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One of the most difficult aspects of a change in leadership is changing the culture of that church, group, or organization. 

You can change the values, the mission statement, and the strategy. But those changes to values and strategy won’t matter if you don’t change the culture. 

Why?

Because whatever the culture is, that is what people do. 

Tod Bolsinger said, “Culture is the set of default behaviors and usually unexamined or unreflective practices that make up the organizational life and ethos of a company, organization, family or church. In short, organizational culture is the way we do things around here.” 

Organizational culture is the way we do things around here.
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To change culture, you must look at how things are done. How do decisions get made? Who needs to be in the room for those decisions to be made? Do decisions get made by a small group after the meeting?

You can have the most outward-oriented strategy as a church, but you won’t be effective if your behaviors don’t match that. 

Many new pastors come into a church and think that if they change the mission, vision, or strategy, they have changed the church. 

But the group will always default to culture. 

How does that culture get set?

Culture is rarely decided on. A meeting is held to work through vision, values, mission, and strategy. But a meeting is rarely held to decide culture. Culture simply happens. It happens through behaviors, policies, celebrations, and demotions. When you cheer someone on, culture is set. When you scold someone or redirect someone, culture is set. 

John Kotter said, “Organizational culture is usually set by the group’s founders and reinforced through success. When a value leads to a behavior resulting in a desired outcome, the values and behaviors become embedded in the group’s DNA.” 

Culture is reinforced through success.
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One important thing leaders need to do is listen to the stories people tell. You will find the culture and where things came from in those stories. 

To change a culture, you must connect that culture change to success. 

People will always default to what brought success in the past. If they see momentum from a ministry project or behavior, they will seek to replicate that. 

As you change culture, focus on new behaviors and do whatever you can to connect them to success. 

To change culture, focus on new behaviors and do whatever you can to connect them to success.
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Changing anything is a challenge.

Whether in your personal life, finances, marriage, work, or church. The reason isn’t that people hate change, even though that is what everyone thinks. On the contrary, as Ronald Heifetz says, “What people resist is not change per se, but loss. When change involves real or potential loss, people hold on to what they have and resist the change.”

What people resist is not change per se, but loss. When change involves real or potential loss, people hold on to what they have and resist the change. -Ronald Heifetz
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But when you lead change in a church, the challenges you are facing are obvious and not so obvious.

The first challenge is authority and influence. You can only accomplish something with authority and influence. When they begin to make changes, many pastors think they have authority and influence but may not have what they need.

This is important because you will need authority and influence to change anything. If you are new to your role or church, you must determine who has the most authority and influence. For my first two years at CCC, I only made changes by getting crucial people on board first because they had the relational equity I needed. According to the org chart, I have the authority to do things but need more influence to see them through.

How do you know who has authority and influence? Listen to whose name comes up often. Who do people seek out for advice and input? When you bring up ideas, does anyone say, “I wonder what _______ thinks?” As you sit in meetings, see who sways the room and who people wait to hear from. The person with the most authority and influence in a church is rarely the person with the title but who has built the relational capital over the years. This person can make or break change.

Do you have the authority and the influence to make the changes you want to make?
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The second challenge is tradition and how things have been done. Countless leaders can tell stories of new ideas that died on the vine of “That’s not how we do things around here.” Or, “We’ve never done it that way here.”

This doesn’t mean you don’t try something or do something, but you need to know what has been done and what hasn’t been done in the past. It is particularly important to know what has been attempted and has failed in the past at a church. Those have important lessons for you as you lead.

When you seek to change traditions or how things have been, you must do some groundwork to understand why something began and how effective that thing is, and also understand the sweat equity people have in a ministry or program.

To understand tradition, you need to look at who is involved, who has a passion for that ministry, and how much budget it receives. When you ask questions about a ministry or a way of doing something, listen to how people respond. When you ask why things began or have changed over the years, listen to any indication of people trying to change or take away a ministry or way of doing things.

Does this mean you should always keep something that falls into this category? No. But it does require care and influence, which will take time.

The third challenge is cultural. If you are new to the city your church is in, this is one of the hardest challenges. You don’t know what you don’t know about culture. I grew up in Pennsylvania, similar to New England but also different. Each state in New England has its flavor and way of doing things, which impacts how the church is done. The same is true in other parts of the country. And while some places are more transient, which lends itself to less tradition, there is still a culture there.

There is also church culture that you have to navigate. That culture has been built from Day 1 (even before) of your church. Was your church started as a plant or a split? What families built the church? How much power do they have? How has the conflict been handled over the years? How many transitions have there been in your church? Has your church experienced growth or decline in recent years? These things fit into the culture and “how things are done around here.”

Culture is simply what people do without being told. Culture can be shaped and changed, but that is a very intentional process that is a different blog post.

Culture is simply what people do without being told.
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For now, you must become a student of your culture. Over the last two years, I sought out staff members and leaders who have left our church to find out what happened and looked for commonalities (which there are). That’s culture. Watch how things get handled, how decisions are made, and how things happen. That’s culture.

