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Archive for the ‘Navigate Cultural Change’ Category
Exploiting Opportunities
By: Jock Ficken
Opportunities abound for most of us, for most of our congregations. Seriously! But, most of us and most of our churches find it difficult to exploit those opportunities. A gap exists between what we say we value…and what we actually value! Leaders and churches oftentimes know it, believe it, but just don’t act on it. … Continue reading
Do You Ever Feel Like a Pretender?
By: Jock Ficken
I rode in the Batavia triathlon last month…sort of…unintentionally…for three miles. Unbeknownst to me, my 20-mile morning ride intersected with hundreds of triathletes! Cars were being waved through onto the same route as the riders. They shrugged. They smiled. They waved me onto the riding route, too. For those 3 miles I rode as fast … Continue reading
Courageous Decisions for Large-Scale Change
By: Jock Ficken
Large-scale change is all around us. Your congregation has decided to lean in to the change and adjust, adapt and improve without surrendering the ever-so-important essence of who you are. Or your congregation is dangerously flirting with the consequences. There are 3 types of decisions: Self-Serving Decision…for the sake of heritage or comfort Procrastinated Decision…for … Continue reading
Good Leaders Create Pain
By: Jock Ficken
Good leaders create pain for themselves and for those they lead from time to time. I was challenged a long time ago not to reduce my ministry leadership to the lowest common denominator where No one gets upset, It costs no one anything, Irrelevance and ineffectiveness get a passing grade. What a gift! It’s not … Continue reading
3 Questions that Could Change Your Ministry’s Future
By: Jock Ficken
Your church’s future depends largely on the people who are not yet a part of it. Many of us grew up learning to memorize answers to questions. Memorized answers to old questions are not serving churches particularly well today. Most of us never learned the art of asking good questions, let alone asking questions. Listening … Continue reading
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By: Jock Ficken
Sometimes leaders need to walk away. Protect their souls. Save their families. PLI invests deeply in leaders… Gaining clarity about who they are. Navigating change. Chaplaining loss. Discovering vision. Leveraging spiritual, relational, physical, emotional well being. These are fundamental building blocks! I’m a big believer in seeing churches that are languishing and have… lost their … Continue reading
Prompting a New Paradigm
By: Jock Ficken
The catalyst for these comments: Lunch with a midwest LCMS district president and with a visionary pastor intent on seeing bunches of congregations more vibrant or vibrant again. The president recited a fairly long list of congregations that will not be able to afford a full time pastor when the current one (maybe poorly paid … Continue reading
Moses For President
By: Jock Ficken
The current political landscape takes me back to a book I read a few years ago: The Culture Code: An Ingenious Way to Understand Why People Around the World Buy and Live as They Do by Clotaire Rapaille. I found it fascinating as the author unlocked and explained the cultural code behind various dynamics within … Continue reading
The Disappointment Gap…Don’t Be a Settler
By: Jock Ficken
The Disappointment Gap…Don’t Be a Settler “Don’t be a Settler” commercials have been funny and frequent of late. Settling: The “other way” of dealing with the Disappointment Gap. Settling: The Lowering of Future Expectations to Match Past Experience. The Disappointment Gap evaporates when we artificially lower Expectations to match our Experience. It’s like the Good … Continue reading
Venturing into the Muddled Middle Ground
By: Jock Ficken
Nestled stubbornly between necessary endings and the prospect of new beginnings is a muddled, clumsy, uncomfortable neutral zone. Theorists name it differently. It’s the middle ground where leaders navigate the closing of a season wrapped in its emotions and memories and unsettling disorientation along with the uncertainties and fears and anxieties of what comes next. If … Continue reading
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