Being a change agent for those who are isolated

Bud Brown July 14, 2022

my saved content

VIEW AS
A PDF

iStock

When asked how his generation differed from others, the 17-year-old replied without hesitation. "People stay in more often. My generation has lost interest in socializing in person—they don't have physical get-togethers, they just text, and they can just stay at home." That is the reality out on the mission field, in your community. Smart phones, social media, online gaming, and video streaming services all move people into social isolation.

Pastors must become change agents because churches have lost contact with communities steeped in isolation and loneliness. Our churches sit in the midst of people clamoring for food, but we don't offer them bread.

People live in isolation

A deadly existential crisis has America trapped in loneliness, despair, and a disintegrating social order.

In the last six months, I've been in airports, bus stations, movie theaters, parks and monuments, and large public gathering places. I saw that people rarely spoke to those around them. I noted many who sought safe harbor in "the screen," walling off people sitting next to them.

As one pastor aptly put it, "We have crowded loneliness… We're around people, but no one is connected."

Your church is isolated

After decades as a church consultant, trainer, and coach, I am confident there's an 80 percent chance your church has cut itself off from the community. Most churches have an insider focus. Everything they do reinforces self-centeredness.

Congregations over twenty years old often find themselves in strange territory, if they bother to look. Their mission fields differ from when they were planted. The majority have lost sight of why they exist. They do not realize they are adrift.

Many churches openly resent changes in the community. They want the church to keep them safe "from those people." Rather than pray for and enter the mission field, they pray for themselves and avoid going out to represent Jesus to the world.

Community and culture are constantly changing, and the pace is speeding up. The church's mission requires that it adjust to those changes to speak to the unbelievers in terms they will understand.

Your church needs change

If you care about the Great Commission, if you care about those who are perishing without the gospel, if you care about being obedient to Jesus, then you must lead your church to change.

That's the job.

Maintaining the status quo is not obedience. Leading change—even at great personal cost—has always been the essence of pastoral ministry.

Solution

So where do you start? Perhaps a few suggestions will get your creative juices flowing.

• Voice the disconnect. Make it impossible for church members to look away from the problem.

• Acclimatize members to regular, incremental changes. Tinker with the order of service, platform furnishings, church literature, the color palette in the foyer. Amend the church constitution every year so they don't become stone tablets that changeth not.

• Connect your sermons to the mission and vision. Show them how the church serves an ever-changing community.

• Change the budget to defund items that do not provably serve the mission and vision.

• Teach people to limit their social media exposure and instead get out of the house to mingle.

• Hire a coach or mentor to help you lead change.

Conclusion

The first response of any human system, including churches, is to resist pressure and anxiety to maintain the status quo. From sweeping trouble under the rug to seeking the quick fix (which invariably creates the next problem you'll have to face), your church will go to great lengths, even denying reality, to maintain the status quo.

That's got to change.

Are you the pastor to lead that change?

my saved content

VIEW AS
A PDF

Bud Brown is an experienced ministry leader, writer and educator. He is co-founder of Turnaround Pastors and co-author of the ground-breaking Pastor Unique: Becoming A Turnaround Leader. He brings special expertise to change leadership in the local church, mentoring pastors to become revitalization leaders, training churches how to find and recruit the best talent, and training leadership teams how to achieve their shared goals. Learn More »

• A multicultural church avoids intracultural leadership (by Bob Whitesel)
• 5 church communication resolutions (by Mark MacDonald)
• Eight unforced errors churches make (by Thom Rainer)
• Do you speak ‘guest’? Learning to speak community lingo (by Mark MacDonald)

Free eBook

Steps to Launching Your Personal Workplace Ministry

Have you ever felt the pull to full-time ministry work as a missionary or pastor? If not, you can still make a Kingdom impact without quitting your current job. In this eBook, you will learn the four essentials that can change your perspective of work, your workplace, and most importantly, your heart.

Download Now