“…The only way to change is to break”

Some great insights from Tony Lorenzen:
http://sunflowerchalice.com/2013/07/17/resilience-and-the-spirituality-of-change/

Church leaders certainly need to be able to address dysfunction and conflict. It almost seems, however, that our current focus in leadership training assumes sickness is the normative state of our congregational systems. Perhaps resiliency thinking can shift the focus on this just a bit. Perhaps the emphasis can now be about teaching change, failure, risk, and adventure as an intrinsic part of the journey. Thus the systems management and conflict resolution become a way to navigate the ups and downs of church life, not only a way to fix what is broken. Perhaps we can shift towards teaching these things as a way to enable congregations to adapt and bounce back from conflicts, disruptions and controversy.
Spiritual writer Mark Nepo tells a story about a glass blower that emphasizes the importance of resiliency. “The glassblower knows,” he says, “that while in the heat of beginning, any shape is possible. Once hardened, the only way to change is to break.”