Mark Labberton:
I am very excited today to have on our programme people that I greatly regard who have done tremendously important work about what they call as the title of their newest book, Future-Focused Church. This is a book about leading through change, engaging the next generation, and building a more diverse tomorrow. It’s a great book, and it’s a part of, in a way, a series of books that have come out of the workings of both the Fuller Youth Institute and the TENx10 Collaborative.
The two guests that we have today, of the three writers, the two that will be on the programme are first Dr. Kara Powell, who is the Chief of Leadership Formation at Fuller Seminary, the executive director of the Fuller Youth Institute, and the founder of the TENx10 Collaboration. Secondly, we have today Ray Chang. Ray is the executive director of the TENx10 Collaboration, which is part of Fuller. A collaborative movement that is geared toward reaching 10 million young people over the next 10 years with the gospel. He’s also the president of the Asian-American Christian Collaborative, which seeks to see Asian American Christians in churches established in their spiritual and cultural heritage.
The third writer of this book is Jake Mulder. He’s not with us today, but was an important voice in putting this book all together. He serves at Fuller Seminary as the assistant Chief of Leadership Formation, and is the executive director of what we call Fuller Equip, which is a non-degree online Christian leadership training platform. He’s also the senior advisor to Fuller Youth Institute and the TENx10 Collaboration. It’s these three who have written this new book. And it’s two of those, Kara and Ray, who we welcome today. Kara and Ray, it’s therefore great to have you.
Kara Powell:
Well, it’s a pleasure and honour to be with you, Mark, and your audience.
Raymond Chang:
Yeah, it’s great to be with you, Mark.
Mark Labberton:
I have great admiration for both of you, and I think some of those who are going to be listeners are well acquainted with you. I’ve given some background about you, and there’s more in the show notes. But I’d love for each of you to just give us a little bit of your sense of background and how you came to this particular work that’s centred now in this book that we’re going to be talking about. Kara, why don’t you go first?
Kara Powell:
Great. I’d be happy to. Well, I feel like the first sentence out of my mouth should be that I love young people, and I feel like God’s called me to work with young people. I was a youth pastor. I was on Young Life student staff and just really I’m thrilled and feel called to see God transform young people, who in turn transform our world. So now I have the opportunity to do that as the executive director at the Fuller Youth Institute and the founder of TENx10 which I’ll let Ray tell you a little bit more about. And I also in the midst of focusing on young people therefore much, I like to say that young people are the tree trunk of my calling, but I certainly have other branches related to leadership development more broadly. Justice, women in leadership, etc.
And the good news is I have the opportunity to really experience those branches in another role I have at Fuller, which Mark you graciously invited me to take when you were the president, as the chief of leadership formation. So I oversee all of Fuller’s non-degree training. And whether it’s young people or other areas beyond young people, I’m just particularly passionate about seeing leaders flourish and move their communities forward. And that’s really the heart behind the Future Focused Church book that I know we’re going to have the opportunity to discuss today.
Mark Labberton:
Well, I’d like to congratulate myself on having you take that job, because it’s absolutely right that you should. So, Ray, tell us about your pathway.
Raymond Chang:
Yes, Mark, definitely congratulate yourself on that. And both of you’ll know how much I care about how the church reflects the fullness of God’s kingdom here on earth. And therefore I think therefore much of that was my heart for participating in this great book project, which Jake Mulder was the third author and really someone who helped shape therefore much of it. But all my life I’ve wanted to see the church be the church, and reflect the fullness of God’s glory and God’s love and compassion, and God’s goodness and righteousness in the world. And a part of that demands that we talk about the tangible ways in which we have to lead change. And therefore that was what really got me excited.
In my TENx10 role, we are focused on making faith matter more for 10 million young people over a course of 10 years. And one of the things that we see over and over again is how much young people are looking for the church to be the church. And how much intergenerational relationships can really either demonstrate how the church is the church, or lead people away from what the church ought to be, or how the church ought to reflect God’s kingdom. And therefore we want to see an entire church reflect and activated around intergenerational relationships, that’s radically focused on Jesus. And we want to see relational discipleship take place in a meaningful and substantial way. And our hope is that this book will serve in facilitation to that.
Mark Labberton:
Yeah. Well again, I just want to say Ray, what a great, great, great gift it is to Fuller and to the TENx10 project and to FYI, and to many other efforts that you’re involved in. And you together with Jake who rightly needs to be underscored. I could hear his voice frequently through the book and I’m just very, very grateful for the three of you and how this book has been a tremendous contribution. I think it really is a harvest of the fruit of work that has been going on for a long time and it therefore feels very rich, not a thin Christian book. It actually feels like it’s a very substantive way of coming at understanding and living into the life of the church and seeing churches develop and form and change in all kinds of different ways, which is what we’re going to jump into.
