I like to change things. It is in my personality to not take what is handed to me as a given. This is not to say that I am a contrarian, but, rather, that I like the potential of something far more than I like its present reality.
What I always get stuck on, however, is how to get to that change I see.
On the one hand is what could be called radical change. This is the kind of change where what you do tomorrow looks nothing like it did today. The processes are different. The expectations are different. The rewards are different.
This is the kind of change I experienced each and every time my wife gave birth to another of our four boys. Yes, it was still parenting, but adding a new child into the mix made the situation completely different. People would say to us, “Yeah, but after a certain point, isn’t another kid just another kid?” To which we would respond, “No. Having another kid is having another kid.“*
This is also the kind of change that is foisted upon you. You have no control. You must change or you will cease to be relevant or effective. Not surprisingly, my efforts to force radical change were not successful. I could be ignored, but you can’t pretend like an economic collapse or a fire that destroys your church building isn’t happening. You change or you die.
On the other hand, there is incremental change. This is the kind of change where the differences between what we did yesterday and what we will do tomorrow are significant enough to be meaningful, but they somehow “make sense.”
When I first arrived at the church I previously served I made a few significant changes to the order of worship. I moved this here and that there, and I extended the “Children’s Time” to a full blown 10-15 minute liturgy that became a congregation wide favorite part of the service.
These were changes I could, and did, introduce. I didn’t ask. I just did. The key was that those changes, in some way, made sense. The congregation had a frame of reference for what was happening. They didn’t know why I moved the “Welcome and Announcements” from the top of the service to after the Confession, Assurance, and Passing of the Peace, but they were able to make it work because the pieces and parts somewhat resembled what they had known.
Too often, we (I know this is true for me) want the radical change. We want it to happen now. We want things to be different now. But all too often we sacrifice what is possible in our pursuit of what is radical.
Steven Johnson calls pursuing incremental change seeking out “the adjacent possible.” His contention is that all innovation is “the story of a gradual but relentless probing” of what could come next given the pieces and parts at our disposal. “Evolution advances,” he says in Where Good Ideas Come From, “by taking available resources and cobbling them together to create new uses.”
I take heart at this. You or I don’t have to come up with a completely unthought of idea in order for things to move forward. All we have to do is take a look at what we’ve got available to us and ask, “What could we do with this stuff?”
*Yes, four sons. Comedian Jim Gaffigan recently tweeted, “Do you want to know what it’s like to have a 4th child? Imagine you’re drowning and someone hands you a 4th child.” Too true. Too. True.
landon whitsitt 
You articulate the different kind of changes well. I too, like to change things, but I am also a contrarian (as you have no doubt figured out), so here is my observation:
Incremental change works better, but is generally fairly slow. I would argue that culture and society is not changing at an incremental pace, and so if the/a church wants to catch up, keep up, or God forbid, get ahead then radical change has to happen much more often.
Also, I’d be interested in hearing more from you about your full-blown Children’s time.
Semantically, “incremental” does not necessarily mean “slow.”
But, if I’m catching your intent, you and I do agree with the idea that the iterations of change need to be rapid. What I am cautioning against is jumping too far ahead.
Johnson talks about the Difference Engine and the Analytical Engine. You’ll have to read the book for the fuller explanation, but his point is that the Difference Engine made sense given the tech and culture of the time. The Analytical Engine did not. It was a steampunk computer, and did not compute (pun intended :)).
As for Children’s Time: Young Children in Worship by Berryman was the resource we based it on.
Rapid incremental iterations of change (aka RIICs). That makes sense.
I’m going to take the opportunity to butt-in here to give you a little more information about the children’s time (since I most often lead it). I followed the example that we saw at our church in Louisville, and essentially we were paring down Godly Play for the children’s time. I hope you’re familiar with Godly Play – Landon referenced Jerome Berryman’s first book, but I like the stories better from the actual curriculum. Anyway, we would open in song, have a story which was usually one of the stories from the lectionary text for the day (told most often with simple wooden figures), wonder about the story, light a candle to remind us that God is with us, pass it around (praying), and then close in song. It was a ritual, and children (and adults) loved it. I miss it terribly. There you go – just in case you were really interested. 🙂 Oh yeah, I’m Landon’s wife, by the way. Nice to meet you.
That’s wonderful. I like it a lot. And it’s very nice to meet you as well. 🙂
In re-reading my comment, I am reminded that I often, use a lot of commas, at many times, incorrectly so.
I like to think that I write, like Shatner talks.
(you can have your comments back now)
awesome.
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