12 Nov You Will Be Opposed

Hans Finzel in the book The Top 10 Leadership Commandments says that it’s not if leaders will be opposed, but rather a question of when. While it would be great to simply lead and have others follow, that is hardly ever the case. It seems in our churches that people are resistant to change no matter what it is. Try to cut a program, people will complain. Try to add a service, people will complain. Try to paint a wall…and people will complain. As a pastor, sometimes we shy away from making changes just so that we don’t have to invest the emotional and mental energy into dealing with complaints. Come on, be honest, you know you’ve done that. Why can’t people just be happy and embrace some change every now and again? While it may seem that the majority of people are complainers, Hans breaks down people into three basic categories when it comes to them embracing change and allowing you as the pastor to lead. The first group of people are your visionaries. You can’t change things fast enough for them! They have new ideas and they love to embrace your leadership. This group of people typically makes up about 15% of your church. Yeah, I know you may be thinking yeah right, I got jipped in that department, however, just because you don’t hear them chanting your name in support doesn’t mean they are not there. The next group of people are the largest group. They’re the fence sitters. They don’t necessarily resist the leadership, but they don’t have the trust to just jump on board like the innovators do. These people like to observe the changes before they decide whether they like them or not. They are a little more skeptical, but with some convincing they will decide to hop off the fence and follow. This group is the majority and usually makes up about 70% of your church. But then come the last 15%. This group is a piece of work for lack of better words. They are the resisters, the ones we talked about earlier in this post. Doesn’t matter what you do, they are only happy if everything stays the same, and even then, sometimes they find something to complain about. At times, it certainly feels like this group makes up 90% of the church because they tend to be the most vocal. Because of this, we tend to only see them and forget about the other 85% of the church. But decisions can NEVER be made with the 15% of resistors in mind. If you allow this to happen, nothing will ever change or get done. You must remove yourself from their criticism and skepticism and think what is good for the whole. Chances are once the decision is made the resistors will complain through it until it becomes the norm, and then they won’t want that to change! Remember, your job is not to win a popularity contest.

For more on this, check out our summary on The Top Ten Leadership Commandments.