But before we do that, I want to ask a sort of broader framing question. The interesting thing about a book like this is that it assumes a somewhat responsibility and capacity for human beings, disciples, to be agents of change. We are not the ones who ultimately are either the author of the church nor the one who brings the church into its full maturity. Which I believe will not happen until eternity. But we are people who are given authority. Jesus says we’re given gifts. Paul will say we’re given a trajectory of showing the fruit of the spirit, which looks mostly like character in action.
And therefore how does human agency operate as you think? What’s your theory of change about the legitimate agency of the church? There’s a recent article in CT, Christianity Today, which underscores the way that in evangelicalism in particular, there’s this sense that the church and the Christian life is up and to the right. Everything is about a deliberate concern for growth and change, which is not true of some of the longest standing traditions. The Roman Catholic Church would probably not use that language to describe itself, nor would the Orthodox church, nor would necessarily all mainline churches. It would be more about being than being and doing.
But in this book and in evangelicalism, there is this tight connection between a belief that being and doing are tied together. I just want the listeners to hear you describe what is it that you think human agency can bring to something like the church? Which is you rightly underscore seems to be in such a problematic place. It’s more like the problem of human agency that we’re seeing rather than enough of the evidence of the goodness of human agency. So why don’t you jump in and Kara, do you want to start?
Kara Powell:
Sure. Mark, I feel like there are about five ways that I could dive into that question.
Mark Labberton:
Yes, yes.
Kara Powell:
So thank you for raising such an interesting and somewhat complex question. I think I’ll choose the thread of looking at the New Testament epistles. That came to mind as you were talking. Because to me they flesh out. I’ll focus on what you said about being in doing. Because what’s interesting is that in Paul’s epistles, the early chapters tend to focus on our sin and our salvation through Jesus. In other words, who we are. Ephesians 2, in verse 8, “We are saved by grace, therefore that none of us can boast.” It’s the later chapters that tend to focus on what we do, once we have a true grounding in who we are.
Just this morning, actually, I was praying for a situation, and I was praying through Ephesians, speaking of Ephesians. Ephesians 6, and the armor of God, etc. Just all the commands, the imperatives that are in the latter chapters of Paul’s epistles, with still threads of the being woven through those latter chapters. So to me, that’s the somewhat relationship between being and doing that does give us agency as people who have an incarnation, just as God worked through the incarnated Jesus, God works through us as incarnated people, people on real flesh. To me, that helps me hold together this desire to first be grounded in being. And I think that’s generally the right starting point. But then let that doing, that fruit, to use Galatians 5, another later chapter in Paul’s epistles, let that fruit come from what we’ve experienced in those earlier chapters.
Mark Labberton:
Thank you very much. Ray, what would you add?
Raymond Chang:
Yeah, without getting too much into the Calvinism versus Arminian debate, I think we see agency or human agency as a significant theme all throughout scripture. And it’s this invitation for us to partner with God in the work of God for the flourishing of all humanity and for the glory of God. And I think when we emphasize one too much, we lose the beauty of the other. But over and over from the beginning of Genesis, all the way to the end, you see this warm, beautiful, significant invitation from God to be partners. And a big part of partnering is to exercise our own agency.
It’s to take the gifts that God has given us, to take the call that God has placed on us. To take the reflections around our circumstances and the lessons that we’ve learned around our circumstances to shape not only the people that we are becoming or are called to become, through the work of the Holy Spirit, but also to shape the activities that we engage in. And therefore, I love Frederick Buechner’s quote about how our purpose is essentially the intersection of our deepest passions and the world’s greatest needs. And I think that’s in large part due to the things that surround us, the things that impact us, the things that have shaped us, the things that we’ve experienced.
And when it comes to your framing of being and doing, which I would also add knowing as a big part of that element. So it’s the knowing, being, and doing. We see how faith cultivates within us, a Godly character as well as a Godly call. But then it’s also to be paired with works, action, and activity. And I think at the intersection of that is agency. And therefore, agency is huge.
Mark Labberton:
Yes. Yes, yes, yes. And it’s problematic. I think one of the things I would just say as a parenthesis here is that one of the questions that I will have for God, perhaps someday by grace, is the opportunity to ask, why did God believe, therefore, much in our human freedom and agency? And why did He give us the degree and level of responsibility that it seems to me we’ve been given? I could quite happily have not had all of the freedom that I carry, that we as human beings carry. And I do think that the story in many, many ways of this book is really the story of what will Christian people in particular do with freedom in Christ’s name. In relationship to each other across generations and in relationship to the wider world. But that’s just simply some framing.