Make no mistake; culture can work for or against you, so you must know how it plays out.

The fourth challenge is memory. This one is the least obvious because it is so personal.

Every person in your church has memories of your church, for good or bad. They can tell you stories of the church at its peak, when the building was full, when this program or that began, and the excitement of it.

Many pastors find themselves working against the memories of the past. Those memories are real but only sometimes accurate. While you will hear stories of how full the building was for that program, you will hear from someone else about how that program burned them out or made a different part of the church challenging. Memories and stories are personality and people-specific. They are also never as great or bad as people remember them. So, ask for stories, listen for commonalities, and talk to as many people as possible inside and outside the church to get as many details as possible. 

These stories will help you as you lead change because they help you understand your church’s story and your people’s experiences. 

When you arrive as a new pastor, you will feel the pressure of living up to people’s memories. This is hard, especially after COVID-19, because the reality is that those memories won’t easily be replicated.

The memories people carry from your church’s past are incredibly powerful and shape how they experience your current church.
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Is leading change difficult? Yes. 

Is leading change impossible? No. 

It will require a certain kind of leadership. 

To begin, lay out what will change and won’t change. This can begin just in your mind. Share it with trusted leaders, get feedback and help. 

A simple first step is laying out your top 3 priorities as you move forward. These are things that are ripe for change. Not everything is ripe for change. 

How do you know?

Here’s a simple question: If you don’t change anything about ____, will it matter in two years?

If you don’t change anything about ____, will it matter in two years?
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Not everything is worth changing now or maybe ever. This question will help you know where to begin, what to work on, and what to fight for. 

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Recently I read Build: An Unorthodox Guide to Making Things Worth Making by Tony Fadell. It’s part memoir, part leadership & organizational book. One that is worth picking up if you are a leader or a pastor. Many lessons are wrapped up in the story of his life and leadership. 

Here are a few that stood out to me:

Ten lessons from “Build: An Unorthodox Guide to Making Things Worth Making”
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The best way to find a job you’ll love and a career that will eventually make you successful is to follow what you’re naturally interested in, then take risks when choosing where to work. He spends a lot of time talking about how to get started in life and your career. He said all the stuff they don’t and can’t teach you in college – how to thrive in the workplace, create something unique, deal with managers, and eventually become one – it all slaps you in the face the second you step off campus. No matter how much you learn in school, you still need to get the equivalent of a Ph.D. in navigating the rest of the world and building something meaningful. You have to try and fail and learn by doing. He goes on. So when looking at the array of potential careers before you, the correct place to start is this: “What do I want to learn?”

When you’re in your thirties and forties, the window begins to close for most people. Your decisions can no longer be entirely your own. That’s okay, too – great even – but it’s different. The people who depend on you will shape and influence your choices. We know this as we age, but we take extra chances when we’re younger.

The way I made decisions in my 20s isn’t how I make decisions in my 40s because my life is different. I’m going after other goals, and different things matter to me. In my 20’s, I focused more on building my platform and career. In my 40’s, I’m more focused on my kids and the people they are becoming.

It is crucial as we age to evaluate how we make decisions, what drives us, and what our willingness to take risks is.

Customers need to see that your product solves a real problem they have today – not one they may have in some distant future. Pastors need to think about this more when they preach. What is the tension your sermon speaks to? This doesn’t mean that should drive your sermon, but can you articulate what problem your sermon will solve? Do you tell people what it will solve?

Meetings should be structured to get you and the team as much clarity as possible. We’ve all sat in meetings that accomplished very little, that wasted time, or left us confused. The whole section on meetings was an excellent reminder for me. Does everyone leave a meeting with as much clarity as possible? Asking, “Are we clear on everything, and who will do what?”

A great deal of management comes down to managing your fears and anxieties. The longer I lead, the more I see how my past affects me. Now, your past can be a great teacher to make sure that you choose the right path in the future. But, if you don’t deal with your past, it will have a way of rearing its head in your present and potentially harm your future.

Many pastors and leaders make decisions based on their fear and anxieties without realizing it.

A great deal of management comes down to managing your fears and anxieties.
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You must consistently check to see if you are acting out or making decisions out of your fears and anxieties. How much are they playing a role in your daily life?

You must pause and clearly articulate the “why” before convincing anyone to care about the “what.” Years ago, one of my jobs when I joined a team, was to find out the “why” behind what the church did. I spent months meeting with leaders, teams, and departments, asking, “why do you do what you do? Why did this ministry start? Why do we keep doing it?” Do you know what I found? Most people at that church could not articulate why they did what they did; they couldn’t articulate why they started something, only “what” they did.

What matters, it matters a lot. But, as Simon Sinek pointed out years ago, the why will always win the day, and you need to start there.

Many churches, teams, and companies can tell you what they do, but that isn’t as important as why you do something. Leaders must be clear and ensure their teams understand why they do something.

