Tod Bolsinger urges churches not to waste a crisis

Churches can thrive in rapidly changing times if leaders adapt to circumstances while holding true to core values, author Tod Bolsinger told participants at the Future Church 2030 Conference in Bryan.

“We weren’t trained for this. We weren’t raised for this. We weren’t prepared for this. … We thought this was a boat trip, and now we’re facing mountains,” said Bolsinger, author of Canoeing the Mountains: Christian Leadership in Uncharted Territory.

During his presentation on “How Not to Waste a Crisis,” Bolsinger drew heavily from the story of explorers Meriwether Lewis and William Clark, who set out to explore the Louisiana Purchase and search for the Northwest Passage.

Lewis and Clark canoed up the Missouri River until they encountered the Rocky Mountains. Once they reached the mountains, their canoes were now useless, and they had to change their traveling methods completely. Furthermore, the mountains were different from any mountains they had ever faced before.

“They were discovering that the world in front of them was nothing like the world behind them. And they were experts at the world behind them,” said Bolsinger, co-founder and principal at AE Sloan Leadership.

Old methods may be ineffective in time of crisis

Many churches are in a similar position to Lewis and Clark, Bolsinger explained. Things they have been doing for years are not working now. The last few years—a period marked by the COVID-19 pandemic and increased divisiveness in the nation—have been a time of crisis, he noted.

The crisis has caused many of the old methods of leading and growing a church to become ineffective, leading to setbacks in many churches, he observed.

Bolsinger pointed to two phases of leading in a crisis. In the acute phase, leaders act quickly to stabilize and protect a church to buy time. In the adaptive phase, leaders must address the underlying issues so that the church cannot only live on but thrive.

Times of crisis may reveal underlying conditions that have been present in a church for years, but leaders may not have had to confront them before. But in a time of challenge, those problems may be magnified, and it is essential to address them, Bolsinger said.

During some of the webinars he held during the pandemic, Bolsinger saw some of the problems churches mentioned included a lack of deep discipleship, lack of community for keeping relational connections, lack of cross-generational engagement, lack of extensive leadership capacity or lack of prophetic wisdom for addressing challenges for social justice.

Adapt to meet the unknown

Adaptive challenges cannot be solved with existing knowledge, Bolsinger stressed. Rather, they require a shift in values, expectations or behavior. Like Lewis and Clark, leaders have to know how to adapt to meet these unknowns.

“What are you going to do with the fact that the world in front of you is nothing like the world behind you?” Bolsinger asked the church leaders.

Effective church leaders must be learning leaders if they are to navigate these adaptive challenges. Leaders of the future lead the learning process with vulnerability and self-awareness, Bolsinger said.

During this time of learning and change, it is imperative to keep the “core DNA” of a church or ministry the same. Before change can come, leaders and those they lead have to know what needs to be kept consistent and steady.

“It’s about being the healthiest version of ourselves, which means we have to get really, really clear about our core values,” Bolsinger said. “And by that, I don’t mean our aspirational values—not who we should be, but who we are. [We need to be] the healthiest version of that.”

Bolsinger quoted Jim Collins as saying, “Once you have determined what will never change, you must then be prepared to change everything else.”

Learn from mistakes

When churches learn and try new things, as long as they are learning from their mistakes, there is no true failure, Bolsinger insisted.

Not everything they try will be a success, but it will all help the church grow, he noted.

No matter what criticism or hardship may come from a time of adaptive challenges and change, Bolsinger encouraged churches to remember God is on their side.

“When we’re trying to lead change in a world where nothing is like it was behind us, we’re going to have to learn, we’re going to have to leave things behind, and we’re going to have to lead people,” Bolsinger said. “When it gets really bad, remember, [God says] you are my beloved child, chosen and marked for this. And you were loved into existence.”