I thought that one of the strengths of the book, and there are therefore many, but I think one of the strengths of the book is a very simple paradigm that you use, which is, if you’re thinking about change, you start with wherever you are and you go to wherever you think you’re trying to reach. So in the book, in the simplest of terms, you simply designate these as the present and future. And you graphically and otherwise illustrate over and over again how the pathway is not straight, it’s circuitous, it’s full of surprises and cul-de-sacs and unexpectedness, and reversions and advances, and therefore forth.
So let’s just start here. You describe the here that’s the big here, the big here of Christianity in American culture right now, and the history of the church right now, which has been written about a lot. But I think it would be helpful. Ray, why don’t you give us a picture of here? Thinking of the TENx10 projects that you’re leading as well as this book, what is the here or the elements of here that is where we are now that you think is most important?
Raymond Chang:
And what a great question. I think that you’re asking a question at two levels. One is the ‘here’ at the macro scale, what are the environmental factors that are shaping the realities on the ground? And then, the ‘here’ is also the realities in a local faith community, or at a local church, or at a parish in a congregation. And sometimes, more often than not, there’s a lot of overlap, but then we don’t always see the overlap. And sometimes there’s divergence from those things depending on how insular or insulated a community is from the broader realities, or where they are geographically.
I think on a macro level, there is a church in the US that is relatively young, that is actively trying to define and redefine itself, especially within the evangelical world, about what faithfulness to Jesus looks like in very tumultuous and complex times. Sometimes those complexities, challenges, and problems were generated from outside the church, and other times they were generated by the church. And we are actively wrestling with what it means for us to be faithful unto Jesus, and to love our neighbours in the midst of all that.
For the ‘here’ at the local congregation, some of the macro realities shape the local realities. But we’re also asking questions around where we are now and why we are where we are. Which includes our physical location, our people, our culture, our current sense of life and vitality. The resources that we have at our disposal, the infrastructure, and then of course programmes and beyond. Our church history is about the here. And I think naming reality, therefore that we are sober-minded about what we are actually inheriting or operating from, is essential. Because without defining reality, we are essentially aiming in the dark.
Mark Labberton:
Right. Right. I’m taken by the helpfulness of this simple but rich definition of here, because therefore often we start… People experience this in churches all the time. It starts perhaps with a complaint about a certain programme, right? Why do I start there as a pastor?
Kara Powell:
I don’t know what you’re talking about, Mark.
Mark Labberton:
It just often heart starts with somebody saying, “I just don’t really like that we do…” Whatever it might be. So why don’t you each take us a little bit more into your own story? What was the here that shaped you as an early disciple? And then as you think about the here that you now hold in your life, you’re obviously mature people. You have incredible, rich experiences, you have a thickness of background that now means here is much more fully defined than it would’ve been, obviously, when you were growing up. But what was the church that you grew up in, and what would that here be like, as opposed to the here that you now think about when you think of church?
Raymond Chang:
Yeah, I think for me, I can’t uncouple my experience from growing up in the immigrant church context. Or seeing my parents essentially make tremendous sacrifices to carve out a life in the United States with language barriers, and experiencing discrimination, and trying to navigate systems that weren’t designed for them. Or my experience within predominantly white institutions. And all of the mission trips and the thought leadership that I consumed and the retreat highs that I experienced to the lock-ins, which are now apparently very troubling and problematic and questionable to-
Mark Labberton:
Just, even the language seems unbelievable.
Raymond Chang:
It is. We get locked in. To my experiences travelling the world and seeing the global church and the ways in which the church has very indigenous expressions as well as transnational expressions that were transferred from one place to another. And how everything came to be. And therefore, my here is a very complex here, and I think what we’re trying to do with the book is help people come to a simple understanding within a complex reality. And if I were to name my here now, and then here that we are actively trying to address, it’s the sense that there are a lot of young people who are disaffiliating from Christianity, who are disillusioned with the church. They were never churched to begin with because their parents never took them to church, and therefore on and on.
And we’re realising that we’re somewhat inheriting a generation that has maybe never seen the Bible or opened the Bible or heard anyone talk about the Bible, unless it was referenced in some sort of pop cultural expression. Where young people are hearing more bad news come out of the church than good news. And yet are still extremely hungry for genuine and authentic relationships. Where they are actively able to exercise their agency, pursue their passions, discover their purpose, find their identity, and experience belonging, as we know, therefore much of the Fuller Youth Institute talks about. As well as wanting something that’s real.
And I think that we know as Christians that there’s genuine hope and life in the Christian story, and in the gospel. And in not just the example, but in the power of Christ. But there seems to be a major gap between what one generation understands as the means to share the story or to invite people into a relationship, and what the younger generations are looking for, what actually works, and what doesn’t work. And some of the here is somewhat addressing that.
Mark Labberton:
Right. Kara, how would you describe your journey?
