Change and Loss

I had been called to the bedside of an elderly church member who was dying in a nursing home. The family was gathered in her room, talking in hushed voices, listening to her labored breathing and wondering when the end would come. The curtain separating her side of the room from that of her roommate was drawn, but that didn’t prevent us from hearing the following exchange:
Roommate: You know that pill I’m supposed to take at nine o’clock?
Aide: Yes.
Roommate: Well, I’m not going to take it.
All of us gathered on the other side of the curtain found ourselves smiling in spite of the seriousness of the situation. A woman with precious few opportunities to determine her own destiny had decided there was an act of rebellion she could take.
Last week I took an online class from Union Seminary/PSCE entitled “Strategic Leadership for a Change,” led by Ken McFayden and based on his book of the same name. You may be familiar with Ken, as he was for many years with the North Central Ministry Development Center in Minneapolis and has done presentations at Synod events during that time. The theme of both the book (which I recommend) and the class is pretty simple: we don’t fear change so much as we fear loss, and every change involves loss. Even the changes that we most desire and look forward mean that we are leaving something behind, something that we will need to grieve for.
Of course Ken’s presentation is primarily concerned with how change affects congregations, how they plan for or resist change, and how as pastors and CLPs we can lead congregations through change. I’ve done my share of grumbling about how congregations resist change, but this book helped me think about the changes in my own life, and the grieving I’ve had to do over the losses that came with those changes.
One of the problems with the book, and it’s probably unavoidable, is that it’s long on analysis on short on solutions. It’s not hard to make a list of losses for any congregation, even a growing one, but it’s hard to know how we can help congregations in their situations. How many times have congregations refused to take their “nine-o’clock pill” even though they might suspect it would do them some good? For that matter, how many times I have refused that “pill?”
Ken’s major contribution is not in a single solution but in pointing us in a helpful direction. Change means loss; loss means detachment; moving forward will mean, not re-attaching (as most of the literature suggests), but in attaching anew. The church we have known may be gone, but we can attach to the church that is coming into being. It doesn’t mean we won’t grieve; it means that, as the Apostle Paul says in a somewhat different context, we will not grieve as those who have no hope (1 Thessalonians 4:13). After all, it was never our church; it was always God’s church, and that is a word of supreme grace.