Change is hard. I was reflecting tonight with a friend about how difficult it is for me to deal with change. We were sitting outside the National Youth Workers Convention main session and had a couple minutes to talk about everything that is happening to the organization Youth Specialties right now.
As we talked I began to think about the older people at my home church. I was thinking about how I must be perceived by them when I talk about change. Many older congregants are very invested in the church. They know the history and the past vision of the church. They were responsible in a large part with building the church and leading it through much of its years. Then guys like me come in and want things to change. And, I’m probably not validating enough what they did as I make those changes which might relate to them that their ideas and vision no longer have value.
As I started thinking about it I realized that much of what I feel now about Youth Specialties must be similar to how many of the people in my congregation feel about the changes we’ve made. It made me realize that I need to do a much better job remembering people’s feelings about the past and things they were involved with are important. I need to recognize that organizations involving people need care when discussing change.
For those of us who have been involved in Youth Ministry and Youth Specialties for a long time we have to admit that the changes happening now are hard. But, before we start casting stones let’s take some time to think about what types of changes we’ve implemented that might have alienated and hurt people. Maybe we need to think about how from this point forward we can do a better job of taking care of those who are heavily invested in things and be careful when we do things that affect them too much.
I love Youth Ministry and that won’t change. I love Jesus and that won’t change. What will change is the vehicle in which we are trained to do those two things. I’m praying for the people who are in the midst of deciding what those changes will look like and that when they announce them that they do it in a way that validates the past and the future.
That’s my hope.
Change is hard, and sometimes change is also unnecessary, misguided and destructive to the organization that is undergoing the change. YS’s corporate structure has driven the kinds of changes it is experiencing now more so than any kind of organizational growth or need to increase the value. It’s chips on a table. Unfortunately, those chips have a lot of meaning to a lot of folks who do a lot of good for a lot of years. Pray for these changes to work out well for the sake of YS’s continued impact, and pray that this sort of circumstance can be better avoided in the future by similar businesses with similar kingdom impact.