Kara Powell:
Yeah, thank you, Ray, for that thoughtful answer and for giving me a little bit of time to think, myself. And I think the image that I would like to use is at my home church growing up, I did grow up in… Well, I grew up in a home, but we went to church a lot. So I feel like I grew up in church. The teenagers, we sat in the front of the church, and our church really did elevate us. They prioritized us. We were involved in therefore many different things. And therefore that image of these teenagers being therefore central was a powerful part of my own here as a teenager.
And I think that’s what we’re trying to reclaim in future-focused church, is what does it look like to really prioritize the next generation? And one of the key actions that a church or a leader or an individual can take to understand here is to listen. And I know we might think we’re listening, but are we really listening to those we want to serve? And are we really listening to young people?
Our colleague at Fuller, Scott Cormode, the first day of class, whether he’s teaching online or teaching in person, he presents this powerful sentence that I love. And I think he’s a great leadership mantra, and that is that, “Leadership begins with listening.” And therefore Mark, you talked about how complaints often galvanize change. Part of what we’re encouraging leaders to do when they listen is to practise appreciative inquiry, and to listen for bright spots, not bare spots.
So there was a church here in southern California that wanted to do that, that wanted to understand when do young people feel the most central, the most honoured in their church? So I love what this church did. They actually asked young people that question. They had a couple of focus groups. And what the young people said was that teenagers said, “We love it when people show up to our events.” So the pastor and the elder who were doing these focus groups, it’s a church of about 300. They thought, well gosh, why don’t we create a Google Calendar, a Google Doc where we can input what we know about young people’s events therefore that youth ministry volunteers can show up more. That’s what young people have told us they’d like, we can do that.
So they made that Google Doc and that helped. There were four or five volunteers in the church and they started showing up more. That went therefore well actually that the elder and the deacon thought, “Well, what if we make this church wide?” And therefore now every Sunday morning in the worship service, this church shows a slide of young people’s activities in the next week or two. And any congregant can show up. And how honouring that is for the young people that adults are showing up, and every week they’re highlighted in the order of service.
And the friend who told me about this, he went to a 16-year-old soccer game recently that he found out about because of the slide and he knew her parents. So he’s sitting and talking to her parents. He looks down the sideline and there’s an 81-year-old from the church there to cheer her on to cheer on the soccer player. So I just love how that is listening to young people, and when they feel most at home, when they feel most central. And then asking a church, “Okay, we want that to be more part of our future, let’s make that more common.”
Mark Labberton:
Let me throw out a counterpoint to what you just said, or a wrinkle to what you just said.
Kara Powell:
Love it.
Mark Labberton:
I remember years ago, digital photography was just beginning to be introduced. And there was a camera company that was advertising on television, their particular camera. And this commercial had a man shooting a photograph of a woman across the street. And she saw that he was taking her picture and sort of beckoned him over. So you thought this was like going to be a connection between the two of them, right? But what happened was that when he got over there, she actually took the camera out of his hand, then she laid across the hood of a car and took pictures of herself. Now, I shared this story because it happened before the phenomenon-
Kara Powell:
Selfies yeah.
Mark Labberton:
… of selfies, before the phenomenon of people taking videos of themselves and endlessly recapturing and playing themselves on Instagram, or whatever it may be. And the question that it raises for me is, what about what you just said could be dangerously close to actually elevating young people in such a way that they’re wrongly centered and pandered to? I’m using this language because this is what I’ve heard people sometimes say. Pandered to as opposed to honoured. I think the illustrations you just gave are about honour for sure. But is centrality the role of young people, or would you describe it in some other way as the outcome that you think is really needed? Kara, what would you say about that?
Kara Powell:
Yeah. Well, the first thing that comes to mind is I wish the problem we had to solve was that young people were overly prioritized in churches. Like that would be a great problem that I would love to try to solve. The data shows the opposite. And actually TENx10 commissioned the Fuller Youth Institute to study senior pastors. And in a survey we did of 600 senior pastors when they were asked, “Are young people one of your top five priorities?” Only one-third of senior pastor respondents said that young people were one of their top five priorities. I was pretty saddened by that. And that was, by the way, senior pastors who responded to a survey by the Fuller Youth Institute. So if anything, there’d be a bias toward being more aligned with young people. So I don’t think we need to solve the problem of churches overly prioritizing young people.
Now, do young people tend to think the world revolves around them? Yes, developmentally, they do. And therefore, that’s where I would say let’s counterbalance that with something that’s therefore important to this generation, and that is the way they love to serve and make a difference in the world around them. So Ray and I could both tell you all sorts of stories of young people, my own kids who are 19 through 24, as well as young people nationwide. Who they start to see how God can work through them, and that makes them hungry to do that more and more. And therefore, for that self-centred young person, how can we balance that with really seeing the needs and the potential of the world? And being involved in responding to the world in those places?
