Change (what corporate America is wrestling with)

Many of you know that I work a full time job in addition to my part time church job (an oxymoron none the less). The company I work for is a technology company. We have to take classes occasionally like Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, and Diversity in the workplace, but recently they are mandating a class called New Reality.

Interestingly, the whole class, about three hours of instruction, is all on managing change.

Here's some interesting stats: In the 1950s an organization, on average, experienced one organizational change in a decade. Implication: You have 3-5 years to prepare for the change, and 3-5 years before the next one took place. In the 60s it became two organizational changes a decade. In the 70s three. In the 80s a change every 18 months. This significantly began to reduce the amount of time an organization had time to prepare for and recover from change. Currently an organization can be undergoing multiple changes at the same time.With every change there is a loss in productivity from the workforce. The organizations that can transition faster tend to be the most successful because they limit the amount of time their people stay in transition.

So, why am I bringing this up? It reinforces for me what Gene Appel said in my class about planning the transition being the oft overlooked, but most significant part of leading through change. I also bring it up because this movement to rapid rates of change in the workplace, translates to rapid changes in the culture.

Now I used to say that churches must remain aware of the direction of culture, and at one time this may have translated, for me, that the church would need to be able to change just as rapidly. While I still think that we need to be able to continually predict where culture is going, and even plan to head it off and redirect its path, I also think it is even more critical to supply the anchor of the unchanging message of the hope we have in Christ to the masses. We should be the beach to the the shipwrecked that offers stability when everything else around them seems to be changing by the moment. It's also why I see that the churches who will be available to provide a way to celebrate Sabbath regularly will have the most impact in the coming years. I sense a cry in the culture for rest, and there is no better rest than to unburden ourselves at the feet of Christ. Churches who begin to be sensitive to the need we have of exchanging yokes with Christ I believe will be the ones God grows in the next ten years.