I felt for my pastor and his team recently when at our church’s annual meeting, an elderly, founding member who attends our more traditional service (hymns, choir, etc.) got up and asked, “How on earth will our youth ever learn the great old hymns of the church if they aren’t in our worship services?” That’s only one example of how the issue of tradition vs. change plays out in believers’ worship experiences and expectations. How does a pastoral staff deal with the many likes and dislikes of its congregants?

As I recently struggled with my own feelings and thoughts on this, I identified 12 principles to help church leaders find and stay the right course for their churches. Most of the principles deal with how to handle or avoid change.

1. The history of the church matters. You ignore it at your own peril. You can overcome it, but the more engrained it is in people's minds, the greater the challenge of change.
2. The pastor’s personal comfort zone matters. Especially initially. You can overcome it, but it will take concentrated effort and will. You definitely need to know where you are leading the church and why, and be able to communicate the rationale often and effectively.
3. Realize you cannot keep everybody happy. Do what you need to do to keep the majority of your congregants on board and engaged, but realize that a number will leave – whether you change or not. Some will stay and give you ulcers. Some will stay and try to slowly win you over as God allows.
4. Your options are limited. They basically consist of the following: Stay as traditional as possible for as long as possible and fight change, innovation and creativity; bring about change and innovation, as you feel comfortable, at your speed; Embrace change quickly and openly across the board; or try to do both, perhaps through multiple services of different styles.
5. If you bring about change, you can lead, lag or lead/lag the community. You will either be a pioneer in most instances, or a “show me who else has done it successfully first” type of leader, or a good mix over time. There are pros and cons to the first two of these approaches. I believe there are times to lead the church world and times to follow.
6. If you stay traditional, you risk losing the youth of your church by making it difficult for parents to keep Johnny coming to services if he can’t get engaged in what’s going on. Ultimately, the church would shrink in size and perhaps die.
7. If you try to be both by having two different services each week, you risk informally splitting your church into two families, contemporary worship and traditional worship. There may arise dissension as to which group should have a particular time slot. You are also limited when it comes to asking one group to move to another so that more room can be made for newcomers in the more-popular time slot. Finally, because of the different styles of service, your teams have to work harder to learn two different formats (and they’ll clearly favor one over the other). Alternatively, you will need more team members.
8. Quality and excellence matter, regardless of approach. Most church congregants today have been exposed to what the world calls “professional quality” standards in just about everything they take in. People can accept a much wider scope of styles beyond their own preference range if what is being presented (in word, song and drama) is of the highest possible quality. In addition, our Father deserves excellence in all that we present Him.
9. Don’t forget the men. Men may not tell you, but most of them feel the church has become nothing more than a women’s club with some male executive officers. Recognize the absence of men in your congregation and then investigate the reasons behind it. A good place to begin is with David Murrow’s book, “Why Men Hate Going to Church.”
10. Rethink the purpose of worship. I believe God wants us to do at least three things during the course of our worship of Him: acknowledge His greatness, receive forgiveness of our sins, and celebrate both His grace and the coming of His Kingdom. Every one of these is cause to rejoice. We must focus then on celebratory music, major chords over minor chords, wherever possible. We need to be sending our people into the world rejoicing and feeling confident about the God they serve and the power He has given them to live life to the fullest.
11. Do whatever you have to in order to teach your congregants to pray. Make your church a house of prayer. Dynamic and effective programs are fine, but they will fail without prayer. More people sitting in the pews are great, but they will not be able to weather the storms of life without prayer. Your talented staff members are wonderful, but they won’t succeed or be blessed without prayer. You may be a terrific leader, but you’ll fail without prayer. Prayer is not an option whether you’re a traditionalist or a change-agent.
12. Finally, remember what the church is all about. Bruce F. Hunt, a missionary to Korea for nearly half a century, proposed two ideas in this area:

• The work of the church is missions. The Great Commission was given to the Church. Missions is the great reason for the Church’s existence, its great work. It is through missions that the Church glorifies God.
• Missions is indeed the work of the Church as a whole, not just a private matter for an individual. We need to get our entire churches involved in missions. Scripture supports the idea that churches choose and put forth the witnesses that Christ wants, hear reports of their work, keep in contact, strengthen them, separate some for special work and send them out.

On the same Sunday that our church’s annual business meeting took place, approximately 60 of our youth were on a retreat. The rest had held their own youth service in the morning as they do every week. Another mother – this one younger – expressed her concern that our young people be prepared by our church to face the world and keep their faith in Christ as they head off to college, rather than focusing on learning the old hymns their grandparents may have learned. Undoubtedly, most church bodies have – among their various members – many different views of what’s important. It takes the leading of the Holy Spirit, sought by the church leaders, to discern how a particular church should function.

No matter what your church’s approach, the aforementioned principles will help you, with God’s guidance, to improve your staying power as a church that has kept the faith, held watch, overcome the enemy and helped Christ build His Body.

Ken Godevenos has served on and chaired several church boards. He is a human resources and church consultant, a mediator and executive director at SCA International (www.scainternational.org). Call 905.853.6228 or e-mail Ken at kgod@accordconsulting.com. Visit www.accordconsulting.com for more information.