Mark Labberton:
Great. That’s really, really helpful. Thank you very, very much for both of you from your responses. Early in the book you’re describing what a future-focused church would be, and this is the definition that you provide. “A group of Jesus followers who seek God’s direction together. Especially in relationally discipling young people, in modelling kingdom diversity and in tangibly loving our neighbours.” So it’s relationally discipling young people, modelling kingdom diversity, and tangibly loving our neighbours as a community of people who are following Jesus.
It’s a really quite fascinating definition. As you know, one of the classic definitions from various documents, not least perhaps the Apostles Creed. Is that the church is one holy Catholic and apostolic church. Those are different kinds of words. The church throughout centuries and millennia has been defined obviously in many different ways, and it depends on the tradition. I think that what you’re writing here is very, very resonant with my own intuition about where this is going as well. But I think for people who may not… we’ll put the quote of this in the show notes therefore that people can actually be looking at it.
But I wonder if you could take turns maybe walking through the points within this definition, because it really does drive everything else that’s in the book. It actually orders the book and it orders in a way the strategy planning and organisational structure that you’re suggesting as well. Ray, why don’t you start?
Raymond Chang:
Yeah. And it’s a great point. We’re not trying to get rid of tradition or turn over the Apostles Creed, or really contradict any of the central creeds that drive our theology and our core convictions. But in reflecting on scripture, and looking at the research, and taking into consideration the state of the church, especially here in the US, we did feel like these three checkpoints, which is what we’re calling them, are important checkpoints to consider. Take relationally discipling young people for example, we believe-
Mark Labberton:
What does that even mean? Yeah.
Raymond Chang:
Yeah. So we believe that young people, as Kara mentioned earlier, need to be one of the top priorities. They may not be the only priority or the top priority, but we contend that it actually does need to be one of the top priorities, maybe within the top three or top five. Because as one of the senior pastors within our research suggested everything rises when we focus on young people. And therefore, without young people, there really is no future within the church. And one of the things that we’re seeing all throughout the country is how buildings are becoming sparser and sparser as congregations age up and out.
When it comes to modelling kingdom diversity, which is the second checkpoint we see throughout scripture how God’s kingdom is inherently diverse. In fact, this was one of the shocking hallmarks of the early church as we see in the book of Acts. And we see how the gospel breaks through dividing lines to turn strangers into enemies, and enemies into friends and strangers and enemies into friends and family-
Kara Powell:
I was wondering where you were going with that Ray. I’m like, well, this is new theology from my friend, Ray.
Raymond Chang:
Yeah.
Kara Powell:
Okay.
Raymond Chang:
That’s right. No, and therefore we see this somewhat radical welcome, radical hospitality, radical love that overturns the ways that our desire for like attracting like to take over and move towards difference and diversity. And also today’s young people are the most ethnically diverse generation ever, and the US is more culturally diverse than any other previous time. And unfortunately, as we see throughout a lot of studies, the church is still one of the most segregated entities and institutions in the country. They’re more segregated than the neighbourhoods that they’re often in, and they’re more segregated than the schools within their neighbourhoods. Which are oftentimes as segregated as they were during the civil rights era.
And therefore, one of the things that we see is how young people experience diversity in all these other settings and expect at a church. But then don’t know what to do with the dissonance when they enter into a church and they don’t see the same type of diversity that they might see in other settings.
And then, our third checkpoint is tangibly loving our neighbours because we know how people from diverse ages and cultures want to see the difference that whatever they invest their lives into makes. They also want to see how the church is responding to the deepest needs and problems and challenges of the world. With our particular attention to those who are on the margins, or those who are marginalized. And we believe, as we see all throughout scripture, as a call to be a redeeming community, that churches are at their best when all generations are seeking reconciliation, righteousness and shalom. And therefore those are some of the reasons why we think these three checkpoints are pretty critical.
Kara Powell:
And if I can just add, part of what was important to us is not only those three checkpoints, which is Ray has said therefore well or grounded in scripture research, what we’re seeing in churches, especially here in the US. But the first part of the sentence where we say we’re a future focused church is a group of Jesus followers who seek God’s direction together. Because while we think these three checkpoints are relevant to all churches, we know that God has a variety of additional complementary adjacent callings for churches. And I was just talking to a leader of a network of very thoughtful churches today and asking her about their leaders’ most pressing pain points. And she replied, “You know, the answer is… what we hear most from churches these days as they’re wondering how do they cultivate a culture of generosity in the midst of our fast-paced online world today.”
So that could be another area that a church could work through this same process that we outline Mark. And , you’ve touched on two of the four points already from here to there. Whatever change that you want to make that you feel like God’s calling you to as you communally discern. Whether it’s praying more, whether it’s giving more globally, whether it’s generosity. Whatever it might be, we’ve seen this process bear some pretty exciting kingdom fruit. And to get even more specific, it actually did relate to young people where these leaders were saying… this was the top pain point that this network is hearing is churches are wondering about the financial future of their church. When they look at a generation that is not investing in institutions like the church.
