Brubaker, David. Promise and Peril: Understanding and Managing Change and Conflict in Congregations. The Alban Institute, 2009. ISBN: 978-1-56699-382-1.
Meet the Author
Since 2004, David Brubaker has served as Associate Professor of Organizational Studies at the Center for Justice and Peacebuilding at Eastern Mennonite University. Brubaker is a member of the Alban Institute and has 20 years of experience in workplace mediation, training and organizational and congregational consulting. For more information, visit his faculty page.
Book Basics
The research was originally conducted for his doctoral dissertation and has been utilized in this book primarily to “provide insights and tools for congregational leaders, both lay and clergy, to be more effective change agents and conflict managers” (p.4). The research involved 100 congregations with similar church polity and geography. Brubaker devotes a chapter to each of the two congregational changes with the highest correlation to conflict: changes to decision-making structure and adding or deleting a worship service. His research also refuted anecdotal evidence that building campaigns or changes in size are causes of conflict.
Brubaker’s four conclusions:
- Change is inevitable in religious congregations, and conflict virtually so.
- What congregations say they fight about (the identified issue) may be less significant than the underlying organizational factors (the systemic issues).
- Knowing that conflict correlates with structural, cultural and leadership changes is of value for leaders, not so that they can avoid making such changes but so that they can prepare for the resistance and conflict that is likely to result.
- Effective congregational leaders will use the tools of their own tradition – including Scripture and ritual – to facilitate the change process (p.120-121).
So What?
“Where there is change, there is conflict may be too simple a description. Where there are insufficiently planned changes to the core meaning-making functions and power relationships of the congregation, there is likely to be conflict may be a less memorable phrase. It seems, however, to be a more accurate conclusion” (p. 110).
“The key issue to successful change efforts may be the quality of the change management process” (p. 119).
- How effective are you as a change management leader? How do you build a team that partners with you in that process and how do you select the appropriate members for that team?
- Do you ever fail to move forward with a needed change because of the presumed resistance and conflict that may result? How can you create a healthy evaluative structure that will lessen the likelihood of this type of decision making paralysis?
- Have you ever led a congregation through a change in decision-making structure or the addition or deletion of a worship service? If so, what did you learn from that process?