Reflections on My First Week at Fuller

I decided to start this blog only after completing my first week at Fuller. I now know that I need a place to organize my thoughts about all I'm learning and thinking through.

Monday, February 13, was largely a day of introducing us to the Missional Leadership program and laying out the plan for the next four years. In year one we will try to understand ourselves with regard to our readiness for missional leadership. Year two focuses on our church's readiness for missional change, year three helps us identify specific challenges in our local context, and in year four we create a research project that will help facilitate missional change within the congregation.

On Tuesday and Wednesday Dr. Mark Lau Branson taught us about the Appreciative Inquiry (AI) process. This is a research method that seeks assessment and positive change within an organization, primarily through  questioning members of an organization and summarizing their responses. While most assessment processes focus on defining weaknesses and solving problems (i.e. SWOT -- Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats), AI focuses on the best values and practices of an organization and dreams how these can be carried forward and re-imagined into the future. AI assumes organizations are living organisms that have a life and spirit of their own, that they cannot be reduced to isolated components, and that the collective imagination of a group will lead them to places they could not have gone on their own. When applying this process to a congregation it becomes much more than a five year strategic plan; it becomes a way of hearing the Spirit for ongoing assessment, celebration and change.

On Thursday and Friday Dr. Alan Roxburgh led an in depth discussion on leadership and historical cultural change. According to Ronald Heifitz (lecturer at Harvard University and son of famed violinist Jascha Heifitz), there are two types of change leadership will attempt: technical and adaptive. Technical change refers to the way leaders try to create change through quick fixes, problem solving, consulting experts, applying models, etc. Examples of this include diet book fads (there has always been a diet book on the New York Times bestseller list, but there is an obesity crisis in America), developing five year strategic plans, and attending trendy seminars that teach how to grow the church. Adaptive change assumes that change can only come through internal means: understanding the history and culture of a system, assessment of context, and the creative imagination of a congregation's leadership.

We also discussed "social imaginaries" -- the paradigms that shape cultures and systems. Roxburgh presented a quick survey of 300 years of history, the modern age, and how that paradigm has shaped the contemporary church. It is important to understand that we now live in a post-Constantinian, post-Christendom, postmodern world with a new paradigm, yet the church still functions with an old social imaginary. We live in a period of liminality, a period between the old modern worldview and a new paradigm that is in process. Can we understand the new social imaginary? Not fully because we are living in a time of transition that could last many generations. Those who lived through the Reformation and Enlightenment did not have the ability to understand their rapid cultural shifts. Only those of us who stand on this side of that paradigmatic change can bring some definition to it. In general, the core values of a modern world were control, management and predictability. In the new world those qualities mean very little.

It was a quick week of long and engaging discussions. I value the time greatly and look forward to another five days with gifted professors and dedicated pastors.

Comments

[Linda]

We are discovering at our church plant just how hard adaptive leadership is! It takes a collaborative effort rather than relying on one monolithic person at the wheel to turn the ship. (Gee whiz! It takes so much thought and effort!) After only one year of existence, we have discovered that on-going evaluation and planning is essential to a congregation and mission field that changes rather rapidly. I wish I could be a fly on the wall in your classes and listen to how it ought to be done. Our leadership families are all dipping oars in and trying to make sure that we're rowing in the right direction. Time will tell...

[terrytimm]

what an incredible season and opportunity for you, tim. i am so jealous. question- can you reccommend something on the AI process; would love to learn more about it.

tt