Not everyone is ready for change, or ready for the same amount of change. This further emphasizes the need to approach followers as partners (Hickman 2010, 55) to create coalition and context for change in continuous dynamic environments (58). The founder carries additional weight in determining the embedded cultural DNA and therefor his/her own internal ongoing change is an essential gift to the group as a fellow learner, if the organization is to experience any sort of innovative principles. 

I’ve been especially interested in the social dynamics in play during change. “Transcending such differences as time, place, technological development, ethnic origin and religious orientation – are two underlying configurations: the domination system and the partnership system” (Schuyler 2016, 104). Does our context for change involve embedded ideological resistance towards the intended change? Who are the players, those with the most to gain or lose, what common ground can be found towards change?  Are the changes we are moving towards carry their own set of ideological defaults? Should they? What does Jesus incarnation tell us about power dynamics and what should “Christian” change dynamics look like during the means and ends of change? 

Our conversations revealed one thing to me; all of us are in a constant state of change. Even if we’re satisfied and feeling a sense of ‘settled’, entropy is at work (218). The stoppage of intentional growth movement is in fact a movement towards unintentional calcification. To cease growing is to accelerate death. The structures we make or enable seem to eventually turn on us as ritual loses meaning, and a cognitive dissonance arises between what we really feel inside, and those outwards symbols.  In other words, how can we stay adaptive and also honor tradition? How can we as leaders ensure we aren’t fortifying structures that might keep us and our followers from growing?

Growth is difficult, learning always meets resistance, and change is an exchange of familiar for the hope of something better. Change is therefor risk, but our generation seems fixated on safety.