“That’s not how we’ve done it in the past,” a church member retorted when asked to participate in a new ministry program. “We can just do it like we’ve always done it.” This is an all too familiar response when it comes to church ministry. Change can be downright scary. I myself am a type-A, high- strung personality and like to have everything planned out when it comes to something new. However, I also know that any ministry needs to embrace change in order to adapt to the changing needs of the people they strive to serve.
Change is inevitable. Nothing stays the same forever. As cultures change, churches change, too. Instead of fearing it, churches would benefit from creating strategies to deal with the change effectively so ministries don’t just survive, but also thrive.
In the book Who Moved My Cheese? Author Spencer Johnson lists four different types of ways of dealing with change. The cheese, their source of food, has been moved to a different location. The four mice: Sniff, Scurry, Hem and Haw, have to deal with how they choose to find this new location. Each mouse deals with the change differently.  Sniff detects change early and adjusts his life around the impending change. Scurry, upon discovering change, plans and prepares for it. He may not know change is coming, but when he does, he embraces it and tries to find alternative ways to find the cheese. As he waits, he wastes away, missing out on the place of solace change might have brought him. Haw at first stays with Hem and also complains about the cheese being moved to another location. Once he begins to feel the ill effects of not having cheese (his rumbling stomach and weakening frame) he decides to go looking for the cheese. Once he successfully finds it, he basks in the realization that change is not as bad as he once thought. 1
How do you deal with change? Do you embrace it, or do you fear it, dragging your heels at the very thought of it? Change can benefit all involved if leaders embrace it and plan for it instead of running from it.
The idea of change makes me shudder. If it is not broken, don’t fix it, right? Yet change is necessary. It prevents a ministry’s direction from becoming stagnant. It allows growth and freedom.  When you look at your ministry as a whole, change can be a great benefit. Churches have to learn to deal with change if they want to move forward with their vision. Some churches may fear change, yet if the dynamics of ministry don’t change to suit members’ needs and new members don’t get connected, a once growing ministry will die.
If you have someone in your church on the cusp of change, here are five ways you can deal with it effectively:
Create a clear vision- it is not enough to know how a ministry will function now, but what does the leader want the ministry to accomplish in one year? Five years? Help  members see where the ministry is headed, so they can decide if it is still a viable ministry for them. The biggest companies today all have vision and mission statements. If a church is poised for numeric growth, it has an overall vision and specific steps as to how to get there. If you don’t know what that vision and mission is, ask the pastor or a member of the staff. Equipped with that information, reframe your ministry as to how it fits under the umbrella of your church ‘s mission and vision. This will achieve unity and give it a unique purpose within the church as a whole rather than a side ministry irrelevant to the church’s function.
Create a plan together- Instead of leaving your church member with no direction help her mark out a clear plan of what the future of the new ministry will look like. Get important ministry heads together, and brainstorm ways to change that will preserve the goals of the old ministry but run it in a way that will reach the most people at one time. Get out a whiteboard and first identify the purpose and goal of the ministry. Then talk about ways that ministry seeks to meet the needs of its participants. Sometimes it means the format (or how that ministry operates) needs to change. In other cases, it may need to be scrapped altogether. This will take courage to scrap unnecessary ministries, but in the end, like a gardener prunes dead branches, this will leave room for the live branches to flourish. This will help her know how to move the ministry forwards, not backwards.
Help them process loss- Behind a member’s fear of change is fear that they will have nothing to offer the new ministry. Furthermore, a ministry head may fear not having a place to be needed even more. This fear, if not held accountable, may cause grumbling and gossip that when sown into listening ears, leads to dissension. Nip fear in the bud as soon as you can. Have a frank conversation with ministry heads whose ministries are no longer effective. Help them process their grief.  Encourage them to redefine their role as a leader and help her discover how their unique gifts will enhance the ministry as a whole. Encourage them by letting them know that you appreciate their work up until this point. Help them redirect their focus in a positive way, not criticizing the ministry’s ineffectiveness, but use it as an opportunity to reach a new generation of church members. Remind them that their work helps to bring forth God’s kingdom here on earth.
Reproduce new leaders- Jesus began his ministry training leaders. He pinpointed the twelve disciples as those whom he could train and show them how to accomplish his Father’s work, hoping they would eventually replicate other leaders themselves. Help him/her to identify someone within the ministry as a potential new leader. Encourage her to mentor the other person and train them into helping them lead the ministry in the event of illness or unexpected absence. Mentorship may take on several forms, based on schedules and the amount of free time available. Encourage mentors and mentees to remain consistent, meeting regularly. Purchase a book that will help equip mentees to lead ministries. Have each person work how the frequency and duration of mentorship. Help him/her utilize his/her gift of leadership to create more leaders. It will not only benefit the other ministries, but the church as a whole.
Celebrate the unveiling- Communication is imperative at this point. Church members who fear change may be wondering what is happening. To help them ease into a new transition, have elders or other established leaders communicate changes at vital points throughout the transition. Encourage them to communicate it in a positive way so people are not conditioned to fear change. Help them to be an advocate for change, rather than someone who rallies members to buck against change. Once a new vision and mission are established, celebrate it. Put in on bulletins and other banners as a way for people to memorize the new vision and mission. Challenge them to pass out business cards and other advertisements to people in their community so everyone can be on board with it. This will create an overall sentiment of excitement and possibility of people coming to faith because everyone is in agreement about the church, where it is headed and where it is going.
Change is inevitable. We can choose to have a wrong perspective and ignore or fear it. But with the right perspective, change can enhance your relationship with God and allow your ministry to flourish.
 
