Today’s Alban Institute blog post talks about congregations that fear change. The post begins by posing this question: “My congregation has never been very good with change. Whenever a new idea is proposed, it is quickly shot down with the phrase, ‘that isn’t how we do things here.’ … New and younger members … can’t move into any leadership positions. They become discouraged and leave. Or, if they do get involved in a program or a committee, their ideas are always shot down. Is my church the only one that experiences this dynamic? How do other churches deal with change?”<\/p>\n
Why yes, Virginia, many other congregations experience this dynamic. (In fact, so many U.S. congregations have become so resistant to necessary change that I suspect it’s one of the factors contributing to the rise of the “nones,” those people who report no religious affiliation on nationwide polls — younger people don’t want to belong to congregations that are mired in the past.) And if you want to promote a healthy attitude towards change in your congregation, you should read the post by clicking here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Today’s Alban Institute blog post talks about congregations that fear change. The post begins by posing this question: “My congregation has never been very good with change. Whenever a new idea is proposed, it is quickly shot down with the phrase, ‘that isn’t how we do things here.’ … New and younger members … can’t … Continue reading “Neophobia”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2393","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-religious-institutions"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/yauu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2393","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/yauu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/yauu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/yauu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/yauu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2393"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/yauu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2393\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2394,"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/yauu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2393\/revisions\/2394"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/yauu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2393"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/yauu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2393"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/yauu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2393"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}