- In today's video, I wanna walk you
through a step-by-step process for influencing
and creating change in your church,
even if you're not the one in charge
making the final decisions and believe it or not,
this process was taught to me by a lead pastor.
So not only is it effective, but it's a recommended approach
that a lead pastor has signed off on.
You know, they get asked for things all the time,
told they should be doing things all the time,
so they know how they prefer to be approached.
And this is a process that they'll appreciate.
So, let's dive in.
(gentle music)
Well, hey, there, I'm Brady Shearer.
This is Pro Church Tools and we're here to help you
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And now, let's talk about how to create change
in your church when you're not in charge.
We'll begin with step number one.
And it doesn't really matter what you're asking
your senior leadership for here
or what you're trying to see changed.
You might want a piece of new gear.
You might want to launch a new ministry,
try something different in an existing ministry perhaps.
The process is the same for all of these,
but I do wanna give a specific example.
So for the sake of a placeholder here, and again,
this could be anything, in this video,
we're gonna suppose that you want your church
to buy a new camera, okay?
You can substitute whatever change you want to see,
but that's what we'll use for the sake
of example in this video.
And the key to phase one is to marry your request
to the vision of the church
as set forth by senior leadership.
Think about it this way, if you're a senior leader,
you have people coming to you all the time
with requests, right?
Can we do this?
Can we not do that?
Why do we keep doing this?
Very, very rarely though, are those gripes motivated
by the missional trajectory of the church.
They're almost always based instead on personal preference.
So, if you can marry your ideal change to the mission
of the church, you've already set yourself apart
and shown that you understand the big picture.
And importantly, if you are a younger leader in church,
like many of us are, this is gonna do wonders
for building trust with your senior leaders,
because you've demonstrated your ability
to articulate the vision.
So, here's how to actually do this.
You go to your senior leader and you say this, "Hey pastor,
I know your vision for our church is
to, insert your articulation of vision here,
and I have an idea for how we can propel that vision forward
in", and then you insert whatever ministry
or project you're interested in.
So to use our camera example, "Hey pastor,
I know your vision for our church is this
and I have an idea for how we can propel
that vision forward through video."
So that right there is the first step,
articulate the vision and marry it to your idea,
to the change that you wanna see.
Now comes step two.
After you've presented this idea to your senior leader,
tied to your church's vision and mission,
which should already have changed
how your pastor is seeing your request compared
to the many others that they hear,
we're actually gonna take it a step further because
at this point, what usually happens is a leader
or congregation member will they'll lobby an idea or request
for change to the senior leader
and then it becomes the responsibility of the senior leader.
They already have a lot on their plate
and we don't wanna make things more difficult for them.
And then selfishly, because they have a lot on their plate,
if we leave the ball in their court,
if it becomes their sole responsibility,
it's likely never gonna progress.
It'll just get tabled as a good idea,
but realistically, your senior leader just has too much
to tackle right now and your request is likely
to get pushed aside.
How do we avoid this?
That is what step two is for.
Here, you basically want to offer up a proof of concept
for your idea with the no time, creative energy
or monetary investment required on the part
of your senior leader.
So for our camera example, you started off by saying,
"Hey, I know our vision is this.
I have an idea for how we can propel
that vision forward through video.
If it's all right with you, I don't need any of your time,
I don't need any budget, but I wanna experiment
with some short form videos, basically reworking some
of the messages that you've preached in the last year.
You know, there's a big move
towards short form video content
across every major social platform right now,
YouTube, Instagram, Facebook, and it's all motivated
by the momentum that TikTok has right now.
Again, we don't need anything new to make this happen,
right this second, but I really think it aligns
with what we're trying to do as a church.
And I just wanted to get your okay first
and then I'll do a little experimenting
to see if my hunch is correct."
So you get the okay there, and now it's your job
to pull off a working version of your change or your project
without any investment from your senior leader.