And I got to say, I’m concerned about that also, especially when I think about how important modelling is to young people’s behaviors. As somebody who, like I said, spent a lot of time in church growing up. Every week at offering, I can still hear that ripping sound of checks being ripped out of checkbooks across the worship centre. And the majority of people were putting money whatever they could in those offering bags. And now every once in a while I have the opportunity to serve as an usher at my church, which is awesome. And maybe 10% of folks give on any given Sunday. Most of us are giving online. That’s what Dave and I, my husband and I practise.
And therefore I do think for this generation that hasn’t seen much in-person giving, and is skeptical of institutions. But we in the church, we’re going to have to remake the case that we’re not ultimately an “institution,” I’ll put that in quotes, that’s somewhat cold and bureaucratic. It’s ultimately all about the purposeful and people-centreed work that young people do want to get behind. , I see young people be very generous if they feel like they’re giving to people. So as soon as this network leader said that this morning and I made a note. Like that’s part of what we have to do is help churches reframe even what it means to give. It’s actually giving to people and giving to purpose, not giving to… If I can do a little bit of alliteration, somewhat perpetuating these programmes that we have in our church.
Mark Labberton:
Right. Yeah. It’s a standing slogan I think within philanthropic circles that people give to people. And when young people just instinctively realise that that’s the case, and that in fact the interesting thing is they’re not in any way alone. And therefore much of the motivation of the Standard Congregational member is actually really not driven in the end by institutionalism. It’s driven much more by a sense that this is a community I belong to. I’m giving to people that I trust who are going to in turn use these resources as we are together to serve ourselves and beyond ourselves. Yeah. A very, very, very important point.
Now, one of the subtexts that runs through the whole book, because you are writing a book about change, is that you early on acknowledged that well-known Peter Drucker phrase that, “Culture eats strategy for breakfast.” Now that phrase may have been heard by many of our listeners, but I would love, Kara, if you could just unpack the thickness of why that is just such an important single sentence. What does it name that is therefore important to understand?
Kara Powell:
Yeah. And actually I feel like I should defer to Ray because while we don’t make it obvious in the book, Ray’s the one who actually wrote that section. So he wrote more of that section on culture than I did, but I’ll go in and get the ball rolling and then let Ray chime in. So yeah, I love strategy. I have an inherent bias toward thinking about strategy and lists and practical next steps and action steps and all that. And without changing a church or any institution’s culture, their ethos, their ultimate way of understanding and interacting with the world, no great-to-do list can beat out an organisation’s culture, and perspective and just way of thinking about themselves.
So that’s part of the Herculean job of change is actually changing that church culture. And that takes quite a bit of time. Before Ray chimes in, I’ll just share this that we’ve learned as we’ve worked with churches. If I can be encouraging to churches after just talking about how challenging it is to change church culture. What we’ve seen is that most churches overestimate what they can accomplish in one year, and underestimate what they can accomplish in three to five years. And therefore, over the longer haul, and we’re talking 12, 18, 24, 36, 48 months, you can see a lot of culture change. But that doesn’t happen at all overnight. So Ray, what else would you say to compliment or hey, correct, anything that I just said?
Raymond Chang:
Well, lots of correction.
Kara Powell:
Oh, good, good. Perfect.
Raymond Chang:
Well, no correction. I think you covered a lot of it and I don’t know if there’s much I can add. But if I did add something, I’d probably say people can come up with great strategic plans and ideate a lot of great strategic initiatives, but it’s a organisation’s culture that really significantly impacts and defines the success or failure of any of those strategic activities. Because the culture is where the values are held, it’s where the core beliefs and the behaviors are formed and carried through an organisation or even across relationships. And if a strategic initiative, and this is part of the challenge, is like there’s a lot of strategic ideas and strategic plans and even strategic solutions that people might offer that don’t align with the values. The core values and the beliefs and the behaviors of an organisation or a church or an entity.
And what you’ll see is you’ll see nothing but resistance, and you’ll see nothing but a rejection of those things or a rejection of those plans. And therefore unless there’s an alignment between the two, or unless the strategy emerges out of the culture or unless the culture is first changed, it’s really hard to lead with strategy. And I think at the very least, you have to have an awareness of what the cultural norms are.