 
 


1 Spencer Johnson, Who Moved My Cheese? (New York:  G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1998). 

Two Publishers. five attempts and many tears later, my new book  This is Really Us: What the Hit TV Show Teaches Us about Faith, Hope and Life  is available! This book highlights the Christian parallels between the themes and character of the hit TV show This is Us teaches Christians how to view and interact with the bible and pop culture. I have ten copies coming to my home. If you would like to purchase a copy, please let me know and I will reserve a copy for you. I should have them the week of October 22.
 This book, among many things recently, have been a lesson in perseverance. No matter what I did to get this book to upload, I was blocked. I can't tell you how many times I wanted to quit! But perhaps I am to share this to encourage someone today to not give up on something the Lord is calling you to do. Through this experience, I learned two important lessons:
1) Anything worth doing will be painful- It's not always easy to see at the time, but looking back I know I will have done the right thing by not giving up when times got tough. And the joy of knowing the lives I may touch through this work-- that makes it all worth it.
2) Where God is, Satan is not far behind- Recently I watched a movie called The Finger of God. In it, a group of Christians set out to demonstrate the Holy Spirit around the world by healing the sick, driving out demons, etc. In one scene, the group felt the impression to go into the streets of California to find a man named Mike. Once they found him, they learned Mike was a recovering drug addict who was having severe back pain and had recently lost a loved one. After praying for healing, another man emerged from the group. Clearly tormented by a demon, they prayed for that demon to leave. However, the man asked them to stop because the physical and emotional pain he experienced was too cumbersome for him. As we do God's work, Satan will be lurking, waiting to steal, kill and destroy. We are called to do God's work, but Satan will do whatever he can to thwart God's plan.
The link to the book is here:
https://www.amazon.com/This-Really-Us-TEACHES-ABOUT/dp/0692189874/ref=sr_1_12?ie=UTF8&qid=1539094125&sr=8-12&keywords=michelle+lazurek

However, if you can buy it directly from me, please do so. Amazon's new deals with third party sellers means much less royalties for the author.

Thank you for your support!

I am about one week away from releasing my book This Is Really Us: What the Hit TV Show Teaches Us About Faith, Hope and Life. In this book, I compare the themes and characters of the show to that of biblical people and themes. Because of this, I want people to see the Bible in a new way and be able to apply it to their lives-- including their TV sets. It will be released on Amazon in print form, but you can also put it in an order in the store section of this website. Wish me luck!