You cannot be afraid to disrupt the thing that made you successful in the first place. This is a hard lesson for leaders, no matter who they are. Especially if you created the thing that makes you successful, leaders must consistently ensure that what “got them there” doesn’t hold them back from what is next. This is why continuing to return to “why” you do something is so important.

If you have fifty people who understand your culture and add a hundred who don’t, you will lose that culture. It’s just math. The longer I lead anything, the more critical I see the culture of a church. The culture of the church decides what gets done and what is essential. Culture is how things happen. You can have the greatest strategy or ministry idea, but it will only be effective if your culture doesn’t fight against that.

The most important thing you have to pay attention to as a pastor.
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The CEO sets the tone for the company – every team looks to the CEO and the exec team to see what’s most critical and what they need to pay attention to. This took me too long to learn. I used to think that if I said the right things, people would know what to do, but I’ve learned that my actions tell people what matters. Does starting on time matter? What things do I check and double-check? What stats do I check? Those things tell my team and our church what matters most.

Then as you lead, “Your team amplifies your mood.” Your team takes what you think is essential and passes it on. If you want to change your church, you must decide what is critical and start paying attention to that and amplifying that. 

The lead pastor sets the tone for the church.
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What is the key to building a generous church culture?

Could it be:

• Telling a compelling story?
• Running a slick capital campaign?
• Sharing a recent testimony?
• Letting your church members know their gift matters?

What is the key to building a generous church culture?
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These tactics and more can motivate people in your church to give, and they may lead to a short-term boost in generosity. But any tactics you use will fail in the long run if you don’t build a culture of generosity to sustain them.  

There’s only one way you can build a generous church culture.

Zacchaeus, meet Jesus

Zacchaeus was a man of small stature (Luke 19:3), but he was also a man of great wealth (19:2).

He was despised by the people of his community. Not because he was a man of financial means, but because he presumably used his position as the chief tax collector in town to collect more money than he should have collected.

But Zacchaeus was transformed into a generous giver. He gave half of his possessions to the poor and paid back what he took from others fourfold (19:8).

How did this happen?

Jesus transformed Zacchaeus (19:3–6).

Jesus gave him a new life and a new heart (19:9–10). He led Zacchaeus to become a giver.

There’s an essential lesson in this story you need to grasp in order to unleash generosity in your church.

The foundation of generosity

The foundation of generosity is not built upon a solid campaign strategy or the pillars of the latest digital tactics. The foundation of a generous church culture is built upon leading the people in your church to Jesus.

I know this sounds trite, but hear me out.

Jesus is a giver.

He graciously gave his life for us so that we might live in him.

Like Zacchaeus, it’s when we come face-to-face with Jesus that we are transformed into generous people. This isn’t a superficial transformation or a one-time offering.

In Christ, our desire to give will in time overshadow our willingness to receive, the grasp on our belongings will become loosened, and we will be led to give joyfully from what we have.

If you want to build a generous church culture, then continue to preach the gospel and teach biblical stewardship.

Remind your church that Jesus has given them new life. Regularly let them know that Jesus paid the ultimate sacrifice so that they could be forgiven from their sins, receive his perfect righteousness, and become children of God.

In time, as you preach the gospel and lead people to meet Jesus, you will see your church members respond to his generosity by being generous themselves.

Over to you

It will certainly be helpful to provide your church community with online giving and mobile giving tools, as well as following the best practices for increasing giving in your congregation. But in the words of Chris Willard and Jim Sheppard, the authors of Contagious Generosity, “Well-executed tactics fail if there is no culture of generosity to support them.”

Before you rush to embrace the latest and greatest promotional tactic, take time to prayerfully reflect on the ministry in your church and whether you are regularly preaching the gospel and leading the people in your church to meet Jesus face-to-face—just like Zacchaeus.  

Here are three questions you can ask to help you think through your ministry:

1. How does Zaccchaeus’s story illustrate the importance of preaching the gospel?
2. In what ways does your church do a good job of leading people to a deeper connection with Jesus?
3. Where can your church improve in this area?

About the Author

Jesse Wisnewski is the senior content marketer at Tithe.ly. Jesse is also the founder of Stillhouse Marketing and the keeper of Copybot. He lives outside of Nashville, TN with his wife and five kids.

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What an organizational culture does to a church:

1. Culture shapes our lives and all our beliefs.
2. Culture is vital to effective ministry.
3. Our culture affects the way we conduct our ministries in the church.
4. Culture helps us understand better the different people we seek to reach for Christ.
5. Cultural understanding is essential to leaders if they are to lead their established churches well.
6. Cultural understanding is essential to leaders if they are to lead their planted churches well.
7. Culture may cannibalize strategic planning.
8. Understanding culture helps the church cope with changes in its external environment.

From Look Before You Lead: How to Discern & Shape Your Church Culture by Aubrey Malphurs.

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