Kara Powell:
Yeah. If I can just build on that a tiny bit, something that helps me quite a bit understand culture change is when Ronald Heifetz talks about technical change versus adaptive change. And adaptive change is when an organisation truly does need to change its culture. Technical change is more when an organisation needs to change technique or something more minor than culture. So going back to young people, let’s give an example. Let’s say a church is feeling like, wow, young people are not really engaging in our Sunday morning worship. You know what we need to do is the problem is we meet at 9:00 and that’s too early for young people, therefore let’s move it to 10:00. Well, that’s a technical change that’s not really changing church culture, it’s just doing a slight tweak on what you’re already doing. Maybe that does solve the problem.
In the particular case study I just gave, it’s not generally that your church is an hour or two early. It’s that when young people show up, they don’t feel like they are prioritized. They don’t feel like the church is done with them and by them. They feel like church is done for them and to them. So, that’s when you need to change culture is some of those more macro shifts. And often what’s interesting is sometime enough technical change can grease the skids for that adaptive change to ultimately come about.
Mark Labberton:
Yeah, I think one of the things that COVID revealed was that churches were at various places in their ability even to make technical changes. And they were even harder to actually make changes, legitimately therefore, to the adaptive change that was needed. Because of this pivotal moment that was reordering therefore much around the fundamental aspects and assumptions of our life. And now the church post-COVID is faced with the leftover reality of COVID, and trying to figure out how does culture change continue? Now that we’ve learned and seen what we’ve seen and experienced what we’ve experienced, how do we continue to step toward this moment and toward the somewhat change that’s going to help our congregation thrive?
Ray, I wonder if you could add in thinking about culture change, about ethnic churches, white churches are ethnic churches too, let me say. But in your context, having grown up in an Asian context, how much was change just change possible in ethnic congregations? That you have seen as a child growing up and as a young adult. And as you do now see therefore fully because of all the advocacy and work that you’re doing in the Asian community especially?
Raymond Chang:
Yeah. If I can address something around the COVID piece-
Mark Labberton:
Please.
Raymond Chang:
I think a lot of people and a lot of churches during COVID try to address COVID as if they were primarily and exclusively adjusting for technical changes. But the cultural shifts that COVID caused were substantial in the ways that people readjusted their rhythms. They completely shifted the ways in which they pursued embodied communities. The ways in which they prioritize church or deprioritized church on Sunday. And I think the lack of thinking around that and the lack of addressing that major cultural moment is actually being manifest now. With a lot of church leaders who are trying to figure out how do we deal with the fact that people need the church anymore, or feel the need for the church anymore? Or come to church not twice a month or three times a month, but once a month?
Or want to go out and experience “church” in the street or at a restaurant with their friends on a Sunday brunch. And therefore on and therefore forth. And those are all great things, but those are questions that the church wasn’t actively thinking about at large during COVID as they were primarily focused on technical change. And therefore, I thought it might be helpful to somewhat-
Mark Labberton:
Sure. Thank you for that.
Raymond Chang:
… add a little bit more complexity to the situation. To the already complex situation that you’ve articulated. I think when it comes to the predominantly or dominantly white church and the multi-ethnic realities, I do think that intentional culture change and cultivation and tending to is hard when you’re in survival mode, regardless of your ethnic or racial background. And therefore you’re almost just going, if you’re under-resourced or you’re navigating a church context where you don’t have a lot of staff or volunteers that you can lean on or leaders that you can lean on. I think an ideal scenario is when people feel a sense of ownership for the community, and cultivating a culture change in that sense therefore that you can actually tend to and curate the type of culture you want to see in partnership with other people.
But a lot of times when we think of migrant or immigrant communities, especially with the Asian American context, there are multiple layers that are being wrestled with. One is, especially if you’re thinking about the first generation Asian American church. Much of it was the provision of both the gospel proclamation and discipleship through the church context. As well as helping people navigate society. So you’re acting both as a worship centre and a community centre or social service.
Within the second generation because there was such a large generational gap between first generation immigrant communities, parents, congregations, and second generation born in the US, Asian Americans, there was… And some of the challenges that emerged as a result of those dynamics not being tended to oftentimes because of survival, but not exclusively because of survival. You see somewhat like an identity crisis taking place at the community level, where second gen Asian-Americans or other immigrants are actively distancing themselves from the first generation. But then not necessarily finding that the predominantly white church or even the white dominant multi-ethnic church knows how to cultivate a space where they can flourish and find a home.
And therefore they do feel this liminality or being in this in-between place where they almost feel spaceless and placeless. And are trying to figure out what it means to be a Christian in light of a church context and community where none of the options feel like home for them. And the only imagination that they can draw from, or the only examples that they can draw to shape their imagination have emerged from other contexts. And therefore I think that there’s a lot that is really complicated in that reality that needs to be addressed.
I don’t know if I’m actually answering the question that you asked to begin with. But to navigate change at the cultural level there I do think requires us to take a step back to reflect on what led us to where we are now. So following that, even the framework to the here, figure out where we want to go. And if we don’t know where we want to go to submit that to the Holy Spirit and to scripture and to align ourselves to that. And then somewhat crafting together our picture of there, and then discerning who we go with and how we get there together. And therefore I don’t know if that answered your question. I feel like I somewhat heard two or three questions in one question.