So for our camera example,
that might mean borrowing a camera from a friend
or another church or pastor you know, for a day
or an afternoon, it might mean just using your phone
to make the first example videos.
But this is where you show off your resourcefulness
as a leader, making something out of mostly nothing.
I mean, that's what we do as church leaders most
of the time anyway, and the objective here for you is not
to execute on the project or the ideal change
in its full finished form, but you wanna do enough
to have something to show your senior leader
so they can immediately catch the vision
of what you trying to accomplish enough
that they're willing to invest in that change.
And then finally, step number three.
In our example, let's imagine we used our phone
and we whipped up a few short videos that align
with our church's mission and touch on a couple of ideas
or potential directions that we could take
if we started producing these videos consistently.
But you also know, man, it would be so much easier
if we just had this camera that you want, right?
So now, we go to our senior leader,
we remind them of the idea we first had.
We restate how it aligns with their mission and vision
for the church and then you show them
how you've created a working version of this, a demo,
an example of what this change could look like,
and you've done it all yourself.
You didn't require anything of them.
They're just sitting back and watching you
propel the mission forward, they love to see it.
And now, finally comes your proposal.
You're so far, you've basically done everything
without needing a commitment of any kind
from your senior leader, right?
Well now comes the ask, and the way to do this well,
the real secret here is not to present one proposal,
but to present three and to put the one you want
as the middle option, okay?
Here's what that looks like.
Let's say the camera that you want is a $2,000 camera.
That's gonna be our middle proposal,
the reasonable proposal, not extravagant,
but definitely an upgrade on what you currently have,
an investment on the part of the church to be sure.
And here, you've got to explain
why this upgrade is important and necessary.
That's what the proposal is for.
And then you wanna prep a lower proposal as well.
So, here you'll include a $500 camera or a $1,000 camera,
and then explain why despite those prices being
somewhat similar, there's a pretty big jump actually
in quality and capabilities from your lower proposal
to the middle proposal, and then anchor those claims
with the higher proposal.
Here you come in with a $5,000 camera.
You say something like, yeah, this camera is amazing
and maturely, it's my dream option.
But honestly, we can get most of what the camera can do
for our middle option, it was less than half the price.
And this is a really effective strategy.
It's called anchoring and to make this work,
when you present your proposals,
you wanna start with the most expensive
and you work your way down, that's crucial,
because basically, you're setting the expectation very high
at the start and then you ask
for something much lower than that expectation,
making your ask seem that much more reasonable.
Of course the key here is to do it honestly.
Don't put your dream most expensive option
as your middle proposal and find an even more expensive one
for your higher proposal, find a way to be economical
with your church's time, money, and creative resources,
while still proposing something that will work
for your idea or proposed change.
That's how it's done.
Like I said, we used the example of wanting a new piece
of gear in this video, but this process can work
for any kind of change you want to see in your church.
It doesn't need to be new gear.
It could be a change of service order on Sunday
or a new ministry idea.
The framework here is tremendously flexible,
tremendously effective.
There's one more important thing about this process
that I need to reiterate and that is,
when you follow this blueprint, as it's been laid out,
you're gonna build trust with your senior leaders
and you're gonna earn relational equity with them
because you're doing things the right way.
You know, change takes time.
And especially if you're newer at a church,
we can sometimes feel the rush
to wanna change a bunch of things all at once.
I'd advise against that, resist that feeling.
These kinds of things often take years, plural.
So work this process, build trust
and then when you come to ask for something
after following this blueprint a few times,
don't be surprised if your senior leader just says yes,
immediately without the need
to go through this entire process again,
because you've proven you understand the big picture
of the church, you have your own ideas and you're willing
to work for them and the senior leadership now, well,
they're that much more willing and ready to reciprocate.
That'll do it for this video.
Make sure again, to subscribe to the Pro Church Tools Show.
Our podcast, it's linked in the description.
If you want your question answered,
send us your question through text to 1-800-485-3139.
Thanks as always for your time, attention and trust.
We'll talk soon.
(uplifting music)