This spring, I took a course, Leading through Change and Conflict, and we were required to create a personal and ministry action plan with a playbook.

These practical assignments required evaluating values, intentions and initiatives from the inside out!

I thought I was taking a risk making my organizational ministry the home, but my professor, Clint Mix, cited throughout this post, was affirming.

Part of one of the assignments was writing about three change principles.

As I define, support, and apply resilience, trust, and servant leadership, I am encouraged that leading change is possible in my home and beyond!

Hard seasons are inevitable in our “now and not yet” world (Mix, Unit 1).

Within life’s trials, taking “the balcony view” (Mix, Unit 17 ) provides perspective for deeper reflection, giving valuable resources for future challenges.

Even with a healthy vantage point, implementing the necessary changes takes time and effort, and “only thirty percent of change programs succeed” (Mix, Unit 5).

The changes grief and loss have recently brought to my life story have grown resilience.

RESILIENCE

Resilience is “an ability to recover from or adjust easily to misfortune or change” (Merriam-Webster).

It is also my word for 2023, and like when you purchase a new car, I keep seeing it everywhere!

Two newer books that incorporate this word are:

Resilient by John Eldredge

Building a Resilient Life by Rebekah Lyons

While studying resilience, the cost and devastation as leaders struggle through burnout or moral failure stand out.

When leaders do not model what it looks like to care for themselves, they do a great disservice to their team (or family), leaving them ill-prepared for inevitable change.

In In the Name of Jesus, Henri Nouwen reflects personally:

“‘Burnout’ was a convenient psychological translation for a spiritual death” (Ch. 1).

We need Christian leaders and parents who survive and thrive physically, spiritually, and mentally.

Change and adversity are inevitable, so let us practice Lyon’s 5 Rules of Resiliency (15):

1. Name The Pain

It takes courage to name the pain and how it integrates into our story.

John Eldredge says,

“Story is how we figure things out, bring order and meaning to the events around us” (23).

I have seen how going first in vulnerability and naming my struggles connects me with others (Lencioni, 35).

My ongoing “transformation” (2 Cor. 3:18) through grief and loss has a ripple effect on those I influence, most importantly, my six children.

Retelling the stories that have changed us helps us to “reconnect our past foundations with our present and future structures” (Quinn, Ch. 7).

It is good to both name the present pain and share what we have overcome!

2. Shift The Narrative

Being a bearer of God’s light begins with me gaining perspective from him each day. Daily morning prayer with my husband, a habit that has supported our marriage, has helped me shift the narrative.

In The Advantage, Patrick Lencioni says,

“If the parents’ relationship is dysfunctional, the family will be too” (19).

I also appreciated John Kotter’s point in Leading Change when considering my children's educational and spiritual formation:

“...attitude training is often just as important as skills training” (113).

I am living the hard reality Lyons describes:

Amen?

3. Embrace Adversity

In the photo above, I was the hesitant one at the back while my kids led the way on one of the many old railroad bridges we crossed with unnervingly wide gaps, open to the water below, and no guard rails, while on a family hike during a camping trip this spring!

My husband held my hand over most of the bridges…

Oh, how I long to protect myself and my family from life’s hardships and suffering, but I am reminded:

"By surviving difficult experiences, they build up an immunity to hardship" (Kotter, 192).

I appreciate how Lyons defines resilience…

She also sums up resilience as “faithful perseverance” (Lyons, 25).

Lyons quotes Helen Keller’s wise words:

“Character cannot be developed in ease and quiet. Only through experience of trial and suffering can the soul be strengthened, vision cleared, ambition inspired, and success achieved” (32).

4. Make Meaning

As we embrace adversity, we learn to make meaning. This meaning comes from the broader perspective spoken about initially and does not match our instant gratification culture.

In speaking about healing after turbulent times, Eldredge says:

“You need a plan. Resilience and victory aren’t going to come with a swipe on your home screen” (156).

The ministry action plans and playbooks I worked on for the course on leading change were helpful assignments to see how one can take intentional steps to plan for success according to our values, no matter the struggles that come.

5. Endure Together

Lyon’s last rule of resiliency reflects my heart for our family.

While we have weathered a lot over the last few years, the Lord has strengthened us individually and as a unit through each changing circumstance.

And as we share personal histories with others, this “leads to a newly found sense of respect because of the admiration that comes when someone realizes that one of their peers endured and overcame a hardship or accomplished something remarkable” (Lencioni, 29).

Changing and healing are even more beautiful when experienced with others.

Nouwen explains,

“Laying down your life means making your own faith and doubts, hope and despair, joy and sadness, courage and fear available to others as ways of getting in touch with the Lord of life” (Ch. 2).

