Reading the Resistance - Christianity Today

Everyone agreed it would increase the impact of our choir in our “best of blend” approach to Sunday morning worship. The choir would be more involved as worship leaders. They would lead congregational singing as well as sing anthems.

To accomplish this, we started doing things we’d never done. We required auditions to discern both the spirit and the talent of choir members. Rehearsals were extended to include time for worship and small group prayer. The workload increased.

The vision was great, but when the changes started so did the resistance. Several long-term choir members dropped out; in one section it was near mutiny. Others pointed fingers at certain staff members, accusing them of exerting excessive power. Some painted it as a philosophical shift: “We’re becoming just like the Saturday night service.” It was painful to hear our choir’s contribution to greater depth in worship dismissed as, “They’re just doing ‘doo-wops’ for the worship team.”

Everyone had said the vision was great, but now …

I was getting another lesson in reading the resistance.

Sometimes it’s just a phase

Change is the price of vision, and with change comes resistance. If there is no resistance, there has been no change; we’ve simply gotten around to doing what others were expecting to take place. The greater the change, the greater the resistance. In the words of one of my mentors, Dick Zalack, “People prefer the painful known to the uncertain better.” Casting a vision involves that “uncertain better” that simultaneously stretches faith and invites resistance.

There are four stages to most transitions:

Denial, holding on to the illusion that nothing will change and the pressures to do so will go away.
Resistance. Far more painful than denial, it interrupts sleep, makes us angry, tempts us to withdraw. Many retreat back into denial, and many churches and leaders bounce back and forth between resistance and denial for years.
Exploration of options for our future.
Commitment to pursue that future.

Interestingly, we tend to justify our own resistance while judging the resistance of others. I’ve even found myself impatient with others in the very area where I was initially resistant myself. Once we overcome our internal resistance, we expect others to do the same but in a much shorter time frame.

I saw this recently while attempting to implement changes in our staff functions. For years I’d resisted too many meetings among our staff as a waste of time. This left us operating as loosely affiliated entrepreneurs rather than as a team.

Once I recognized the value of meetings in creating a sense of team, I was impatient with others who demonstrated the very resistance to meetings that I had instilled in our organizational culture. I created resistance, then later was frustrated by it.

If resistance is simply a stage of transition, give people time and encouragement. The resistance will subside if it’s just a phase. But it may be much more than that.

Sometimes it’s spiritual

Understanding why everybody’s anxious and nobody’s doing what you had hoped takes discernment. With time and prayer, trace the resistance to its source.

1. Resistance may signal redirection from God. As a river’s flow changes due to the presence of an obstacle, so a God-placed obstacle may cause our energy to flow in another direction.

When our church relocated to our present site, we anticipated moving from multi-purpose space to a new worship center within a few years. Initial plans for funding the worship center were met with resistance, while the pressing need for added children’s ministry space was apparent to nearly everyone. We delayed construction of the worship center, added more worship services to the schedule, and were able to pay cash for the new children’s wing. Then we were in position to build the worship center.

When circumstances beyond the leader’s control force change, ask if God is at work. A good indicator is when the congregation sees an alternative direction and most everyone agrees. If this is the case, pray about it and prepare to change direction.

2. Resistance can be a call to humility. This source of resistance merits special attention, mainly because it is so prevalent.

God resists the proud (James 4:6), but pride may be subtly disguised as feeling left out or unappreciated. Those with the greatest investment in the old way of doing things are often the most resistant to the new way of doing things.

I offer myself as an example. I like to view myself as a flexible person. However, when our competent lay ministry team recommended we change our spiritual gifts training materials, I balked. I had created those lessons. I didn’t see the need for change, and besides, I said to myself, they didn’t fully appreciate the strengths of my approach.

Their tactful persistence won me over to the conclusion others had reached long before.

If pride is the root, humble yourself, before God humbles you!

3. Resistance may reveal the need to alter something within us rather than around us. It can point to an area of growth necessary in the life of the one incarnating the vision.

Recently we made some changes in our staff structure. Some of the resistance was my own, especially since it uncovered changes I needed to make in my life. Some of our staff difficulty was not a reflection of our organizational chart, but deficits in my leadership skill. So realigning our staff led to a list of skill-development areas for myself.

If this is the case, make changes in yourself. This requires courage, because resistance is strongest in my life when external uncertainty confronts internal insecurity.

4. Resistance can be a visible sign of spiritual warfare. Some mistakenly view all resistance to their ideas as an attack of the enemy, overspiritualizing the dynamics of change. Others downplay the reality that a God-given vision will result in spiritual opposition. The truth lies between. Two signals of spiritual warfare are circumstances beyond our control and disunity.

We recently broke ground on a new student center. While the congregation strongly supported the vision for reaching middle-schoolers and high-schoolers, there was dissension even among our leaders regarding our approach to raising the necessary dollars. Many of us came to believe this disunity was part of Satan’s strategy to derail this ministry initiative. Knowing unity was the desire of Christ for His followers, we prayed and discussed until a spirit of unity was reached. We agreed on the vision, although we did not have complete unanimity on the details.

If spiritual warfare is suspected, this calls for prayer. Persistent prayer will dispel the fears and amplify the faith of the congregation.

5. Resistance may indicate a need for balance. This occurs when one part of the vision is well developed while another is underdeveloped. Impact on one segment of the congregation may be clear while impact on another is overlooked. Balance may appear to be a question of age, interests, taste, or tenure. But legitimate balance issues are about ministry.

The source of resistance is often related to spiritual gifts. Our church board consists of people with various gifts. The gift of leadership is most predominant, however, and a direction rising from this gift sets our course. Sometimes a few on our board resist. It’s often the people who have the gift of mercy.

We’re learning the best response isn’t “Well, they don’t have the leadership gift; no wonder they don’t get it.” It’s better to ask “What can we learn from their gift of mercy that will make the vision clearer or the process kinder?”

If ministry balance is the issue, then rebalance. Test whether the opposition arises from people who have a common spiritual gift. If balance is the issue, then you’ll find that the change was prompted by leaders with a different (even opposite) gift.

Benefits of resistance

When working out at my athletic club, I overhear trainers telling their clients that resistance builds strength. They offer promises of greater muscle definition and strength as they pile on the weights. Their ability to handle additional resistance indicates progress.

For the church leader, progress requires honestly assessing the resistance to change.

Where the choir was concerned, I searched my own heart, and prayerfully determined that my motive—the deepening of our corporate worship—was right. The leaders of the change consistently humbled themselves before God and, from what I could see, were overcoming the pull of pride. Nor was it a balance issue, because other priorities were not suffering.

In the end we decided that two causes were at work, as is often the case. It was, in part, a phase. We raised our expectations several notches at one time, and we upset everybody’s routine. And there was certainly spiritual warfare involved, because deepening worship invites the presence of God and the interference of Satan. It was not God’s call for redirection, for the evidences of his blessing were clear even in the midst of the resistance.

The choir’s new role has now taken hold and is gaining momentum, and I’ve had another first-hand lesson in reading resistance.

When committed church leaders prayerfully seek God’s direction for the future, resistance often signals the need for perseverance. Its weight contributes to greater definition of the vision and greater determination among those who champion it. It’s a blessing in disguise.

Wayne Schmidt is pastor of Kentwood Community Church, 1200 60th Street, Kentwood MI