leader who can bring personal and organizational change. And maybe two quick takeaways on that, how does Jesus lead us? One, this little thing called the incarnation, right? Like Jesus left where Jesus came from in heaven to dwell with us and walk with us and understand where we're coming from.

And so often that seems to be one of the key aspects of driving change. It's being with people, knowing people, being sensitive to where people are coming from. But the other one would be Jesus, Jesus preached. Certainly I believe that, but deep Jesus didn't just preach about changes. Jesus was willing to get in the trenches and model what it looks like. So those are a couple, but I would really encourage people choose a gospel. You want a short one, you know, take the book of Mark and just ask the

question like what can I learn about change leadership from Jesus and it is fascinating how much I think you'll take away.

Are you saying that we should only read short passages of the Bible, Jake? that correct?

And

the New Testament too, the value of the Old Testament, no I'm kidding. gosh. We don't want to get you in trouble theologically Dwight, so we'll stay away from that.

Well, so as we bring this conversation to a close, what are some final words that you would have to those dedicated but drained, as you say, church leaders who are wrestling with their church's future?

Yeah, I think probably the same words that I would offer to myself, and that is that God is the worker, and God is at work in ways that we cannot see. So it helps me to rest in that. ⁓ So I offer that to all of us. God is the worker, and God is at work in ways we probably can't even see.

Amen. And that is ultimately the source of the future that we hope in for sure. Well, ⁓ Kara, Ray, Jake, thank you so much for joining us on the Pivot Podcast and helping us envision how we can be participants in God building tomorrow's church today.

Good to be with you.

Great, wonderful to have a great conversation Dwight.

And to our audience, thank you for joining us on this episode of Pivot. To help spread the word about Pivot, please like and subscribe if you're catching us on YouTube, leave a review on your podcast platform, or share Pivot with a friend. See you next week.