I want my kids to be relevant to God’s love because,

“The Christian leader of the future is called to be completely irrelevant and to stand in this world with nothing to offer but his or her own vulnerable self" (Nouwen, Ch. 1).

What a gift to share how our story joins with all of humanity to point to a grander story of renewal and restoration.

Trust

The second organizational principle for leading change is trust.

In the forward of The Speed of Trust, the late Stephen R. Covey says,

“Low trust is the greatest cost in life and in organizations, including families…low trust slows everything—every decision, every communication, and every relationship.”

In the first chapter, his son, Stephen M. R. Covey, speaks on trust, saying,

“It changes the quality of every present moment and alters the trajectory and outcomes of every future moment of our lives—both personally and professionally.”

Cultivating trust is the most powerful way to lead change in our home because “relationships of all kinds are built on and sustained by trust” (Covey, Ch. 1).

Again, this begins with the leader.

“One of the fastest ways to restore trust is to make and keep commitments—even small commitments—to ourselves and others” (Covey, Ch. 1).

This has such a powerful effect on change, and Covey lays it out simply:

“When trust is high, speed goes up, and cost goes down.”

He outlines the five waves of trust:

Self trust

Relationship trust

Organizational trust

Market trust and

Societal trust

Leadership, according to Covey, “is getting results in a way that inspires trust” (Ch, 2).

Trust was extended to me throughout my life by my parents and other leaders. I want to do the same for my children, empowering them to take on challenges and grow in their potential (Covey, Ch. 5).

In Developing the Leader Within You, John Maxwell says,

“You win people’s hearts by helping them grow personally” (10).

In his practical chapter on creating positive change, Maxwell says,

“The more people trust the leader, the more willing they will be to accept the leader’s proposed change” (67).

I venture to say this relationship dynamic is the same with us and Jesus, the ultimate servant leader!

Servant Leadership

Servant leadership is the third and arguably most crucial organizational change principle I want to apply within my home ministry.

Servant leadership begins with surrender, reflected in postures of grief and prayer.

We build our resilience for changing times when we regularly wait and listen to God for discernment, individually and in community (Mix, Unit 10).

From this position, the vision and strategies for life organically develop as part of our healing/change process.

A healthy home or organization has integrity when it is “whole, consistent, and complete" (Lencioni, 5), and this begins in daily surrender to Jesus; only then can I inspire others with a legacy of hope!

I must lead with this integrity because,

“Nothing undermines change more than behaviour by important individuals that is inconsistent with the verbal communication” (Kotter, 11).

Books like Greg McKeown’s Essentialism and James Clear’s Atomic Habits have encouraged me to narrow my focus and make incremental shifts toward change over the years.

Nevertheless, Henri Nouwan’s insights in his book In The Name of Jesus bring a spiritual perspective to the most remarkable change and leadership principles.

Nouwen encourages us to lay down position, power, and pride and gives us this caution,

“My success was putting my own soul in danger” (Ch 1).

Nouwen says, “Through the disciplines of contemplative prayer, Christian leaders have to learn to listen again and again to the voice of love and to find there the wisdom and courage to address whatever issue presents itself to them” (Ch. 1).

Along with leading from Christ’s inspiration, Nouwen encourages the teamwork he modelled, sending out the disciples in teams (Luke 10:1) and combating the mentality of being “spectacular” on our own (Mix, Unit 2).

He also highlights the desperate need for leaders to revisit the meaning of theology and, indeed, be in contemplative prayer, discerning the voice of God.

The hope for the future is leaders who take up their cross and lay down their lives.

While Jesus is our hero leader, he always went first in demonstrating resilience (Matt. 4:1-11; Mark 14:32-42; Hebrews 12:2-3), building trust (Matt. 28:18-20; John 10:14-15, 14:1-2; Rev. 1:17-18) and sacrificially serving (Mark 10:45).

We desire our children to embody these principles through life’s changing circumstances so they can be change leaders.

Leadership tools, resources and strategies are useless without the commitment to follow an intentional change process submitted before God for daily guidance and empowerment.

I should not be surprised that each book I read on leading change in an organization says,

“First lead yourself” (Kouzes and Posner, 308).

I am thankful that my husband and I can collaborate to bring restoration within our home, neighbourhood and other ministry opportunities.

Taking the time to reflect and examine values, principles, and strategies is invaluable for real-life change.

So many faithful servants of the Lord, like my grandmother and father, have lived this faithfulness, and I am honoured to run my leg of this mysterious race (Hebrews 12:1-3).

I look forward to celebrating future generations leading with resilience, trust and a servant's heart!