Thought for the Day - Friday 15 October

Romans 12:2 (New Living Translation)

 

Don’t copy the behaviour and customs of this world, but let God transform you into a new person by changing the way you think. Then you will learn to know God’s will for you, which is good and pleasing and perfect.

 

During my working life, I was involved in trying to change things, to take existing processes and try to turn them into better processes.  Our approach was to work with frontline staff and give them a way of identifying what worked well and what didn’t work so well.  We would then try and come up with ideas to sort the broken elements of the process.  A lot has been written about ‘change’ over the years and a lot of consultants have made lots of money under the banner of ‘change agents’ and overcoming resistance to change.

 

My own general observations were that folks at the front line embraced the opportunity of changing the ways they worked because, if it improved the relationship between them and the people they dealt with on a day to day basis (customers, contractors, colleagues etc.), it made their lives easier and removed some of the hassle.  It was the supervisors and the middle and senior managers that resisted changing things because they did not want to implement something that wasn’t their idea and the very concept that someone junior to them could come up with a better way of doing things made them uncomfortable and maybe even feel vulnerable.  They would rather stick with the original process and by not changing, their staff was left disappointed and demotivated.  Rather than grab the opportunity to make things better for staff and customers, they would take the approach of: ‘if I allow this change, how is it going to make me look?’.

 

This was an example of leaders, managers, supervisors not being prepared to change the way they think.   They didn’t recognise process changes as a good thing, they thought of them as a threat.

 

The church in this country of ours faces many challenges faced with lack of ministers, declining attendances at morning worship, high maintenance costs of church buildings, lack of young folk, lack of volunteers to take leadership roles etc., etc.  Doing things the way we’ve always done them is an approach that is failing.  Today’s reading is so relevant in that church people, especially those in leadership positions need to take Paul’s words seriously and change the way they think in relation to the times in which we are living.

 

Prayers

 

Heavenly Father, we thank you for choosing us to be custodians of your church in this country.  It doesn’t seem we are doing such a good job at the moment so open our hearts and minds to your Holy Spirit and guide us to do what you would have us do to reverse the trends we are currently witnessing.  Help us to be better workers on your behalf and change the way we think so that the harvest of believers will increase in the coming years.   Amen.