 
On March 27th, ABC changed television again with its premiere of the Roseanne reboot. Filled with laughs and touching upon relevant cultural topics, the show opened to 18 million viewers, knocking the Big Bang theory and Young Sheldon out of their respective two spots as number one show and comedy.  Fans of the show (myself included) watched not only to laugh their cares away but also to see exactly what the Connor clan has been up to over the past twenty- five years. The Connors were the epitome of the working class family of the eighties and nineties and this reboot is no exception. Roseanne, now working as an Uber driver and Dan still taking contracts for drywall jobs still struggle to make ends meet, as Darlene tells David in one episode that they made “a decorating choice called poverty” after he comments her room is exactly the same way it was after all these years.
 
But their decorating choice isn’t the only thing that makes Roseanne both a comedy and tragedy. As I have tuned into my nostalgic side and re-watched the original Roseanne episodes, one of the pervasive themes of the show was that Dan and Roseanne wanted better for their children than they had. Married at eighteen, Dan and Roseanne struggled to put food on the table and the electricity going (although in one episode in an earlier season, they couldn’t quite make that happen.) The original Becky (played by Lecy Goranson) is depicted as a struggling widow waiting tables at an Italian restaurant (that looks eerily similar to the same place Roseanne and Jackie owned their restaurant the Lanford Lunch Box for several seasons.) In the first episode, Becky meets a woman (played by second Becky Sarah Chalke) who wants Becky to have her baby in exchange for $50,000, of which she eagerly accepts. When Dan and Roseanne refuse, Becky retorts that she doesn’t want to have to worry about money anymore and if she has this baby she can be worry free for quite some time. She has never moved on from Mark’s death (real life actor Glenn Quinn died in 2002) and she struggles to pay her rent and move on with her life, which was the same way we left her in 1998. Married at sixteen, Becky soon regrets that decision as she learns Darlene is going to college and has turned down a copywriting job making $30,000 a year, more than any Connor has ever made in his/her life.  When Becky lies about her age in the reboot, she quickly learns she has a slim to no chance of ever having a child, something she at one point put on hold to go to school. No children to speak of, a dead end job and barely making ends meet seems reminiscent of the same life she mocked her parents for in earlier seasons.
 
Similarly, Darlene has come home to take care of ailing Roseanne and Dan, which we quickly find out is a lie. Roseanne reveals that Darlene has lost her job, has no money and has moved back home from Chicago because she has no place to live and has a pending divorce from David looming over her head. Roseanne replies that Darlene is “her little loser” as she cries from embarrassment (a characteristic un common for Darlene’s previously quick witted, resilient character.) Darlene, who had shown promise despite being married to David after getting pregnant with Harris at nineteen, now proves yet again the struggle gene is genetic.
The only bright spot is previously weird kid DJ (played Michael Freshman). He, and his wife have both served in the military and have one daughter together (who ironically has little screen time in the first five episodes.) The same brother whom Becky and Darlene mocked for years as being someone who wouldn’t amount to anything because of his quirks has become the bright spot in the Connor family.
 
As much as I have laughed at the poignant and humorous jokes Roseanne provides, I can’t help but shed a tear or two. In a similar vein as the Gilmore girls reboot where the last four words Rory utters to her mom (“Mom, I’m pregnant!”) reveals in an instant all the fears Lorelai had that her daughter would turn out like her has come true, turning Rory into yet another statistic.  The Connors are not different, its children living out the same concerns Dan and Roseanne voiced over all those years.
 
As Dan said, “The classics really do hold up.” While this is true, it is also true that
history has indeed repeated itself for the Connor clan.  
 
 
MICHELLE S. LAZUREK is an award-winning author, speaker, pastor's wife and mother. Winner of the Golden Scroll Children's Book of the Year, the Enduring Light Silver Medal and the Maxwell Award, she is a member of the Christian Author's Network and the Advanced Writers and Speakers Association. She is also an associate literary agent with Wordwise Media Services. For more information, please visit her website at michellelazurek.com.