Mark Labberton:
No I think you added a… No. You answered in a thick way, therefore I’m appreciative of all the dimensions that you just picked up on. I do think that one of the themes of the book that is the strongest and understandably, understandably and rightly therefore is the theme of community. It’s about a community of followers. It’s about a community of followers focusing on various people within it, particularly you’re noticing young people. Then you’re also talking about the diversity of people that are within. So the community again. And then the community within the wider community of the town, the city, the village, whatever it might be that we’re actually living in.
And surely those are major, major biblical themes. So when I think about a book on changing the church, and you know because Kara in particular has been involved in some work that we did while I was still at Fuller. That we called Rethinking Church in the 21st century. And the question was just asking what is behind the challenges? Why are we where we are? What do we do with where we are? And how do we respond to where we are? And a lot of that work is now coming to fruition finally after all these years. So stay tuned for more information about those things.
One of the great things about this book is that it’s a map of a journey, and you frame it around this language from here to there. It has sometimes been said that on journeys that it’s really not about the destination, it’s about the journey itself. It’s about the process that you’re going to go through to do this. And in many ways, what you’re offering in this book is that a future-focused church is already set on a destination. The process of which will itself be a journey that you help and encourage and strengthen in all kinds of ways by the advice and research that you’ve done on these themes.
But it also now really underscores to me how much the destination is also part of the book. And the destination is not itself a finished product when the church “arrives,” it’s that you engage in a process that is therefore thick and rich in the ways that you’re encouraging here, that in fact it will be more robustly the church to arrive wherever, “there is” in five years or in 10 years, let’s say. Comment on that, would you? Is the process really the goal? Or is there a goal beyond the process? And is there the process or is it really the destination?
Kara Powell:
Yes. I don’t feel comfortable choosing one or the other-
Mark Labberton:
Fair enough.
Kara Powell:
And I don’t think we do in the book.
Mark Labberton:
No, you don’t.
Kara Powell:
Because we talk about the present and future and how, and we also talk about who. And Ray, I think you did such a good job in your last answer illustrating why knowing who is in your community is therefore important. Whether it’s immigration issues, whether it’s faith issues, gender issues, whatever it might be. Really understanding your own context, the people that God’s called you to love and serve is therefore important. So yes, I think at first glance, it seems like the there is what’s ultimately compelling. But therefore much of the rich transformation comes during the how you have the opportunity to the there. So Mark, I’m not going to let you force me to choose one or the other. I’m going to say it’s both.
Mark Labberton:
Right. I say right because I agree with you. And I think it’s right because that is the nature of the Bible itself. , if God’s purpose was simply, “something called a destination,” then even more would we have questions about freedom. And why is it that we’ve been given therefore much liberty in being able to shape the pathways that we take? But the stories of the Bible, the reason it’s 66 books filled with stories is because of the way that people have tried to engage in the process. And I think whether we’re thinking about destination or whether we’re thinking about the process itself, the journey, the fellowship along the way.
I think this book is a tremendous gift on therefore many different levels. And it’s my hope that those of you who might be listening to this are going to be able to take advantage of what the book really offers. And I would say you might be in the middle of leading or participating in a church that might need to take this up as an actual set of callings and tasks, and work, and directions to be able to set. But you can also read this book, I think very valuably in a different way. Which is also a story of your own discipleship. It’s also a story of trying to imagine how we might look at the moment that we’re in, in this very cultural landscape that we are living in every day. And ask ourselves, how did we have the opportunity to this here? Where is the church meant to fit into this here? And how might it realign and reorder my way of understanding what God is really up to?
Because hidden within this book, and not in the sense of being tucked away, but meaning within and through the language of the book are lots and lots of clues and triggers and challenges about how we actually can think about the moment we’re in, and then move into the action that God may be calling us to.
Thank you both therefore very much for the book. Thank Jake, and thanks to those who care about the church. And I just want to make an appeal that if there’s ever a moment to care about the church, it’s now. And if there’s ever a moment to care about young people in the church, it’s now. And therefore much of what we’re facing is really going to be framed by how deeply and truly and faithfully we do that somewhat work. Thanks to both of you and to Jake for this outstanding, outstanding contribution.
Kara Powell:
Well, you’re welcome. And if I can just end with this, my last sentence will be the first sentence of our book, which is, “We believe the best days of the Church are ahead.”
Raymond Chang:
Yeah, I totally echo what Kara just said. And we believe that with the power of the Holy Spirit, therefore much good can come out of any change effort that people engage in with faith. And therefore thanks Mark for having us on.
